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“I think the president-elect is having fun.” This is how the Canadian ambassador in Washington responded to Donald Trump’s first proposal that his country should be the 51st country of the United States.
The threatening “joke” is one of Trump’s favorite communication techniques. But the incoming president has spoken at such length about his desire to annex Canada to the US that Canadian politicians must take his ambitions seriously, and publicly reject them.
Canadians have little consolation that Trump ordered to attack their country and instead threatened them with “economic power”. But he refused to stop the military from achieving his ambitions of “reclaiming” the Panama Canal and annexing Greenland, an independent Danish territory.
More subtle smiles? Germany’s chancellor and France’s foreign minister took Trump’s threats equally seriously warn that Greenland is covered by the EU’s safeguard clause. In other words – at least in theory – the EU and the US could end up at war over Greenland.
Trump’s defenders and sycophants take the whole thing as a big joke. The New York Post published a new “Donroe Doctrine” – a 19th-century message to Europeans not to interfere in the western hemisphere – and Greenland is called “our country”. Brandon Gill, a Republican congressman, argued that Canadians, Panamanians and Greenlanders should be there. “glorified” with the idea of being American.
But minority rights are no joke. The seizure of a country by force or by force by a large neighbor is the biggest alarm in world politics. It is a sign that bad government is on its way. That is why the western alliance knew that it is important to support the resistance of Ukraine against Russia. It is also why the US organized an international coalition to remove Iraq from Kuwait in the early nineties.
Attacks by small countries provoked the first and second world wars. When the British court was worried in 1914 about going to war with Germany, David Lloyd George, later prime minister, wrote to his wife: “I have fought hard for peace . . . but I am driven to the conclusion that if the small nation of Belgium is invaded by Germany all my customs . . . it will join the side of the war.”
Britain and France refused to protect Czechoslovakia from Nazi Germany in 1938. But within a year, they realized their mistake and extended a guarantee of protection to Poland—the next smallest neighbor on the list. they were attacked by Germany. The invasion of Poland provoked a war.
Trump’s supporters hate any comparison between his speech and those of past or present opponents. They argue that his demands are actually aimed at strengthening the free world, for war against an independent China and possibly Russia. Trump justified his expansionist ambitions for Canada, Greenland and Panama on national security grounds.
Another argument is that Trump’s bluster is a negotiating ploy. Sometimes his supporters say that he is just putting pressure on the allied nations to do what is necessary, for the greater good of the western alliance. And they say, aren’t many of the 55,000 Greenlanders who want independence from Denmark? Aren’t Canadians sick of the “woke” elites running their country?
But these are weak arguments. It would make sense for Trump to try to persuade Greenlanders that they can be better as Americans. But threatening to use military or economic pressure is extreme. His claims that many Canadians would like to join the US are also false. The idea was rejected by 82 per cent of Canadians in a recent survey.
As for grand strategy – the truth is that Trump’s threats to Greenland, Panama and Canada are a complete gift to Russia and China. If Trump can say it’s a strategic imperative for the US to take over Greenland or the Panama Canal, why is it illegal for Putin to say it’s a strategic imperative for Russia to control Ukraine? If Gill can say that it is America’s “foreseeable destiny” to expand its borders, who can deny Xi Jinping’s insistence that it is China’s goal to control Taiwan?
Russia and China have long dreamed of splitting the western alliance. Trump is doing their job for them. A few weeks ago, it would have been beyond the Kremlin’s wildest dreams to see a major Canadian news magazine don the cover. story on “Why America can’t conquer Canada”. The idea of European leaders invoking the EU’s defense clause against the US – not Russia – would also seem like a dream. But these are new facts.
Even if Trump does not make good on his threats, he has already done significant damage to America’s global standing and its alliance system. And he has not been in the office.
It seems unlikely that Trump will order an attack on Greenland. (Although at one point it seemed unlikely that he would try to overturn the election.) It is even more unlikely that Canada would be afraid to give up its independence. But the fact that the incoming president is tearing up international norms is a disaster. Sniffing Trump’s “humor” is wrong. What we see is tragedy – not comedy.
