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| An aircraft carrying businessman Donald Trump Jr. arrives in Nuuk, Greenland on Jan. 7. (Emil Stach/AFP/Getty Images) |
| “The future does not belong to the globalists,” declared then-President Donald Trump at the dais of the U.N. General Assembly in 2019. The audience of dignitaries in New York and most analysts were already accustomed to the key pillars of the Trumpist stump speech: A coterie of jet-setting global elites with no allegiance to the lands of their birth, aligned with liberal technocrats, were the source of all societal ills. Multilateral international institutions were an impediment to national interests. America must always come first. Ahead of his second term, an emboldened Trump has not dropped his scorn for “globalists.” But in recent weeks, his populism has been overshadowed by something else: a newfangled 21st century imperialism.
Much to the bemusement of U.S. allies, Trump has articulated a vision of hemispheric expansionism. He called for the U.S.'s acquisition of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. He has repeatedly suggested Canada should become the U.S.’s 51st state. He raised forcefully retaking control of the Panama Canal, complaining about fees for passage and Chinese influence over the strategic waterway. In perhaps the mildest provocation of the bunch, he said the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the Gulf of America. | ||||||
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| Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum in front of a 1661 world map showing the Americas and the Gulf of Mexico, responding to President-elect Donald Trump's comments about renaming the body of water. (Presidencia de Mexico/via REUTERS) |
| Trump’s hectoring has drawn immediate rejection. At a news conference, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum pointed to a 17th century map of the New World, where the bulk of the North American landmass was labeled “America Mexicana.” The Gulf of Mexico, for what it’s worth, was named as such by cartographers well before the United States had won independence. And while the president-elect cast his country’s northern border as an “artificially drawn line” that can be erased to create a continental superpower, few in Canada are going along with the joke. “That’s not going to happen,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told CNN on Thursday, adding that a cornerstone of Canadian identity is that they are not American. He suggested Trump was trying to distract from the conversation about the harm his proposed tariffs on Canadian exports may cause U.S. consumers. José Raúl Mulino, the president of Panama, responded that “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zone belongs to Panama and will remain so.” Diplomats stressed that there was no truth to claims by Trump and his associates that Chinese troops are controlling the pivotal waterway. Denmark has repeatedly said Greenland is not for sale to the United States. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen convened a meeting of Danish party leaders on Thursday to weigh how to respond to Trump’s threats. Pipaluk Lynge, a Greenland lawmaker, told Politico that the United States ought to reckon with its own history of abuse of Arctic Indigenous peoples before claiming the lands of others. “We know how they treat the Inuit in Alaska,” Lynge said. “Make that great before trying to invade us.” After Trump refused to rule out using economic or military force to achieve his goals in Greenland, a number of European leaders issued their own statements of concern. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said there was a “certain incomprehension” about Trump’s statements. “The principle of the inviolability of borders applies to every country no matter whether that’s in the east or the west,” he said, gesturing to Western opposition to Russia’s landgrabs in Ukraine. So what’s Trump playing at? The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board argued that Trump is, in the instance of Canada, simply “trolling.” But his designs over Greenland may have more substance, and tap into a long-standing U.S. fascination with Greenland, which U.S. officials also eyed at the time they purchased Alaska in the mid-19th century. Its mineral resources and strategic position in the Arctic make it all the more geopolitically relevant in the 21st century. On Wednesday, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., took an entourage on a private visit of the island, replete with photo-ops with Greenlanders wearing MAGA-style red hats. For Trump, talk of annexation and expansion is part of his brand of populism. “It makes America dream again, that we’re not just this sad, low-testosterone, beta male slouching in our chair, allowing the world to run over us,” Charlie Kirk, a far-right influencer who accompanied Donald Trump Jr. on his trip to Greenland, said in a recent podcast. “It is the resurrection of masculine American energy. It is the return of Manifest Destiny.” Some analysts have offered a less metaphoric interpretation of Trump’s recent moves. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned vocal critic, told the Associated Press that Trump’s strategy is “transactional, ad hoc, episodic and really viewed from the prism of how it helps Donald Trump.” Analysts have long mused over the efficacy of Trump’s “madman” approach to foreign affairs, his hectoring of allies and frequent use of threats. But it’s not clear what he stands to gain from this latest episode. “When you do things that make it less likely you’re going to achieve the objectives, that’s not master bargaining, that’s crazy,” Bolton said. There’s arguably no contradiction between Trump’s neo-imperialist belligerence and the America First, anti-globalist populism he has voiced for much of his political career. After all, 19th century mercantilism — the antecedent of the economic worldview that seems to grip Trump and advocates of tariffs and other protectionist measures in his camp — was a core element of 19th century imperialism. And the president-elect’s recent demands appear to signal that the putative gloves are coming off. “Trump, [Elon] Musk, and their minions appear to be convinced that they can bully the entire world,” wrote Stephen Walt in Foreign Policy, adding. “This approach goes well beyond quid-pro-quo transactionalism; it’s a blatant attempt to blackmail, bully, and cow others into preemptive concessions, based on their fear of what Trump might do to hurt them.” |