Trump's Threats Against Greenland and Panama Are Bad News For Ukraine
It's not 'Trump being Trump.' It's about normalizing land grabs.
At a press conference at his private Florida club on January 7, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump refused to rule out military action to retake control of the Panama Canal and seize Greenland. "No," he said at Mar-a-Lago. "No, I can't assure you of either of those two. But I can say this: We need them for economic security. The Panama Canal was built for our military." Trump said that the U.S. needs Greenland, an autonomous, self-governing territory of Denmark with a population of 56,000, for "national security purposes" and questioned whether Denmark has a "legal right" to it. In recent weeks, Trump has also talked about Canada becoming the 51st U.S. state.
The absurdity of these claims makes it tempting to dismiss them as another instance of "Trump being Trump." However, his claims to other countries' sovereign territory serve to normalize Russia's land grab in Ukraine and China's threats against Taiwan.
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