The Gulf of America. The United States of Greenland. Canada, the 51st state.
How earnest is Donald Trump? Does the president dream of stealing new territory for America? How maniacally imperialist will this administration be?
As with anything Trump says, it’s difficult to know. He blusters and lies, and he shoots first and never bothers to ask any questions. If he’s deadly serious about immigration and the border — he’d end birthright citizenship if he could — the fate of an ice-sheathed Danish territory or our neighbor to the north is not so easily discerned. Canada, at least, should be fine. Trump wants to levy onerous tariffs and leave it there. In theory, he could strong-arm Denmark over Greenland, and there would arise one of the more absurd international contretemps we’ve seen in a while. American troops, landing to secure what is theirs, the most sparsely populated region of the world …
Not likely, but if there’s one president who could make such a scene, it’s Trump.
The question, for normal Americans, is how much they should panic. In the first term, the greatest danger Trump posed, truly, was his ability to start a war. Never had a man with such limited qualifications and a volatile temperament stormed into the Oval Office. It was reasonable to worry about an ex-reality-TV star getting near the nuclear football.
For reasons we’ll never quite understand — instinct or disposition, or whatever passes for deep thought inside of him — Trump is an isolationist. Many in the foreign-policy establishment consider this as a strike against him. He takes a dim view of NATO and doesn’t seem to care all that much if Russia declares victory in its invasion of Ukraine. His politics have been likened to those of the Nazi-sympathizing America Firsters of the 1930s, and for many conventional Democrats and Republicans, they are what makes him singularly odious.
But Americans should be thankful our latest Republican president is this way, and not ambitious like the men who surrounded George W. Bush for eight years. They should be relieved that Trump, if he’s going to be president, prefers the tin-pot imperialism of renaming a famous body of water (that one might not even stick), or stoking the fantasies of a certain kind of terminally online rightist who dreams of Greenland as an unsullied American frontier, over the foreign-policy ambitions espoused by Lindsey Graham. If braying about robbing territory from Denmark is unnerving, it’s also relatively harmless. As is mocking Canada as an American colony. Trump shouldn’t do this, but it beats invading Iraq, invading Afghanistan, or agitating for regime change in Libya.
Imagine, for a moment, Trump was Trump — but a neoconservative. Suddenly, instead of tariffs, he obsesses over sending American troops to as many Middle Eastern countries as possible. He openly fantasizes about a new war in Iraq or a bombing campaign of Iran. He decides, too, that Russia is worth combating head-on and demands that the Republican-run Congress allows him to deploy U.S. soldiers directly into Ukraine to start fighting and dying in that war. Then, he says, nuclear war can be won — America is unbeatable even in that realm. We’ll just nuke ’em first with our big, beautiful missiles. Since his administration is now stocked with sycophants, they all accept the premise, and J.D. Vance, dreaming of winning the nomination after Trump, eggs him on. Suddenly, MAGA demands war. Let’s make America great again — by blowing up a bunch of countries.
Dark, isn’t it? The left should understand that about Trump, at least; it can always get worse. And if an erratic, authoritarian-friendly champion of a cultish political movement is going to take control of America, let him be someone who’d rather gaze inward. Let him tangle with the administrative state — and probably lose. Let Elon Musk, likely to be exiled from the White House anyway, try and fail to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Let them whine about DEI. Yes, it all matters, and there’s enough damage Trump can do. But if Trump is this limited, ultimately, in his ambitions, life will churn onward. President Tom Cotton would be another matter, or President Ted Cruz. For now, Trump is probably going to have to figure out how to get another corporate tax cut through a deeply divided Congress.
Most concerning is this rising oligarchy. There is too much power, influence, and wealth concentrated in too few hands. Tech titans relish Trump, and deregulation is the word on everyone’s lips. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg want to reap their billions in peace. Crypto enthusiasts want to inflate their bubbles with interference from regulators. AI evangelists want government cooperation for a potentially dangerous technology with nebulous returns but wonderful PR Trump will let them.
Trump’s vision, in many ways, is quite small. The neocons had a romantic and dangerous sweep to their worldview, and we all suffered for it. Trump still thinks Mexico will pay for the wall. As long as he’s not training any guns there, let him go on thinking that. He’s a lame duck already. He just doesn’t know it yet.
