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| Canada stands on guard |
Nothing in Trump's previous playbook prepared me for his recent threats to take Greenland from Denmark, and indeed, its own citizens, by economic or military force; to potentially invade Panama and take back control of the Canal Zone, and his threats to use economic force to make Canada a "51st state' and erase its "artificial border".
Time Magazine yesterday said Trump was playing Monopoly with the world as his board.
The USA has been the strongest, sometimes only, superpower, since 1945. It has the world's strongest army, and numerous weapons that can destroy the planet. It has the world's strongest economy. It arguably also has the world's key language, and control of the largest part of the online world.
From a completely amoral, ruthless and Machiavellian perspective, it could be far more dominant, and dominating, than it has been - though it has killed millions in wars since 1945, and invaded, bombed or attacked a handful of nations, it has not, for the most part, conquered or openly discussed conquering, friendly allied neighbours in NATO. Like the biggest kid on the playground, it has preferred to adopt a mostly moralistic approach, and keep the peace, so long as it gets to call a lot of the shots.
Trump's comments yesterday, along with Musk's recent attacks on allied foreign elected leaders, signal a radical and extreme shift to a basically neutral, non-aligned American empire, emboldened to take and do what it wants with its unassailable advantages, international law be damned.
It is a position that, while coherent in a basic sense (it's feasible, if geopolitically shocking), is bluntly, Napoleonic at best, and, yes, Hitlerian at worst. The basis for Trump's claim on Greenland yesterday was simple self-interest, unadorned. Brute force bellowing out its war aims. We haven't seen this in the West since the 1930s with Germany and Italy; and it was assumed, naively it now appears, that America, as the main benefactor of a rules-based West created by itself post-war, would uphold those values.
Trump has, to put it mildly, "torn up that rule book".
Greenland aside, the vast mineral, oil and fresh water resources of Canada, as global warming (which Trump denies but also plans for) unfolds, are astonishing. As Trump mused the other day, if America swallowed up Canada, it would be basically double the land mass of any competing nation; with Greenland, more so - and by far and exceptionally - the richest superpower - dwarfing China, and also Russia. Trump is highlighting a cruel, Darwinian fact about the century unfolding - the USA has more cards to play than its enemies have thought. Taiwan, Ukraine? I can take Canada, Panama, Greenland, and then probably Mexico and Iceland; maybe later the UK, and Central America... it's a warning to those who have consistently left Canada without nuclear defence or a well-funded military.
What comes next is on a spectrum from frosty diplomacy to NATO fighting America (as France and Germany have signalled they would have to do if Greenland is invaded). This seems science fiction, or Orwellian, but is simply what happens when the voters of a superpower elect an insane, wicked, self-obsessed evil person, who may be an asset of a foreign enemy power, who is supported by vastly rich sociopaths who share his desire for world disruption.
Without wanting to be too dramatic, let's say that 2025 is shaping up, already, to be probably the most unusual and potentially destabilised year in world politics since at least 1975. Maybe longer, but at least 50 years, and that includes Rwanda and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 9/11. Let's hope it is not worse than 2024, which would be hard - but any attacks on Panama and Greenland - sovereign allies, or attempts to destroy the economies of Canada or Denmark, key NATO allies - by the USA - would alter history in a way that makes it appear Trump is playing RISK with the world, not a property acquisition game.
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