The United States of Amcanpancanalgreenland

Are Trump’s latest threats to seize control of Greenland, the Panama Canal, and even make Canada the 51^st State of the United States, mere pronouncements or antics?

By Anil Madan

Donald Trump has a way of causing a stir. More than any President ever, he has a knack, a gift if you will, for seizing the moment to generate the news headline of the moment. The follow-on has the media, the average person, and indeed often his political opponents and world leaders talking about nothing about pretty much nothing other than his latest pronouncements or antics.

Trump’s latest threats. Pic – New York Post

So, are his latest threats to seize control of Greenland, the Panama Canal, and even make Canada the 51^st State of the United States, mere pronouncements or antics? Or is there something of substance here?

As might be expected, commentary about the motives of a President who is often viewed as transactional in nature have ranged from speculation that he is merely negotiating, to ridiculing his remarks as nothing more than usual Trumpian nonsense on a par with his ephemeral pledge to have Mexico pay for his border wall, the building of the wall itself being another ephemeral promise.

Others have commented that Trump is merely trying to deflect attention from negative news as he tries to cruise smoothly to his inauguration. The New York judge who presided over the hush money trial in which Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records has scheduled sentencing for Friday, January 10. Trump wants to avoid that, and his attorneys have now petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to intervene. His attorneys are also trying to prevent the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his alleged transgressions in connection with the January 6, 2020, assault on the US Capitol, and unlawful retention of classified documents.

And, in what surely seems a classic case of deflection, he has complained that by President Biden’s order, the American flag on all federal buildings will be flown at half-staff for a 30-day period as a show of respect for the late President Jimmy Carter. Trump wants the flag flown at full height during his inauguration which falls within the 30-day mourning span. It matters not that tradition calls for the 30-day half-staff period as a mark of respect to former presidents.

Trump’s latest seize-the-moment antics are a trifecta, comprising his bitter complaint that the Panama Canal is being run by Chinese soldiers, that the US should acquire Greenland, and that the Canada should become the 51^st State because the US has a $200 billion trading deficit with Canada and pays altogether too much to provide a security umbrella for Canada’s defense.

Trump’s claims that the Chinese government and its soldiers are running the Panama Canal are untrue. The Wall Steet Journal reports that Hong-Kong based Hutchison Whampoa won the bidding for two of the leases and operates a terminal on each end. The other terminals are operated under long-term leases by PSA Singapore, Seattle-based SSA Marine which is a US company, and Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine. It may be that Trump has seen photographs or videos of uniformed workers that he has mistakenly concluded are Chinese soldiers.

Panama President Mulino called Trump’s accusations nonsense. In December he said: “There is absolutely no Chinese interference nor involvement in anything to do with the Panama Canal.” He has since added: “There is not a single Chinese soldier in the canal. For the love of God, you are free, the whole world is free, to visit the canal if you please.” The head of the Panama Canal Authority echoed these comments, and also dismissed Trump’s accusations that American shipping is gouged for transit fees through the canal’s locks: “Rules are rules and there are no exceptions,” he said. “We cannot discriminate for the Chinese, or the Americans, or anyone else. This will violate the neutrality treaty, international law and it will lead to chaos.”

The reactions of Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and Panama’s President and Foreign Minister were as might be expected. Trudeau said bluntly: “there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.” President Mulino dismissively said that there is nothing to talk about and added: “The canal is Panamanian and belongs to Panamanians. There’s no possibility of opening any kind of conversation around this reality, which has cost the country blood, sweat and tears.”

Contrast this with comments regarding Denmark. On the one hand, Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Egede’s response was similar to Trudeau’s and Mulino’s. He has called for independence from Denmark, saying the island needs to free itself from its colonial past. The island was made a colony of Denmark in 1721 and became an autonomous dependent territory in 1953. Egede said: “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders. Our future and fight for independence is our business.”

On the other hand, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, while saying that Greenland is not for sale, did not dismiss Trump’s expression of interest in Greenland but seemed to endorse it. “On one hand, I am pleased regarding the rise in American interest in Greenland,” Frederiksen said in an interview Tuesday with Danish broadcaster TV 2. “But of course it is important that it takes place in a way where it is the Greenlanders’ decision, what their future holds.”

Denmark’s Foreign Minister Rasmussen said: “We fully recognize that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialize, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States.” But then he added enigmatically that the United States’ heightened security concerns in the Arctic were legitimate following increased Russian and Chinese activity in the region and: “I don’t think that we’re in a foreign policy crisis. We are open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can possibly cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled.”

Keeping in mind that relations between Greenland and Denmark are strained as the island nation seeks independence, there are deeper geopolitical constraints here. I don’t mean to suggest that Trump will indeed resort to force to take over the Panama Canal or Greenland despite his refusal to abjure such an approach.

But both Denmark’s Prime Minister and its Foreign Minister seem to recognize the need to curb Russian and Chinese incursions. The question is where will an independent Greenland come out in a possible shift of global implications?

The idea that the United States of American might acquire territory by force or purchase, including Greenland, is not new. It has been reported that in 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward raised the idea of annexing Greenland along with Iceland. In that year, Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million. The reaction was generally favorable but there were detractors, and the purchase of Alaska was called “Seward’s folly” by some. Perhaps this is why he did not publicize his efforts to acquire Greenland.

Denmark retained Greenland after its separation from Norway following the Napoleonic wars. In 1910, Norway tried to reassert control over Greenland. This was five years after Norway gained its independence from Sweden. The US saw this as an opportunity and offered Denmark an exchange: Greenland to the US and Denmark would get the Dutch Antilles and the Mindanao Island in the Philippines. That obviously did not happen.

In 1941, under President Roosevelt, the US established Thule Air Base on Greenland. In 1946, following the end of WWII, the US formally offered to purchase Greenland for one hundred million dollars in gold bullion.

The strategic importance of Greenland to the United States has not diminished since 1941. If anything, it has increased. The World War II threat posed by the Nazis was replaced by the strategic threats of the Soviet Union during the ensuing Cold War. Today, both Russia and China encroach in the Arctic.

As one looks at a map of the world, one sees the great expanse of Canada east of Alaska and there sits Greenland, atop the North East Passage and below the North West Passage. The country that controls Greenland controls access to major shipping lanes and can project power in the Arctic.

It is well known that aside from the geopolitical strategic importance of Greenland, it also has oil, gas, and rare earth minerals, in addition to fishing resources. The acquisition of Greenland will counter China’s virtual monopoly on rare earth minerals.

The idea that Greenland is of great strategic importance to the US is obvious. And if one pauses to think how formidable it would be to add Canada to the US, Trump’s rumblings are not crazy flights of fancy.

Whether these rumblings will, on a practical level, amount to anything more than a snowball in hell remains to be seen.

Perhaps we should see this as nothing more than Trump’s assertion that the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada are all in America’s strategic sphere of influence and that interference by China and Russia will not be tolerated. President John F. Kennedy used a similar approach during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Trump seemed to rule out using military force against Canada but has said that he would not rule out using “economic force.” And he has called the Panama Canal important to America’s economic security. These statements reflect reality and if divorced from threats of the use of force, they should spark no outcries. But when coupled with such threats, the entire picture changes.

One can see easily that it is probably as much in Greenland’s and Denmark’s interests as in the interests of the US that Greenland be a strategic resource for the West and NATO.

In the past, the US has acquired or captured the Northern Mariana Islands, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam, and territories that now make up the states of Alaska, Hawaii, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. And in 1819, the US acquired Florida, in 1845, it annexed Texas. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase included territory that makes up all of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa. The price then was $15 million.

Cheerz…
Bwana

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 10 January 2025