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“I think the president-elect is having a little fun”. That’s how Canada’s ambassador to Washington reacted to Donald Trump’s first suggestion that his country should become the 51st American state.
The scary “joke” is one of Trump’s preferred methods of communication. But the incoming president has now spoken at such length about his ambition to annex Canada to the US that Canadian politicians should take his ambitions seriously, and publicly reject them.
Canadians have little consolation that Trump rejected the invasion of their country and instead threatened them with “economic strength”. But he refused to rule out military action to achieve his ambitions to “take back” the Panama Canal and seize Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory.
More light-hearted banter? Germany’s chancellor and France’s foreign minister took Trump’s threats seriously be warned that Greenland is covered by the EU’s mutual defense clause. In other words – at least in theory – the EU and the US could end up in a war in Greenland.
Trump’s defenders and sycophants are treating it all as one big joke. The New York Post proclaimed a new “Donroe Doctrine” – the 19th century message to Europeans not to interfere in the western hemisphere – with Greenland relabeled as “our land”. Brandon Gill, a Republican congressman, quipped that Canadians, Panamanians and Greenlanders should “honored” of the idea of becoming Americans.
But the rights of small countries are no joke. The forced or forced takeover of a country by a larger neighbor is the biggest political alarm in the world. This is a signal that an evil state is on the march. That is why the western alliance knows that it is important to support Ukraine’s resistance to Russia. This is also the reason why the US organized an international alliance to drive Iraq out of Kuwait in the early nineties.
Attacks by small countries caused the first and second world wars. When the British cabinet was debating in 1914 whether to go to war with Germany, David Lloyd George, who later became prime minister, wrote to his wife: “I have fought hard for peace . . . but I am driven to the conclusion that if the little nationality of Belgium were to attack in Germany all my traditions. . . take part in the battle.”
Britain and France adamantly refused to protect Czechoslovakia from Nazi Germany in 1938. But within a year, they realized their mistake and extended a security guarantee to Poland — the next smallest neighbor on the list of hit in Germany. The invasion of Poland triggered the start of the conflict.
Trump’s supporters bitterly resent any comparison between his rhetoric and aggressors from the past or present. They argue that his demands are actually aimed at strengthening the free world, for a struggle against an autocratic China and possibly Russia as well. Trump justified his expansionist ambitions for Canada, Greenland and Panama on the grounds of national security.
Another argument is that Trump’s bluster is just a negotiating tactic. His supporters sometimes say that he is simply forcing allied countries 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” elites running their country?
But these are weak arguments. It would be legitimate for Trump to try to convince the Greenlanders that they would be better off as Americans. But the threat of using military or economic coercion is too terrible. His claims that many Canadians would like to join the US are also delusional. The idea is REJECTED by 82 percent of Canadians in a recent poll.
As for grand strategy – the truth is that Trump’s threats to Greenland, Panama and Canada are a perfect gift to Russia and China. If Trump can claim that it is a strategic need for the US to seize Greenland or the Panama Canal, why is it illegitimate for Putin to claim that it is a strategic need for Russia to control Ukraine? If Gill can claim that it is America’s “manifest destiny” to expand its borders, who can argue when Xi Jinping insists that it is China’s manifest destiny to control Taiwan?
Russia and China have long dreamed of breaking away from the western alliance. Trump did their work for them. Just a few weeks ago, the Kremlin would have had no dreams of seeing Canada’s premier news magazine run a cover. story in “Why America can’t conquer Canada”. The idea of European leaders invoking the EU’s self-defense clause against the US – not Russia – also sounds like fantasy. But these are the new facts.
Even if Trump has not made good on his threats, he has already done significant damage to America’s global standing and its alliance system. And he is not yet in office.
It seems unlikely that Trump will order an invasion of Greenland. (Although in the past it seemed unlikely that he would try to overturn an election.) It is even less likely that Canada will fear surrendering its independence. But the fact that the incoming president is destroying international norms is a disaster. Any derision of Trump’s “jokes” is misplaced. What we are witnessing is a tragedy – not a joke.
