First it was Canada, then the Panama Canal. Now, Donald Trump wants Greenland again.
The elected president is renewing the unsuccessful calls for US purchases from his first term in office Greenland from Denmark, adding to the list of allied countries with which he was already initiating disputes before he took office on January 20th.
In an announcement Sunday about the appointment of his ambassador to Denmark, Trump wrote: “For the purposes of national security and freedom around the world, the United States of America believes that possession and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Trump is targeting Greenland again after the president-elect suggested over the weekend that the U.S. could regain control of the Panama Canal unless something is done to reduce the rising shipping costs of using the Atlantic-Pacific waterway.
He also proposed making Canada the 51st U.S. state and referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada.”
Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, said Trump’s interventions in friendly countries stem from an aggressive style he used while in business.
“If you ask for something unreasonable, you’re more likely to get something less unreasonable,” said Farnsworth, who is also the author of the book “Presidential Communication and Character.”
Get national news daily
Receive the most important news and headlines from politics, business and current affairs in your inbox once a day.
Greenland, the largest island in the world, lies between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. It is 80% covered by ice and is home to a large US military base. It gained home rule from Denmark in 1979 and its leader, Múte Bourup Egede, suggested that Trump’s recent calls for U.S. control would be as meaningless as those in his first term.
“Greenland is ours. “We are not for sale and will never be for sale,” he said in a statement. “We must not lose our years-long fight for freedom.”
Trump canceled a visit to Denmark in 2019 after his offer to buy Greenland was rejected by Copenhagen and ultimately failed.
He also pointed out on Sunday that the United States was being “ripped off” at the Panama Canal.
“If the moral and legal principles of this generous gesture of giving are not followed, we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly and without questions,” he said.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino responded in a video that “every square meter of the canal belongs and will continue to belong to Panama,” but Trump countered on his social media page: “We’ll see!”
The president-elect also posted an image of a U.S. flag planted in the Canal Zone with the phrase “Welcome to the United States Canal!”
The United States built the canal in the early 20th century but ceded control to Panama on December 31, 1999, under a treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
The canal relies on reservoirs hit by the 2023 drought, which forced it to significantly reduce the number of daily slots for ships to pass through. Because there were fewer ships, administrators also increased the fees charged to shippers for reserving slots to use the canal.
The flare-ups in Greenland and Panama followed Trump recently posting that “Canadians want Canada to be the 51st nation” and presenting a picture of himself on a mountaintop overlooking the surrounding area next to a Canadian flag .
Trudeau suggested that Trump was joking about annexing his country, but the pair recently met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to discuss Trump’s threats to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods.
“Canada will not become part of the United States, but Trump’s comments are more about using his statements to get concessions from Canada by keeping Canada off balance, especially given the precarious current political environment in Canada,” Farnsworth said. “Maybe claim a victory on trade concessions, a tighter border or other things.”
He said the situation was similar in Greenland.
“What Trump wants is a victory,” Farnsworth said. “And even if the American flag doesn’t fly over Greenland, the pressure might make Europeans more willing to say yes to something else.”
–Gary Fields, Associate Press Writer in Washington, contributed to this report.
&Copy 2024 The Canadian Press
