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“I think the president-elect is having a little fun.” This is how the Canadian ambassador in Washington reacted to Donald Trump’s first proposal for her country to become the 51st US state.
The threatening “joke” is one of Trump’s preferred methods of communication. But the incoming president has now spoken so long about his ambition to bring Canada into the US that Canadian politicians must take his ambitions seriously and publicly reject them.
Canadians have little consolation that Trump has ruled out invading their country and is instead threatening them with “economic force.” But he refused to rule out military action to achieve his ambitions to “take back” the Panama Canal and take over Greenland, which is a self-governing Danish territory.
More lighthearted banter? The German chancellor and the French foreign minister took Trump’s threats seriously enough to warn that Greenland is covered by the EU mutual defense 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 see the whole thing as a big joke. The New York Post proclaimed a new “Donroe Doctrine” — a 19th-century message to Europeans not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere — with Greenland relabeled as “our country.” Brandon Gill, a Republican congressman, laughed that Canadians, Panamanians and Greenlanders should be “respected” to the idea of becoming Americans.
But the rights of small nations are no joke. The violent or forced takeover of a country by a larger neighbor is the biggest alarm in world politics. It’s a signal that a rogue state is on the move. That is why the Western alliance knew that it was crucial to support the Ukrainian resistance to Russia. This is also the reason why the USA organized an international alliance in the early nineties to expel Iraq from Kuwait.
Attacks on small countries fueled the First and Second World Wars. When the British government was agonizing over whether to go to war with Germany in 1914, David Lloyd George, who later became prime minister, wrote to his wife: “I have fought a lot for peace . . . but I am forced to the conclusion that if the small nationality of Belgium is attacked by Germany all my traditions . . . he will be engaged on the side of the war.”
In 1938, Britain and France infamously refused to protect Czechoslovakia from Nazi Germany. But within a year, they realized their mistake and extended the security guarantee to Poland – the next little neighbor on Germany’s hit list. The invasion of Poland caused the beginning of the conflict.
Trump’s supporters bitterly resent any comparison of his rhetoric to that of past or present aggressors. They claim that his demands are actually aimed at strengthening the free world, at fighting autocratic China, and perhaps Russia. Trump has justified his expansionist ambitions for Canada, Greenland and Panama with national security.
Another argument is that Trump’s bragging is simply a negotiating tactic. His supporters sometimes argue that he is merely pressuring allied nations to do what is necessary, for the greater good of the Western alliance. And after all, they say, aren’t many of Greenland’s 55,000 inhabitants seeking independence from Denmark? Aren’t Canadians tired of the incompetent “woke” elite running their country?
But those are weak arguments. It would be legitimate for Trump to try to convince the Greenlanders that they might be better off as Americans. But the threat of using military or economic coercion is unheard of. His claims that many Canadians would be happy to join the US are also delusional. The idea was rejected according to 82 percent of Canadians in a recent poll.
As for grand strategy — the reality is that Trump’s threats to Greenland, Panama and Canada are an absolute gift to Russia and China. If Trump can claim that it is a strategic necessity for the US to take over Greenland or the Panama Canal, why is it illegitimate for Putin to claim that it is a strategic necessity for Russia to control Ukraine? If Gill can argue that it is America’s “manifest destiny” to expand its borders, who could object when Xi Jinping insists that it is China’s manifest destiny to control Taiwan?
Both Russia and China have long dreamed of breaking up the Western alliance. Trump is doing their job for them. Just a few weeks ago, it would have been beyond the Kremlin’s wildest dreams to see a major Canadian news magazine on the cover story on the topic “Why America can’t conquer Canada”. The idea of European leaders invoking the EU’s mutual defense clause against the US rather than Russia would also seem like a fantasy. But these are new realities.
Even if Trump never makes good on his threats, he has already done enormous damage to America’s global standing and alliance system. And he is not even in office yet.
It seems unlikely that Trump would order an invasion of Greenland. (Though it once seemed unlikely that they would try to rig the election.) It is even less likely that Canada will be intimidated into surrendering its independence. But the very fact that the future president is breaking international norms is a disaster. Any laughing at Trump’s “jokes” is inappropriate. What we are witnessing is a tragedy – not a comedy.