WASHINGTON – Donald Trump's campaign forays into foreign policy were few and far between. He promised to build a stronger military and keep the country out of war. He said he would bring peace to Gaza and end the war in Ukraine on “day one,” without giving details.
Last week, Trump boldly plunged into global affairs — but he barely touched on those supposed priorities. Instead, at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, he focused on a list of obscure, arguably eccentric goals: acquiring Greenland from Denmark, taking over Canada as a very large 51st state and taking back control of the Panama Canal.
The president-elect said he would bring all three territories under U.S. control through economic coercion, but did not rule out using force to conquer Greenland and the canal.
It sounded like a revival of 19th-century gunboat imperialism, or at least a throwback to the global system that prevailed before World War II – “spheres of influence” in which major powers dominated their regions and smaller countries submitted.
As is often the case with Trump, it was difficult to know whether to take him seriously.
Finally, he also announced that he would give the Gulf of Mexico a new name, the “Gulf of America” – presumably with a previously unknown presidential power as the chief renamer.
And he did not raise the prospect of an invasion of Greenland or Panama without being asked. Reporters asked at his news conference whether he would rule out the use of force – a question to which he almost always answers “no,” regardless of the context.
Nevertheless, his saber and tariff rattling deserves to be taken seriously.
Trump's threats against less powerful countries reflect the core tenets of Trump's worldview, factors that are likely to make his second-term foreign policy chaotic and destabilizing.
He likes to throw his weight around, often by imposing tariffs on other countries. In his first term, he threatened to blow up the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada until both countries agreed to modest changes – which the president then heralded as a historic success. He is now trying the same move to get Denmark to give him Greenland.
He never embraced the idea of a “rules-based international order,” a system that prohibits major powers and small countries alike from invading or coercing their neighbors. Building such an order has been a central goal of U.S. foreign policy since World War II, when Germany and Japan sought to dominate Europe and East Asia by force.
One element of this order was a US-developed system of military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Trump thinks it's a scam concocted by foreigners to get Americans to defend them.
“They want protection,” he complained last fall. “They don’t pay us money for protection, you know. The mob makes you pay money, right?”
Canada and Denmark, as NATO members, shouldn't have to worry that the United States is planning to invade their territory – but in the next four years they will.
Another element of the rules-based order is the principle of self-determination, according to which the citizens of a country have the right to decide who rules over them. Trump has apparently never heard of it. He didn't even bother to ask Greenlanders, Canadians or Panamanians whether they wanted the United States to invade.
The irony is that Trump's aggressive actions have already backfired.
Take his ambition for a stronger US presence in Greenland. It's not a crazy idea; The island, which lies on the Arctic sea routes and has huge reserves of oil and rare earths, would be an important strategic advantage. And impoverished Greenlanders might welcome U.S. investment—if they could trust that they would benefit from it.
But the way Trump framed it as a hostile takeover threat made it unlikely he would succeed.
“Officials in Greenland are elected by the people,” his former national security adviser John Bolton said on CNN last week. “You keep talking about buying them like it's a real estate deal, you're hardening their positions – you're backing them into a corner that will make it very difficult to advance the true American national interests here.”
In Canada, Trump's bullying also sparked a backlash across the political spectrum. Trump claimed that “many Canadians” like the idea of losing their sovereignty; found a survey that the actual share was 13%. “Canada will never be the 51st country, period,” said Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader closest to Canada’s Trump.
And in Panama, Trump's suggestion that the US take back the canal triggered a predictable reaction. “The canal is Panamanian and belongs to Panamanians,” said President José Raúl Mulino. “There is nothing to discuss.”
Worst of all, Trump's claims that the United States has the right to control territory in its neighborhood, whether residents like it or not, are damaging broader U.S. interests around the world.
“This is exactly the same position that Xi Jinping takes on Taiwan,” Bolton emphasized – and also Vladimir Putin’s justification for his invasion of Ukraine.
If Trump bulldozes forward and attempts to rebuild a 19th-century sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, it will not only strengthen Chinese and Russian claims to spheres of influence in Asia and Europe; it will weaken the alliances the United States needs to strike back against them.
That would be a very bad deal – especially for a president who considers himself a master dealmaker.