President-elect Donald Trump refuses to rule out military force to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal. Trump said he is not considering military force to annex Canada but said he hopes the U.S. can acquire the neighboring country to the north through economic force. Frankly speaking, I am not sure how much it is possible to comment on this, but, from your perspective, what do such statements tell us about Trump’s future foreign policy and do you think similar attacks on allies can lead to the weakening of American global partnerships, maybe even to dysfunctional NATO? Read a few comments. If you enjoy what I do, please support me on Ko-fi! Thank you.
Jack Goldstone, Chair Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University, Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center
Yes, we can hardly believe what we are hearing. But it makes sense: in a world where Russia is seeking to dominate and control Ukraine, and China is seeking dominate and control Taiwan, Trump – who considers himself like Putin and Xi in his power and wisdom—is looking to show that he too can dominate and control territories in “his” part of the world. For all we know, Putin himself told Trump that he should take Greenland and is entitled to it for US security, much as Putin claims that Russia is entitled to control Ukraine for its security.
At the very least, it shows that Trump has a childish view of global politics; instead of building alliances to strengthen America’s international position, he is willing to trash any alliances in order to show he has the strength to bully other countries (even small ones and allies). As to whether Trump would actually go to war for these goals, no one knows – simply raising these goals has been outside the scope of rational discourse, so it is hard to know if this represents bluster or a real plan.
Trump has already threatened Denmark with huge tariffs if it does not negotiate to hand over Greenland, and refuses to rule out force in regard to gaining control of Greenland and Panama. So he seems quite serious. It would be rather awful for the world if both Putin AND Trump started to disregard international law and sovereignty, and just seek territorial gains by force wherever they think they can prevail. Yet that may be where we are headed. Trump seems disinclined to listen to anyone who disagrees with him, once he has an idea fixed in his mind.
In regard to NATO, I fear it is doomed to dysfunction as long as Trump is President. He is threatening Canada as well as Denmark, while being silent on Russia and China. Trump has insisted that NATO countries pay 5% of their GDP toward NATO’s military budget. This is crazy – the agreed-upon target for members is 2 percent, which most members currently do not meet. And does Trump even know that America’s OWN spending on defense in 2024 was just 2.9%, far short of this target? Again, it is hard to know how much of this is bluster – Europe would benefit from raising its spending target to 2.2% and getting more NATO countries to meet that. But is Trump just flourishing in his deal-making, asking for 5% so he can declare getting 2.2% a victory? Or is he setting a wholly unrealistic target as an excuse to ditch NATO? I fear it is the latter, but in his first term Trump was happy to boast about how he got European countries “to pay up.” What is clear is that US foreign policy toward ALL nations will be much more adversarial than we have ever seen.
Kurk Dorsey, Professor of History, Department Chair, University of New Hampshire
I am really not sure if Donald Trump is just really stupid or actually malevolent, but I do not see any positive possibility that could explain his pronouncements on foreign policy in the last year or so. The comments about Greenland and Canada would be totally inappropriate for a mid-level State Department employee, much less a President-elect, if for no other reason than our NATO alliance. I think Trump doesn’t realize that Greenland already is within NATO and hence the US security umbrella, even though John Bolton explained that to him in 2019. He certainly does not understand that the vast majority of Canadians would vote against him if forced into the US.
Even raising the idea of reacquiring the Panama Canal shows a lack of understanding of the canal’s value, not to mention the concept of national sovereignty. I believe that he made the canal comments in the context of suggesting that the US could use the canal to block migrants who cross through Darien, which is in keeping with a recurring Republican idea that the US military should attack the drug cartels in Mexico. These simply are not serious ideas, but they will have serious consequences, even if no one acts on them.
If I were the leader of any country that believes that it has a security guarantee with the United States, I would assume that it is no longer valid as of January 20th. I am not convinced that Trump will figure out a way to withdraw from NATO, but his repeated comments about NATO and NATO allies make it clear that he does not consider Article V binding on him. Leaders in South Korea and Taiwan would do well to assume that they are on their own for the foreseeable future.
Trump’s easy invocation of using military force is almost certainly a bluff that he thinks will intimidate other leaders. More troubling to me is that he is at the very least making jokes about ordering US soldiers to engage in potentially unlawful acts, both at home and abroad. Related to that, such comments will sow doubts among some Americans about the political neutrality of the military and also sow dissension within the ranks of the military about the definition of service members’ duty.
In 2016, I had some slim hope that Trump’s “glandular outbursts,” to use a term from The National Review, would be contained by adults in the administration like Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson. That was largely the case, but sadly the adults are few and far between this time. Maybe Secretary-of-State-designate Marco Rubio can hem in Trump’s impulses, but it seems that most of the people nominated for positions related to foreign policy were chosen because they are willing to say that the 2020 election was stolen, and they look reasonably good on television. Those are not comforting qualities.
So I think we are in for a rough four years with no serious American leadership, and I did not even get to his ignorant and counter-productive positions on tariffs. There have been many problems in the era of US leadership that has existed since roughly the Bretton Woods agreements of 1944, but we are about to find out that flawed US leadership is better than the alternatives.
Dani Nedal, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
It’s indeed hard to know precisely what to make of Trump’s statements, but I think it’s important to distinguish between the Panama and Greenland issues, which have some precedent both in US history and Trump’s own previous administration, and the ‘Canada as 51st state’ thing, which I think is mostly classic Trump trolling.
In the cases of Panama and Greenland, Trump’s veiled and not-so-veiled threats of military force should probably be read as heavy-handed moves to pressure the respective governments into negotiations. In Panama, it’s unclear what exactly he has in mind, other than lower transit fees. It’s entirely possible that he thinks that the US really should retake the Canal, even though it makes no strategic or economic sense, but he might also be satisfied with the government derailing planned Chinese investments in infrastructure and logistics (which the last government did in no small part because of US pressure). I think he is genuinely convinced that the US can and should purchase Greenland, even though the politics and the legality of “purchasing” the entirety of what is now effectively an autonomous region and could become an independent state makes the proposition a nonstarter. It could succeed in pushing Greenland into an exclusive bilateral agreement with the US, but it’s unclear what that would accomplish that the current treaties don’t already offer.
That said, I wouldn’t discount the possibility of military action entirely down the line under the pretense of securing both areas against Chinese encroachment (which they could try to—incorrectly/disingenuously—argue within the scope of the 1951 treaty with Denmark and the 1977 Neutrality Treaty with Panama). When Trump says that Chinese soldiers are illegally operating the Panama Canal he isn’t just running his mouth, he’s establishing a rationale.
The big takeaway for his foreign policy more generally and US allies and partners specifically is that Trump fundamentally doesn’t see value in upholding international norms or maintaining relationships that he can’t put a price tag on and that he is just as likely, if not more so, to brandish threats of military and economic coercion against allies.
Stacie Goddard, Professor of Political Science, Associate Provost, Wellesley in the World, Wellesley College
I’m not sure exactly what to say about the President-Elect’s comments, but I’ll offer this. There’s a fair amount of evidence that Trump embraces a “madman” theory of negotiating, the idea that if you seem a bit unpredictable and irrational, you are more likely to get a “better deal” from your opponents than if you seem rational. The territorial threats that he is making here are unbelievable—and that may be the point. If he can present himself as enough of a madman to make these demands, then the rest of the world needs to be on guard.
Keep in mind that there is no evidence to suggest that this type of brinkmanship is successful, especially when these threats have so little credibility.
David Haglund, Professor, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University
With Donald Trump it is never possible to figure out whether he is well and truly off his rocker (i.e., crazy) or whether he is actually brilliantly playing the part of someone who appears crazy but is instead a foreign policy genius.
Needless to say, his renewed bid to try to get possession of Greenland would bode ill for the alliance, since it would put him at dagger’s drawn with fellow NATO ally, Denmark.
As for whatever he may be up to with Canada, it is possible that if he is simply pressuring the country to boost its anemic defence spending, this might well be in the interests of NATO.
The best anyone can say when Trump is concerned is this: “stay tuned.”
Thomas Schwartz, Professor of History and Political Science, Vanderbilt University
To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what to make of Trump’s comments on these subjects. They seem to have come out of left field, as they were never discussed during the campaign.
I really can’t imagine that Trump would order the American military to seize any of these territories. Maybe that’s naïve, but I just can’t see it.
What this could be is Trump’s negotiating style – demand the maximum and put pressure on your counterpart. In the case of the Panama Canal, get better terms for American shippers. In the case of Greenland, get the Danes to do more to defend the territory, with Canada, get them to crack down on border crossings.
The foreign policy advisers that Trump has – people like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz – are not unreasonable men, and I suspect they see this as a negotiating stance. But it certainly is a strange way to go about things, something which the world might have to adapt to for the next four years.
This is not much of an answer, but if his first term is any indication, there will be some surprises as well as some very traditional behavior.
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