So he’s picking fights with allies, particularly smaller ones—and, if all goes well, he’ll end up with something he can present as a “victory” to his base without the risk of wider, devastating conflict. He won’t get that from Kim Jong Un or Xi or Putin. But he just might from Denmark or Panama. In fact, the Danish foreign minister said recently that his country is “open to dialogue” about cooperating with Trump to protect U.S. interests in the Arctic. Sounds like a win!
It is tempting to discount all of this as trolling because, well, Trump is trolling. We are all experienced hands now when it comes to Trump’s nonsense, so we are rightly skeptical that he will pursue Greenland, Canada, or the Panama Canal to the extremes he has suggested. And yet, he is also serious enough about these ideas—or at least serious enough about whatever cracked strategy lies behind them—that he’s willing to ignite bitter feuds with several key allies right as he’s about to take office. And that, in fact, reveals an important truth about his approach to foreign policy more broadly, which is driven almost entirely by his desire to appear strong—or, more to the point, his fear of looking weak. This is why he picks senseless fights with smaller allies while avoiding brawls with the strongmen he so greatly admires.
But if you happen to be a Republican looking to backfill Trumpism this week, there are economic and geopolitical arguments for his imperialistic turn. Even if the 55,000-odd Greenlanders were the kindest, smartest, or most attractive people in the world, they would be of little interest to any world government. But Greenland possesses vast quantities of minerals and oil, as well as a position in the North Atlantic that has become increasingly significant as ice caps melt and governments begin vying for a larger prize: whatever treasures lurk beneath the Arctic. The Panama Canal, meanwhile, is a vital shipping route, and taking control of it would allow Trump to do one of the few things he clearly loves to do as president: punish his enemies and reward his friends via access fees.
On the campaign trail, Trump talked a lot about Iran and China and said nothing about Greenland or the Panama Canal. Now that he is president-elect, the situation has reversed. It’s easy to see why. Surveying the current geopolitical climate, he surely sees several perilous conflicts on the brink of erupting into protracted, devastating wars. Trump is profoundly ill suited for the complexity of the geopolitical situation he is inheriting. He disdains all forms of diplomacy except escalation; his only “diplomatic” move is to issue threats of increasing belligerence and derangement. But doing so against leaders like Putin and Xi risks not only inflaming tensions but exposing his own weakness. Were he to spar with one of them like he has been with Denmark or a lame-duck Canada, he may have to back down or even lose. In short, Trump fears such dictators for the same reason that he admires them. They’re the strongmen he has always desperately wanted to be—and would be, in his mind, if only our pesky democracy didn’t limit his full potential.
Trump’s foreign policy motivations may be narcissistic, but the stakes are real. On January 20, he will return to the White House with the world in a significantly worse state than it was eight years ago, when he first took office. Tensions with Iran are arguably higher than they have been since the hostage crisis began in 1979, and the country is believed to be on the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb. A strike on its nuclear facilities, whether by the U.S., Israel, or one of its many Arab enemies could quickly devolve into a regional war or worse. The incoming Trump administration will be filled to the brim with Iran hawks—and many eager for a confrontation with China. Given the increasingly desperate and fierce fighting in Ukraine, it is not far-fetched to imagine a situation that triggers NATO’s collective defense provision. In comparison, the world in 2017 was downright placid.
In fact, these manufactured feuds are boosting his ego as we speak, and that’s by design. Trump’s blinkered worldview sees democracies as weak and dictatorships as strong: China is massive, and North Korea has a nuclear bomb, while Russia should be America’s best friend—conflict with any of them risks devastation and all-out war. Given his early appointments, Trump may very well end his second term mired in devastating conflicts in South Asia or the Middle East. But he is beginning it looking for a low-risk way to look strong.
Which bring us to this month, in which Trump has expressed his desire to take the canal, which the U.S. controlled until 1977, as well as Greenland, a Danish territory that the U.S. has never laid any claim to (though American troops did occupy it for defensive purposes during World War II). In both cases, Trump has refused to rule out deploying the military to get what he wants. That’s not all. Trump also apparently covets Canada, and has pledged to make it America’s fifty-first state, albeit merely through “economic force.” It’s a positively McKinley-esque vision—in its expansionist ambition, anyway, if not its design.
