Open Borders For Authoritarians

How Trump's rhetoric on Canada echoes Putin's on Ukraine

Photo by Guillaume Jaillet on Unsplash

On March 11, in threatening higher tariffs on Canada which he backed off on by the end of the day, U.S. President Donald Trump posted the following message on Truth Social: "The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State…The artificial line of separation drawn many years ago will finally disappear." Trump's threats against Canada have turned from a joke into a serious scandal which has tanked financial markets: the U.S. president is threatening a sovereign country with economic destruction to take it over.  

In doing so, he is echoing Russian leader Vladimir Putin's threats before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In July 2021, Putin published a 5,000-word essay on the Kremlin website proclaiming Ukrainians and Russians as "one people," and, like Trump, declaring that internationally recognized borders were artificial. Putin wrote, "Inside the USSR, borders between republics were never seen as state borders; they were nominal within a single country…But in 1991, all those territories…found themselves abroad overnight." However, some 92 percent of Ukrainians voted for independence from the Soviet Union in 1991; these borders became official.

Both men share a disdain for internationally recognized borders, believe that international agreements can be torn up, and think that bigger countries can take over smaller ones as they see fit.