President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday outlined an ambitious plan for American expansion by taking control of Greenland, the Panama Canal and perhaps even Canada.
He refused to rule out military action to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, but said he would rely solely on economic strength to integrate Canada into the United States.
He questioned Denmark’s legal claim to Greenland, criticized the role of China in operating the Panama Canal and the late President Jimmy Carter for transferring the canal to Panama in 1979, and said that the Canada received much more than it gave in its relations with the United States.
“I’m talking about protecting the free world,” he said during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
His remarks set the muscular tone in foreign policy less than two weeks before his inauguration on January 20.
“You don’t even need binoculars. You look outside. You have Chinese ships everywhere. You have Russian ships everywhere. We are not allowing this to happen,” Mr. Trump said.
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As Mr. Trump spoke, his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was arriving in Greenland for a private visit. He had not scheduled any meetings with officials.
Since his first term, Mr. Trump has set his sights on Greenland to give the United States a strategic foothold in the Arctic and improve its position against Russia and China.
Greenland is home to a major American military base.
Mr. Trump’s problem with Panama stems from the Chinese presence and the high fees charged to American ships, including Navy ships, to use the canal.
Panamanian President José Raul Mulino has insisted that China does not manage the waterway, but that a China-based company has significant interests in ports on the Atlantic and Pacific ends of the canal.
Mr. Trump offered to buy Greenland during his first term, but did not make a deal. Denmark, a NATO ally, controls the territory.
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“I’m not going to commit to that,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he would rule out the use of military force. “You may need to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country. We need Greenland for national security reasons.”
If Copenhagen intervenes, he said, the United States “will impose tariffs on Denmark at a very high level.”
Yet Mr. Trump has said he has no concrete plans to acquire Greenland, although he has floated the idea several times. In announcing his choice as US ambassador to Denmark last month, he said that “for reasons of national security and freedom throughout the world…ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
John R. Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations, identified key benefits of U.S. control over Greenland, such as buffering Russia’s influence and blunting China’s quest to become an Arctic power .
Mr. Bolton told the Washington Times that Mr. Trump’s tactics were doomed to failure.
“Trump’s remarks, in sending Donny Jr. to Greenland, push the democratically elected local government into a bind, and push the democratically elected Danish government into a bind,” he said. “So what Trump is doing is undermining the various goals that he claims to want. … Trump may think he’s having a good time with this. They don’t like it in Greenland and Denmark. And if he really wants to keep the United States safe, he should do it.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Tuesday that Greenland “has been very, very clear… that there is great support among the people of Greenland that Greenland is not for sale and will not be sold either.” more in the future.”
On another foreign policy front, Mr. Trump warned that “all hell will break loose in the Middle East” if Hamas does not release its hostages by his return to the White House. The terrorist group has been holding hostages in the Gaza Strip since its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
“If these hostages don’t come back… it won’t be good for Hamas, and frankly, it won’t be good for anyone,” he said.
Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s new Middle East envoy, briefly joined the news conference and said, “We’re making a lot of progress” in freeing the hostages. They “really hope that between now and the inauguration, we will have some good things to announce.”
Mr. Trump made several other statements during the freewheeling news conference, which lasted more than an hour. Among them:
• He announced that Dubai-based Damac Properties would spend $20 billion to build data centers across the United States.
• He said he wanted to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
• He denounced Democrats’ “militarization of justice” and called Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith a “deranged individual.”
• He promised to reverse parts of President Biden’s executive action banning offshore drilling in federal waters.
• He predicted that Russia would escalate its war in Ukraine and called the conflict “complicated.”
Regarding the Panama Canal, Mr. Trump said Panama was jacking up prices on U.S. ships that transit the strategic waterway. The United States built the canal in the early 1900s to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
He said giving the canal to Panama was a “disgrace” and that Panama had failed to uphold its side of the deal. Under President Carter, the United States returned the Panama Canal to the country in 1979 and ended its joint partnership for control of the Canal Zone in 1999.
Mr. Carter, who died Dec. 29 at age 100, lay in state at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.
“They make fun of us because they think we are stupid,” he said. “But we are not stupid anymore, that is why the Panama Canal is currently in discussions with them.”
In the case of Canada, Mr. Trump said bringing the northern neighbor under U.S. control would create economic power and strengthen border security.
He said joining Canada and the United States “would really be something.”
“You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you look at what it looks like, and that would be much better for national security as well,” Mr. Trump said.
He said the United States spends “hundreds of billions” of dollars each year to protect and care for Canada, but it “doesn’t need anything it has.”
“We don’t need cars. We don’t need their wood,” Mr. Trump said. He didn’t mention the 140 million barrels of crude oil the U.S. imports monthly from Canada, which dwarfs oil from America’s second-largest importer, Mexico, at about 20 million barrels a month.
He called for hockey legend Wayne Gretzky to replace longtime Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced his resignation Monday.
Canadian officials say Canada will never be part of the United States
Conservative commentator Jed Babbin recently suggested that expansionist rhetoric is consistent with Mr. Trump’s modus operandi of keeping “our allies off balance and our enemies feeling safer than they should.”
“He probably thinks that intimidating Panama will reduce those (canal) fees.” It could work,” he wrote in a recent Washington Times op-ed.
He said U.S. military bases in Greenland made strategic sense, although a base in Iceland would be preferable.
“Maybe Mr. Trump was trying to increase Denmark’s defense spending. He succeeded. Danish Defense Minister Troels Poulsen announced, shortly after Mr. Trump’s comment, an increase in defense funding for Greenland by approximately $1.5 billion,” Mr. Babbin said. “The Danes insist that Mr. Trump’s remarks had nothing to do with their decision to invest in defense.”
washingtontimes
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