• ‘America First’ & Trump’s Wild Expansionist/Imperialist Dreams
  • Germany’s General Election: Olaf Scholz & SPD Hope For a Miracle

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Trump Revives 19th Century Imperialism

“Having campaigned on a policy of ending wars, making peace, putting America first and disentangling the country from the world, President-elect Donald Trump last week decided to revive 19th century imperialism,” Fareed Zaakaria, the CNN-host writes in his latest Washington Post column.

“In a single news conference, he pondered making Canada a US state and acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal by economic coercion – and declined to rule out military force in the latter two cases….

“Where will all this go?”

The talk about Canada “appears to be mostly trolling,” Zakaria writes, while Greenland and the Panama Canal do confer notable strategic benefits.

That said, “America has been so influential around the world because it has been able to persuade others that it seeks to act not just in its narrow self-interest but for broader interests – that it wants peace, stability, rules and norms that help everyone.” Trump’s “neo-imperialist” ethos undermines that.

Zakaaria concludes: “In the news conference, Trump proposed getting rid of the ‘artificially drawn line’ between Canada and the United States….

“Of course, that is precisely what [Russian] President Vladimir Putin says about the line between Russia and Ukraine…

“Or [Chinese President] Xi Jinping about the division between China and Taiwan. This is a world that makes Russia and China great again.”

The Man & His Plan?

“If commercial fees [for passage through the Panama Canal] are typically low and America’s navy already has cheap and preferential access, why is Mr. Trump threatening to take the canal?” The Economist asks.

As Zakaria notes in his column, the answer may have to do with Trump’s fixation with China.

The Economist continues: “The simplest answer may be that the president-elect is expressing geopolitical machismo, as he has with his proposal to take over Greenland. He may also want to press Panama to reduce Chinese influence in the country…

“China’s soldiers do not contrary to Mr. Trump’s claim, operate the canal, but Chinese diplomats and businessmen have clout in Panama…

“During Mr. Trump’s first term as president Panama ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan and established them with the government in Beijing. That led to an acceleration of Chinese investment in big infrastructure projects in the country. Plans for a huge Chinese embassy at the mouth of the canal were scuppered by American pressure…

 “But in 2021 Panama renewed for 25 years a major port concession held by a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based firm.”

Trump’s ‘America First’ shifts to imperialist rhetoric

Trump’s rhetoric reminiscent of 19th century imperialism, has alarmed allies and emboldened adversaries, raising concerns about the potential for conflict.

Donald Trump ran on a return to his ‘America First’ foreign policy platform. The U.S., he said, could no longer afford to be the world’s policeman.

On his watch, he pledged, there would be no new wars.

But since winning his second term, the president-elect has been embracing a new imperialist agenda, threatening to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland – perhaps by military force – and saying he will use economic coercion to pressure Canada to become the nation’s 51st state.

“Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of the artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security,” Trump said of the world’s longest border and the US’s…

Such talk of undermining sovereign borders and using military force against allies and fellow NATO members – even if said lightly – marks a stunning departure from decades-old norms about territorial integrity.

And it is rhetoric that analysts say could embolden America’s enemies by suggesting the U.S. is now OK with countries using force to redraw borders [as India and China have done with Nepal’s sovereign territory at the tri-junction] at a time when Russia is pressing forward with its invasion of Ukraine and mainland China is threatening Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory (AP/Associated Press; SCMP/South China Morning Post, Jan. 10).

“If I’m Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, this is music to my ears,” said John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser-turned critic, who also served as ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump’s language, reflecting a 19th century world view that defined European colonial/imperial powers, comes as international allies were already grappling with the implications of his return to the world stage.

Gerald Butts outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s former top adviser and long-time close friend, said Trump seems more emboldened than when he first took office in 2017.

“I think he’s feeling a lot less unencumbered than he was the last time. There are no restraints. This is maximum Trump,” he said (AP).

Butts is part of a WhatsApp group with others who staffed heads of state and government in Canada during the first Trump term.” Someone joked that the big fear the last time was that he didn’t know what he was doing, and the big fear this time is that he does,” he recounted.

Trump’s swaggering rhetoric also marks a continuation of the kind of testosterone-heavy energy that was a signature of his campaign, particularly as he worked to win over younger male voters with appearances on popular podcasts.

Charlie Kirk, a key Trump ally who joined Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on a trip to Greenland last week, argued on his podcast on Wednesday that it was imperative for the US to control Greenland. The island is an autonomous territory of Greenland, a long-time US ally and a founding NATO member.

Beyond the territory’s strategic location in the Arctic and its rich resources, Kirk said, “there is this other component. It makes America dream again, that we are not just this sad, low testosterone, beta male shouting in our chair, allowing the world to run over us” (AP).

“It is the resurrection of masculine American energy, it is the return of Manifest Destiny,” said Kirk, whose Turning Point group helped with Trump’s get-out-the-vote effort.

Trump allies have long argued that his bluster and audacious statements are all part of his complex negotiating tactics.

Aides note that nearly half of US shipping containers travel through the Panama Canal and that key canal ports are controlled by a Hong Kong-based company.

Greenland is in any case home to the Pituffik Space Base, the northernmost US site, which plays a key role in missile warnings and space surveillance.

And China and Russia have been making their own investments in the Arctic at a time when new potential shipping routes are opening as ice caps melt.

Canada, Trump’s team notes, spends far less on defence than its southern neighbour.

”Every decision President Trump makes is in the best interest of the United States and the American people. That’s why President Trump concerns regarding Canada, Greenland and Panama,” said Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.

But Michael McFaul, the Barack Obama-era ambassador to Russia who now serves as director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said Trump’s language is counterproductive to US security interests.

“President Trump is about to take over at one of the most dangerous times in American history,” he said.

“We will be best addressing those threats with allies. Allies are our superpower. And so I wish he would focus on the real threats and not invent threats” (AP).

Trump’s trolling is not the negotiating ploy of :crazy genius” he said, and will have consequences.

“We’ve got serious enemies and adversaries in the world, and we’re better off with the Canadians and the Danes with us than pissed off with us,” he said.

Indeed, Canadian officials have responded with increasing anger.

The joke is over,” Dominic Blanc, the country’s finance minister and point person for US-Canada relations said last Wednesday. “It’s a way for him, I think, to sow confusion, to agitate people, to create chaos knowing this will never happen.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded with sarcasm last Wednesday to another Trump proposal: to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.

Standing before an old map, she quipped that North America should be renamed “America Mexicana”, or “Mexican America”, because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.

“That sounds nice, no?” she said innocently.

Denmark and Panama have responded similarly, with Panama’s foreign minister, Javier Martinez-Acha, saying, “The sovereignty of our canal,” which the country has controlled for more than 25 years, “is not negotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest.”

NATO’s Dilemma

Mike O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution noted that NATO members are sworn to defend each other if they are attacked, creating what would be an unprecedented situation were Trump to actually try to forcefully take Greenland.

“You could make a strong argument that the rest of NATO would be obliged to come to Denmark’s defence,” he said. “It does raise the possibility, at whatever crazy level, of direct military force.”

Bolton has long criticized Trump for lacking a coherent policy strategy, saying his approach is “ transactional, ad hoc, episodic and really viewed from the prism of how it helps Donald Trump” (AP).

He said Trump has never liked Trudeau, and was clearly enjoying trolling the Canadian leader as he rallied against the nation’s trade imbalance. Canada, a resource-rich nation sells more goods to the US than it buys.             

But Bolton said the president-elect’s expansionist talk about Canada and Greenland [and also the Panama Canal] is likely to backfire, adding: “When you do things that make it less likely you’re going to achieve the objectives, that’s not master bargaining, that’s crazy” (AP).

Germany at the Crossroads

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s , 66, governing coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neo-liberal Free Democrats (FDP) failed dramatically at the end of 2024, sparking a vote of no confidence (self-sought) that resulted in the snap election scheduled for February 23.

Scholz’s coalition may have imploded, but at his party’s conference last weekend, he made it clear that he won’t give up without a fight.

The majority of the 600 delegates at the party conference for the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Berlin officially confirmed Chancellor Olaf Scholz as the party’s top candidate in Germany’s upcoming parliamentary election (DW/Deutsche Welle; Sabine Kinkartz, Jan. 12).

Currently, according to a poll by public broadcaster ARD, 77 % percent of Germans are dissatisfied with Scholz’s leadership, and the SPD squabbled for weeks about whether one of their more popular members should better lead the campaign.

Scholz, who possesses a singular self-confidence and avoids basing his actions on polls, is likely to have been unmoved by these concerns. With his political survival at stake, Scholz appeared decisive and combative at the party conference (DW).

The SPD currently has just under half of the support that poll respondents have expressed for the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

But a lot could still happen between now and election day .  .  .

Trump’s antics could offer Scholz opportunities in the election campaign. At the party conference, he once again rejected Trump’s claims: “The principle of the inviolability of borders applies to every country, regardless of whether it is to the east or west of us. Every state must adhere to this principle. No country is the backyard of another. No small country should have to fear its larger neighbour. That is at the core of what we call Western values, our values,” he said [This should resonate especially in Nepal!].

Scholz will have to mount a double-pronged attack : at the detractors of democracy at home – the right-wing Alternative fuer Deutschland; and the American Neo-Imperialists abroad – Trump, Musk and their ilk.

The country is at a “crossroads”,” Scholz said. “If we take a wrong turn in Germany on February 23, we may wake up next morning in a different country.”

The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com