Over a decade ago, a mock ad campaign fantasied about invading New Zealand on the off chance Australia would acquire another public holiday.
100% pure New Zealand. 100% pure natural resources. 100% pure energy supplies. 0% Airforce. 0% Navy. 0% infantry. 100% there for the taking. 100% too easy. 100% ours.
It finished with an authorisation from The Department of Offense and an Australian coat of arms where the kangaroo and emu brandish assault rifles.
Foolishly, I assumed this was the spirit of Trump’s online trolling of Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and the United Kingdom.
Pitching Canada as the 51st State of America vexes Justin Trudeau in the same way Elon Musk offered to liberate the UK from an irate Keir Starmer.
‘There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States. Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner,’ snapped Trudeau.
‘Girl, you’re not the governor of Canada anymore, so it doesn’t matter what you say,’ replied Elon Musk. Governor? Ouch.
‘When we take Canada,’ added Ben Shapiro, ‘you will be expelled to Panama to work the canal.’
Joking aside, Donald Trump is not going to bully Canada into leaving the British Empire, but what he might do is make good on his threat to level damaging tariffs if they don’t take steps to stop illegal immigrants pouring over the northern border with their fentanyl shipments.
The incoming President has made it clear that top-to-bottom, whether it is Canada or Mexico, the borders of the US will be secured and if the loft apartment and basement refuse to lock the doors, they will be punished.
‘We don’t need anything they have,’ said Trump, at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago. He has made similar threats to the European Union and China. Essentially, he wants to balance trade relations and navigate the US into a position as a producer rather than consumer. All this talk about the conquest of Canada is a clever way to bring the underlying, and otherwise less entertaining trade policy, into public view.
Greenland is another territory on the Trump wish list. Failing to rule out the use of military force to a startled press gallery, he argued that acquiring Denmark’s territory is a matter of national security.
What’s Denmark ever done? Well, keep in mind that Denmark is part of the European Union and Trump is on a war path against their club of busy-body control freaks. He wants them to sort out their security instead of relying on the US to rescue their ungrateful leaders.
‘People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security,’ Trump shrugged, as if it were the most obvious statement in the world.
‘I don’t think it’s a good way forward to fight each other with financial means when we are close allies and partners,’ rebuffed Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister of Denmark.
Trump wasn’t done stirring up geopolitical trouble, insisting he would rename The Gulf of Mexico to The Gulf of America unless something was done about illegal immigration and the drug cartels crippling the nation. ‘What a beautiful name, and it’s appropriate.’
Sanctimonious race-baiting activist politicians rename places all the time, almost completely erasing Western Civilisation in the name of retaliatory diversity politics, so they don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to Trump’s pitch.
If you look at the situation with the humour of a businessman instead of a paranoid politician, you will notice that Trump is making outrageous threats to highlight the equally outrageous treatment of the US by its neighbours, cousins, and allies.
America has been used as a dumping ground, a blank cheque, and a free police service for so long that it has been weakened to the point of danger.
Trump is a good deal smarter than his critics give him credit for, and he has devised a way to get stubborn leaders to play ball. It’s the standard art of the deal laced with a bit of theatre. Take your rival to the edge of insanity and make them settle for much more than they would have otherwise offered.
If Trump had started out with, ‘Please fix your borders…’ he would have been given a bit of lip service and a worthless piece of paper. ‘Fix your borders or I’ll nick your territory and rename your patch of water…’ Well… That is more likely to result in action.
Donald Trump Jr is over in Greenland giving the impression that he could stir up revolutionary sentiment if he wanted to.
In 2019, the BBC asked, Donald Trump and Greenland: Why would he want to buy it? They pointed out that Greenland held ‘13 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and 30 per cent of its undiscovered gas’ along with ‘vast mineral resources’.
They also pointed out:
US President Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million for Greenland in 1946. There was even talk of swapping some parts of Alaska for bits of Greenland.
The dubious history of Greenland is far longer and more complicated but let’s not pretend that this is a Trump thought bubble. America has bought territory before – Alaska from Russia and the US Virgin Islands from Denmark – perhaps it will again. That we are even discussing the issue indicates Trump believes a serious military conflict is on the horizon.
It was noticed by America’s ABC News back in 2020 (following Trump’s first Greenland pitch):
Russia has dramatically expanded its military footprint in the Arctic Circle, with new or refurbished military bases, increased operations and military exercises, and newly deployed missile systems and Arctic brigades. While China has no physical presence in the Arctic, it declared itself a “near-Arctic state” in 2018 and launched its “Polar Silk Road” plan to invest in natural resources and shipping routes throughout the region.
This has intensified in recent years, with Russia proposing in 2023 to expand the borders of the Leningrad Military District especially after Sweden and Finland joined the Arctic Alliance. If we look beyond oil, one of the most important pieces of infrastructure America will be seeking to defend in the Arctic are its undersea cables. Russia has been dabbling in undersea espionage and there is no way this has been overlooked by America’s Defence Force (or Elon Musk).
As Norway’s former military representative at Nato said, ‘The Arctic is currently a dark area on the map.’
Reading from The Arctic Institute:
[Garrett] Hinck finds that with regards to underwater cable law, despite the existence of both the 1884 Convention on the Protection of Submarine Cables and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of Sea, there is very little that governs the usage of undersea cables in wartime or when damaged. “…relatively little attention … has focused on the legal frameworks that govern the networks of glass and steel that form the literal backbone of our internet … in practice, the lack of legal disputes involving attacks on cables leaves their legality uncertain.”
Even if you dislike the argument for undersea warfare, Russia is testing hypersonic missiles in the Arctic while running joint military convoys with China.
‘We will protect it, and cherish it, from the very vicious outside world. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!’ said Trump.
It makes me wonder if Donald Trump Jr was sent to Greenland to quietly assure its leaders that his dad isn’t serious about the whole annexing thing.
The threats against the Panama Canal are more complex. ‘We gave the Panama Canal to Panama. We didn’t give it to China. And they’ve abused it. They’ve abused that gift. It should never have been made, by the way. Giving the Panama Canal is why Jimmy Carter lost the election – more so maybe than the hostages [in Iran]. The hostages were a big deal. They charge more for our ships than they charge for ships of other countries. They charge more for our Navy than they charge for the navies of other countries. They laugh at us because they think we’re stupid. But we’re not stupid anymore. So the Panama Canal is under discussion.’
That is not an absent-minded threat.
‘They want our help because it’s leaking and not in good repair. And they want us to give $3 billion to help fix it. And I said, “Well, why don’t you get the money from China? Because China has basically taken it over. China is at both ends of the Panama Canal. China is running the Panama Canal.”’
Trump is attaching terms and conditions to US money and it is all weighted toward reducing China’s many points of geopolitical control. He is biting at Russia and China, inflicting a thousand potential wounds to thin their resources, divert their focus, and ultimately weaken their power.
Once again, Trump is not wrong. Panama made its bed when it joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2018 after cutting trade with Taiwan. China runs the ports at both ends.
With the Panama Canal trafficking 40 per cent of America’s container ships, this is an issue that is not going away. It is a crazy potential leverage point to gift China which, no doubt, keeps US military strategists up at night.
‘The sovereignty of our canal is not negotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest,’ said Martínez-Acha, Panama’s Foreign Minister, seemingly unaware that the canal has already been negotiated and sold cheaply to China. China is particularly good at sneaking land and resources out from the noses of politicians distracted by all the shiny Chinese money.
The takeaway from Trump’s hour-long speech is that the edges of the map are getting smaller. That the largest and most powerful nations are itching to re-draw the borders. Some of them are already doing so under the guise of trade. Trump is testing these new lines, seeing which ones are real and which ones can be negotiated. All of this is about geopolitical stability, American military primacy, and the survival of Western Civilisation as the dominant force.
Donald Trump is many things, but he is not an idiot, and this speech was not a joke.