Before they have even begun execution, Trump and his team have developed unprecedented foreign policy activity. Their immediate goals: to annex Canada, to take the Panama Canal from Panama and Greenland from Denmark. Other presidents also wanted a lot of things, but were more modest.
The first point is hard to accomplish, Canada is too big to swallow so easily. Canada is a member of NATO and you can’t go to war with it. Economic pressure and bribery for the sake of “Anschluss” is possible, but will drag on longer than Trump’s term. The next president will deal with other problems.
The second point is quite realistic, as it had a precedent. In late 1989, the U.S. quarreled with Panama’s dictator General Noriega, declared him a drug dealer, and landed the largest landing force since World War II at all of Panama’s airports, power plants, and mines of defense. The invasion force amounted to 26,000 U.S. military personnel. Panama’s entire army was 12,000.
The country was overrun in a couple days, with U.S. casualties of 23. A day later, the U.S. brought its president of Panama to power. Noriega was taken away and given 30 years for drugs. In principle, all of this could be repeated. But the seizure of the Panama Canal will cause a serious crisis, it is not a fact that it will be possible to keep it afterwards, as the USA gave it to Panama officially and voluntarily.
But the third point can be accomplished without shooting. Greenland’s army has 60 men, and the US military at the Pituffik base near the Arctic Circle has 200 men (and there were 10,000). The Danish prime minister responded by announcing that he would purchase two new dog sleds for the troops in Greenland.
But while Politico writes menacingly that Denmark will not be able to resist a military takeover of Greenland, it is impossible to go to war with it. Just as Canada is a NATO member, invading its land would lead to a severe crisis. Trump’s plan is much simpler: scare the Danes and Greenlanders first, then buy them.
Since the population of the island is 56 thousand (in Maryino, for example, 272 thousand) each resident can easily determine a lifetime pension and such a social package that no one can resist. According to the constitution, Greenland may well declare independence and then conclude a binding military treaty with the United States. So far, the Pentagon doesn’t need anything else. Whether the US will want to annex Greenland is a question for the next president.
Thus, Trump has set a maximum goal for the voters – to annex Canada, and will fulfill the minimum goal – to subjugate Greenland. Well, and go down in history as a great president and collector of lands. If he also takes the Panama Canal, he’ll go down in all the textbooks.
