What Trump’s expansionist designs on Canada, Greenland and Panama all have in common

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What self-respecting strongman does not have territorial expansion on his wish list?

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has mused repeatedly in recent weeks about taking over the Panama Canal and Greenland, and even making Canada the 51st American state. And while most analysts have rejected his comments as unserious, there is more to Mr. Trump’s expansionist mutterings than merely a bad joke by a low-information leader who remains a Manhattan real estate developer at heart.

Mr. Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, both of whom have sought to expand their countries’ spheres of influence in open defiance of the rules-based international order. Mr. Trump likely sees nothing wrong with trying to reassert U.S. authority in America’s own backyard.

As China and Russia increase their presence in the Arctic and in Latin America, the United States has legitimate national-security interests in wanting to curtail their military and commercial activities in these regions.

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Mr. Trump may have a limited understanding of international law and little regard for the sovereignty of other countries. But in the cases of Greenland and the Panama Canal, at least, his musings should serve to focus much-needed attention on their strategic importance to the United States.

China has had limited success in seeking to control Greenland’s abundant reserves of rare-earth minerals. But that has not been for lack of trying. As a result, President Joe Biden’s administration has been actively seeking to woo officials in Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory, and pressing its government to adopt a mining-investment law that would favour Western companies over state-linked Chinese ones.

“Greenland wants to become the next mining frontier,” Jose Fernandez, the U.S. State Department undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, said after a November visit to the capital Nuuk. “Yes, we want to get their critical minerals and use them in our economy, but we don’t want to do that at their expense.”

Since 2009, Greenland’s 56,000 residents have had the right to declare their territory’s independence from Denmark but have not done so. And Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede rejected Mr. Trump’s latest designs on the territory – which Mr. Trump first raised during his first term in office. “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” Mr. Egede said.

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Mr. Trump is unlikely to be deterred. While outright ownership of Greenland seems far-fetched, the incoming Trump administration will likely continue to put pressure on the territory to explicitly align itself with the United States.

Mr. Trump’s threat to retake control of the Panama Canal – if the authority that runs the critical waterway that links the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean does not lower fees charged to U.S. vessels – is likely a similar negotiating tactic. He wants Panama to abandon the neutrality principle embedded in one of the two 1977 treaties under which the United States ceded control of the canal it built and operated for 85 years until 1999, to favour U.S. ships over Chinese ones. Mr. Trump, who was uncharacteristically gracious in praising former U.S. president Jimmy Carter after his death on Sunday, had previously criticized Mr. Carter for “foolishly” ceding control of the canal.

Though U.S. vessels still account for about three-quarters of the canal’s traffic, China has increased investment and diplomatic ties with Panama as part of a broad effort to expand its geopolitical and economic influence in Latin America. In 2017, Panama cut off diplomatic ties with Taiwan, amid pressure from Beijing. A Hong Kong-based company owns two ports at entry points to the canal and a Chinese consortium is currently building a US$1.4-billion bridge over the waterway. Mr. Trump has even claimed Chinese soldiers are “operating” the canal, though an exasperated Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino shot down that assertion. “There are no Chinese soldiers in the canal, for the love of God,” he said.

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By lumping Canada in together with Greenland and the Panama Canal in his social-media posts, Mr. Trump clearly sees parallels between them. He thinks all three territories belong squarely in the U.S. sphere of influence.

To be sure, Canada will not become the 51st state on Mr. Trump’s watch. But his efforts to coerce and corral Canada into adopting policies that align with U.S. economic and security interests will continue. His real aim is to make Canada a satellite state, not the 51st American state.

Although Mr. Trump has a limited grasp of history, his expansionist musings might be seen as a modern-day articulation of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which sought to assert U.S. dominance in the Americas. It may even be the beginnings of a Trump Doctrine.