The incoming US president Donald Trump generates torrents of diplomatic angst with seemingly outlandish statements about Canada becoming America’s “51st state,” buying Greenland from NATO ally Denmark, and repossessing the Panama Canal in order to counter China’s growing economic footprint throughout the North American hemisphere. Where is all this expansionist (‘progressive’ would call it neo-imperialist) energy coming from? How did Trump’s America First isolationism suddenly morph into nothing less than an Americas First mergers and acquisition (M&A) strategy?
It’s perfectly clear that Trump’s no starry-eyed visionary. But he is transactional leader with nothing less than a stunningly effective capacity to sense fear within the ranks and weaponize it for political mobilization.
Americans are uncertain and angry right now, feeling deeply unsettled about the country’s trajectory and globalization’s increasingly fierce competitive landscape which sees its dominance challenged by rising powers such as China. They want someone strong and confident (or who can at least project strength and confidence) to tell them how they can be great again without assuming undue global responsibilities and a return to Cold War-standoffs with both China and Russia, much less “forever wars” like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
No mean feat even in the best of times, but Trump’s instincts are indeed correct, and he’s actually uniquely suited for the task.
In fact, there is an only-Nixon-can-go-to-China opportunity here. Richard Nixon rocked the world to its core in 1972 by formally recognizing China’s communist regime. Americans trusted him in that bold, arc-bending historical move because he was firmly established in the public zeitgeist as the quintessential anti-communist. If Trump, the poster-boy isolationist and climate change-denier manages to negotiate (or bully or bluster) US expansionism across North America (Canada, Greenland), then Americans may well trust his national security logic that we’re in a “Race for the Arctic” with both China and Russia. It would be the twenty-first century version of the Monroe Doctrine.
Three key trends animate the globe right now: (i) an East-West decoupling dynamic, (ii) a re-regionalization imperative along North-South lines that brings “near-shoring” production close to home markets, and (iii) a growing superpower clash animating all these “races” — namely, adapting to climate change, winning the energy transition, achieving AI supremacy, etc.
Trump, love him or loath him, sees just enough of this world and the fear it generates to know the right plan of attack. With China weakened by economic forces it is having substantial challenge in managing, he sees an opportunity for a Nixonian or even Reaganesque move. The latter recognised that the USSR was overstretched and faltering due to its enormous military budget so he forced it into an arms race it could ill afford and not hope to sustain. In the end, while the US did incur short term deficits and vast long-term debt what the Soviet Union is but a distant memory
Trump’s approach to international affairs reflects Americans’ judgment that they are done building a world order — which their nation has overseen from 1954 to 2008 —and now must vigorously embrace an aggressively competitive approach to this multipolar world; in other words, be less the generous market-maker and more the selfish market-player.
The world’s current and emerging superpowers (U.S., Europe, Russia, India, China) fear one another more and more. Americans sense an imperative in this era of re-regionalization and decoupling— one that screams “get yours now before somebody else does!”
So, the progressives are half-right. This is not an era of neo-imperialism, but rather one of neo-colonialism.
Russia evinces that ambition in the nastiest ways (see Georgia, Ukraine). China, presently globalization’s premier integrating power, has sought to do so systematically with its Belt and Road Initiative, securing long and critical supply chains across the world through that multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure building scheme funded by its inexhaustible ability to print money and report statistics which cannot truly be independently verified. India is just beginning to think and act along such lines, for now instinctively pushing back against China’s efforts to integrate South Asia into its global value chain — in effect, trying to box in New Delhi’s ongoing “rise.” And a hitherto nascent Japan, long constrained by its pacifist constitution has been forced by China’s aggressive acts in the South China Sea, the clashes with the Philippines and the near-constant saber-rattling over Taiwan is now turning its weakened but still formidable economic power towards investing in a seemingly inevitable buildup of its military with committing to the third largest defense budget in the world.
Europe and the U.S., with Trump’s return, seem destined to complete their conscious uncoupling like two self-absorbed social media influencers whose career and self-promotion needs no longer jibe. And just as Russia has sought to put the pieces back together of its empire, we now spot the same acquisitive rumblings within Western ranks.
Trump has long argued that Europe and Canada both “owe” America vast sums of money for defending them for decades against the Soviet/Russian threat. He now implies that America deserves Greenland as compensation for that strategic debt, arguing that the US would do a better job of developing and defending Greenland than tiny Denmark has ever managed. That Denmark happens to be part of the same NATO alliance the US belongs to is easily brushed aside.
Together with Alaska (bought from Imperial Russia in 1867), Greenland and Canada comprise North America’s “crown jewels” when it comes to an Arctic revealed by climate change. The warming Arctic possesses almost one-third of the world’s remaining hydrocarbon (oil, natural gas) reserves, along with prodigious amounts of minerals (nickel, zinc, rare earths) critical to both national security and the energy transition.
Does anybody with half a mind think Canada and Greenland won’t need serious help in standing up to Russia and China’s aggressive ambitions across that vast and strategically crucial landscape? Neither entity has the global “soft power” nor the necessary military strength to do so, much less police their own borders or territorial waters.
Or how about China’s recent emergence as the major trade partner and source of investment throughout South America? The Chinese will be more than happy to bankrupt the US’s neighbors of energy, minerals, and food while climate change devastates these vulnerable economies in the years ahead, knowing full well that the vast numbers of climate migrants escaping that desperate situation will head to the North American border — not China’s.
Humanity now enters a period of profound uncertainty where previous preconceived norms no longer hold for our global system and its cast of major players are being compelled to evolve at warp speed. But evolve to what is the question confronting many governments. Just like species are compelled by climate change to evolve exponentially thousands of times faster than a more sedate pace, globalization and the assumptions which underlie it are being similarly pressured by the confluence of history-twisting transformations ranging declining birth rates and rapid aging due to the prolongation of life via advanced science across the Global North to the drought-driven slow strangulation of agriculture across the Global South to AI’s likely profound job market destruction just as that Global South seeks to cash-in its demographic dividend and achieve deep integration in global value chains.
Up until now, globalization’s integrating forces have unfolded largely along East-West lines. Thanks to climate change, our planet’s lower latitudes (closer to the equator) will likely face extreme environmental issues and thus the resultant economic tumult potentially culminating in unprecedented mass migrations which could dwarf current volumes.
The North can build all the physical walls it wants, but the logic of North-to-South political integration will prevail, echoing the European Union’s logic in integration of former communist/socialist states following the Cold War — namely, it’s better to pre-emptively integrate than suffer long-term disintegrating dynamics.
And here’s the national security kicker: all that North-to-South integration is really an economic and technological race among the North’s current and emerging superpowers (U.S., EU, India, Russia, China) in order to capture the long-term brand loyalty of that emergent global majority middle class concentrated across those very same lower latitudes increasingly tormented by climate change.
That evolution of our world system thus requires what might resemble a very strong empire-building phase. Tech Bros like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg recognize it for what it is, as does the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai. For his part, while never a conventional definition of a visionary, Trump nonetheless is a shrewd identifier of trends, at least enough to be increasingly locked onto this idea as the means to establish his legacy: the real-estate magnate who not only bettered America but made it “greater” through territorial and economic hegemony.
This is why it is a profound mistake to take all this recent diplomatic jousting less than seriously: It’s not just Trump, and it’s not just climate change, and it’s not just the “Race for the Arctic,” and it’s not just North-South demographic disparities, and it’s not just the AI sprint or superpowers competing to lock-in strategic resources.
It’s everything everywhere all at once.
Successful geopolitical strategy is all about understanding the prerogative to flow with history’s tides instead of swimming against them. That’s how a nation (or a bloc) expands its power (more people, more territory, more member-states) while denying such growth to rivals and opponents.
This is the world we live in right now — a super-competitive moment. By mid-century, we will all be living in somebody’s slice of our multipolar world. The closest comparison would be a confluence of the age of robber barons combined with an age of empires.
Washington needs to fully commit to making that future world — or however much of it can be effectively integrated — American in its ethos and rules versus anything else. Like it or not with the Belt and Road initiative stalled the United States remains the driver of today’s globalization: its internal rule set of free trade, democratic rule and collective security projected across the world these past eight decades but now encountering firm authoritarian pushback from the likes of China and Russia.
And the best way to ensure that future is to re-open the United States to new member-states — the ultimate Trump card in the new superpower brand war. Only by so doing does it ensure its primacy as the globe’s only hyperpower (a position it has not held since the Soviet Union’s dissolution).
Such ambition and responsibility will define patriotism this century: Nations and their cultures get better by getting bigger, just as the vast majority of our collective history has shown. Even tiny Singapore is getting on this game, as its Special Economic Zone with neighboring Johor Bahru evidences.
However theatrically, Trump is pointing us in the right direction. The question posed is: Do you want a future in which Canada defects to the EU, Russia rules the Arctic and China runs Latin America? Because that will be the default outcome of American non-action, the price of passivity.
This is where Trump’s outwardly bombastic absurd ambition offers clarity through the current strategic fog: embracing today’s inconceivable to prevent tomorrow’s inevitable.
Believe it or not, however haphazardly or unconventionally arrived at: this is genuine geopolitical strategy. Those who take Donald Trump to be a hucksterish simpleton or buffoon are dangerously underestimating him, as Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have found out.
But let’s also take a moment to get more real in our thinking. Justin Trudeau is right to opine that Canada will never actually become America’s 51st state, but what if it became America’s 51st-through-59th-states? Would that be enough political power and standing for Canadians to choose over admission into the EU’s economic club? Is an offer of 18 potential Senate seats and more congressional districts than even California’s 52?
For its part Greenland currently holds two seats in Denmark’s 179-member parliament. Would that be more compelling and empowering than two seats in the U.S. Senate? How about a $57 billion buy-out package that instantly transforms every Greenlander an instant millionaire, barring the longer term implications to property prices and cost of living ?
Does Trump have your undivided attention now? Not so amateurish now, is it?
The simple truth is that we currently live in volatile and uncertain times. But, no matter what, the best way to predict the future is still to create it yourself versus letting others take the lead in doing so. After all, why pass up the chance to have everyone else live in your world?
One thing we know about Donald Trump is that he believes in always taking the offensive to keep the competition off balance. Furthermore, he is all about deal-making and his musings on Greenland and Canada are extensions of his standard approach. And Trump, perhaps more than any other current U.S. political leader, recognizes that America’s strategic future will be marked by North-South or hemispheric integration. He may discount the ultimate cause of that shift — namely, climate change’s ongoing devastation of our planet’s lower latitudes (as he appears to be a climate change sceptic), but he’s already zeroed in on its most disruptive outcome: mass migration from the Global South to the Global North.
America — and Canada, for that matter — can pretend that we can someone wall ourselves off from that turbulent future, that the great oceans on both coasts are still some sort of unbreachable moat, but ‘Fortress North America’ is a cruel fantasy. Better to move the US borders further north and south than to suffer that inescapable pathway — again, a matter of the hitherto inconceivable pre-empting the inevitable.
Donald Trump may seem as unlikely a messenger from this future as Nixon or Reagan was during the height of the Cold War (A future global economy dominated by China and America? Are you insane?), but the logic will only grow more real over the years.
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