What's Behind Trump's Rhetoric on Greenland, Canada and the Panama CanalExBulletin

A plane carrying Donald Trump Jr., the son of President-elect Donald Trump, arrives in Nuuk, Greenland, on Tuesday. The private visit to the Danish autonomous territory comes amid the president-elect's intensifying rhetoric that he wants to incorporate Greenland into the United States. Emil Stach/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Imaages .

switch captionEmil Stach/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump, days away from taking office, wasted no time returning to the forefront of American foreign policy, resuming his trademark mix of bombastic rhetoric and threats that leave friends and enemies in uncertainty.

His undiplomatic speeches in recent days about reclaiming the Panama Canal and annexing Greenland and even Canada have left world leaders scrambling to respond. Panama's foreign minister has insisted that sovereignty over its vital canal, which the United States ceded to it a quarter of a century ago, is “non-negotiable.” The prime minister of Denmark, a NATO member that oversees the self-governing territory of Greenland, insisted that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.” And Canada's outgoing Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, joked that there was “not a chance in hell” of a merger with the United States.

Here are four things to know about Trump's recent remarks.

Most experts agree Trump is unlikely to use military force

Trump, at a press conference earlier this week, refused to rule out the use of military or economic coercion to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, arguing that both are necessary for the security of UNITED STATES.

But the president-elect's comments seem more like a negotiating tactic than a real threat, according to Dan Hamilton, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution.

“A lot of it is exaggerations and bluster,” Hamilton says. “It's also a proven Donald Trump tactic of sort of disorienting your negotiating partner, putting them on the back burner because you want to get a better deal for the real goals that you have.”

In the case of Greenland and Panama, these “real objectives” include keeping China and other potential adversaries at bay, a return of sorts to the Monroe Doctrine, a policy first adopted by President James Monroe more than two centuries ago as a warning to European powers. not interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere, which the United States considered its sole competence.

“We need Greenland for national security reasons,” Trump said during Tuesday's press conference. “I'm talking about protecting the free world. You look, you don't even need binoculars, you look out. You have Chinese ships everywhere. You have Russian ships everywhere. We don't allow this to happen. We don't let that happen.

Brent Sadler, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says Greenland could become increasingly important “if shipping becomes viable through this route, as Arctic weather warms and ice sheets shrink.”

“Geography is really important, and Greenland's geography is extremely strategic,” says Sadler, a retired U.S. Navy captain. “We do not want a Chinese economic or military presence in a very critical location for an attack on the United States.”

In the case of Greenland, Trump likely wants to maintain and possibly deepen the U.S. military presence there, and ensure “greater U.S. access to critical minerals and materials,” Hamilton says.

The Arctic territory, whose leader campaigned for Danish independence, was an important Cold War outpost for the United States, which still maintains the Pituffik space base (formerly Thule Air Base) in Greenland. Meanwhile, China is increasingly seeking joint ventures to exploit Greenland's rich “rare earth” minerals with exotic names such as neodymium, cerium and lanthanum, which are vital to the modern technology industry.

China is also a major concern in Panama, as Chinese companies “operate ports at both ends of the canal,” writes Gregg Curley of the Atlantic Council.

Whatever Trump's intentions, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at Brookings, says it's important not to underestimate him. O'Hanlon calls Trump's rhetoric regarding the use of military force “foolish talk,” but cautions: “I think it's erring on the side of taking any president or president-elect at their word and believing that this could often be a warning of something that could actually happen. »

World leaders are still considering how to respond to Trump 2.0

During his first term, Trump berated NATO and even threatened to withdraw the United States from the transatlantic security treaty, based on false claims that member countries “must [the U.S.] a huge amount of money. »

Douglas Lute, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Obama administration, says that during his first term, alliance leaders viewed Trump as “unpredictable, unsettling, bordering on chaos.”

But they also understand that “his style is such that he says things publicly, particularly when addressing his domestic political base, that ultimately do not have a major impact on serious policy.” , said Lute.

“Trump is good at getting people into a hysterical mode,” says Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the United States and Americas program at Chatham House, based in London. She wonders “how quickly will Europeans start to think strategically about this?” »

“It's early days, but we don't yet know what the strategic issues might be here? What can we look to work on behind the scenes with the new Trump administration?” she said. “If it's about sea lanes, critical minerals and geopolitical competition, then what should we do? Right now it's just some kind of fury, anger and reprimand” from world leaders.

Trump's comments on Greenland, in particular, cross a line for NATO, according to Brookings' O'Hanlon. He believes that, however unlikely it may be, the effective use of military force would require careful consideration of the mutual defense clause in the NATO charter.

“If [the U.S.] “If we attacked Denmark, all other NATO countries will have the obligation to decide whether they want to come to Denmark's defense,” he said. “I'm not saying we're going to have a civil war within NATO, but things could get pretty tough.”

Some see Trump's tactics as a contemporary version of Nixon's “crazy theory.”

Former President Richard Nixon is often credited with a strategy to make adversaries believe that leaders can go crazy, in order to sow fear and gain the upper hand in international relations.

Roseanne McManus, associate professor of political science at Penn State University, says the modern version of the so-called “madman theory” or “madman strategy” was outlined in the late 1950s, although there there are allusions to this theory centuries ago. In 1517, for example, Niccolo Machiavelli said that “it is sometimes very wise to feign madness.”

Nixon attempted to use the madman theory to confuse Soviet leaders and bring North Vietnam to the negotiating table to end the war there. Among other things, Nixon's strategy included “veiled nuclear threats intended to intimidate Hanoi and its patrons in Moscow” and “approval of a secret alert of U.S. nuclear forces around the world to project the idea that [Nixon] was “insane” and forced adversaries to back down,” according to the National Security Archive.

McManus says there is reason to believe that “Trump is deliberately using the madman theory and trying to make people believe he is a little crazy to gain an advantage in negotiations.”

Although Trump's unpredictable appearance is nothing new to world leaders who have dealt with him during his first term as president, traditionally, “many NATO countries are accustomed to U.S. engagement very predictable. make them a lot less comfortable,” she says.

The president-elect wants to disorient the United States' allies, hoping that “if both partners want good relations with the United States, they will have to get their hands dirty,” Hamilton says.

Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, whose essay in Foreign Policy this week asked the question “Does the Fool Theory Really Work?” thinks there is a clear difference between the Nixonian and Trumpian versions of the strategy. “With Trump, it’s more that he’s legitimately unpredictable,” he says. “He can go from menacing fire and fury to love letters,” he says, referring to Trump's relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the first term.

Trump's speech could backfire

Drezner says that for coercion to work, Trump would have to “credibly commit to doing the crazy thing that you're threatening,” adding that you then have to credibly promise to back down if your terms are met.

He claims Trump overestimated his negotiating strategy. “The grave conceptual error that Trump made in his first term and will make in his second term is his belief that because he can intimidate his allies, he will be able to extract similar concessions from Chinas and Russias from all over the world,” Drezner said. said.

If Trump's strategy does indeed amount to a “crazy” approach, it will likely reach a point of diminishing returns, says Penn State's McManus. “If you act irrational all the time, no one will trust you and no one will want to make a deal with you,” she says. “It’s harder for them to make credible promises, credible commitments or credible assurances.”

Lute, the former ambassador to NATO, calls this the “cry wolf” scenario. Not only does it destroy credibility, he says, but there is “an opportunity cost.”

“In the end, you lose credibility and people spend time worrying about something that won't happen,” he says. “It consumes time and energy… that would be better spent elsewhere, for example helping Ukraine.”

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