“Great Powers Are The Ones Calling The Shots Again….”

“We’re entering a new age of conquest,” said Sumantra Maitra, director of research at the American Ideas Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. “Great powers are the ones calling the shots again. Some countries have realized it early, and some have not, but they will soon….” (MSN)

The man who would be “czar for a day” envisions a greatly expanded American empire. It’s no secret that he aspires to unite all of North America, from Mexico at one end to Greenland at the other into a continental United States of America.

The peaceful hopes of less global conflict after the Cold War ended have fully faded now. No one believes in that opportunity anymore. Through multiple US administrations and one extended Putin administration that also envisions a reconstruction of Russian empire and greatness, the two superpowers have polarized completely.

The current revival of imperialist thinking represents an abrupt reversal of the post-Cold War order of the last three decades. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it seemed possible that humanity could finally learn to live by a set of universally recognized rules, with a few nasty exceptions on the periphery. (MSN)

Not so anymore.

Many strategists and diplomats see the world returning to something like the Concert of Nations that emerged in Europe after the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century. Under that system, praised by the late Henry Kissinger for preventing global war for nearly a century, empires recognized each other’s spheres of influence worldwide, including the right to oppress and dominate less powerful countries and peoples within those spheres.

The Monroe Doctrine added an American contingent to that.

This month Mike Waltz, Trump’s incoming national-security adviser, described the president-elect’s vision as “Monroe 2.0.”

“If we want to hold on to the past, we better get eyes in the back of our head rather than on the front of our head, because we are seeing the dying of the current world order.”

The green shoots of new imperial expansion

Trump’s reason for wanting to add Greenland to the US as another state are pretty strong. To start with, there is the standard oil excuse. Why is there war or conquest anywhere with the US? It’s hard to find examples where oil is not the center of the equation because it is what many of the major components of the MIC, from banks to heavy industry, want. Nothing eats up heavy product to require more product like war.

Trump has even indicated he would not rule out using the US military to snatch Greenland out of maw of Denmark. While that may be just negotiating bluster, implied threats of war against a non-warring people in their own land are hardly the kind of talk that endears any nation to the US. We didn’t threaten war with Russia to buy Alaska. If we want to buy Greenland, OK if Denmark wants to sell it; but one hopes the people who live there will have a vote in the matter. It’s not so clear under Trump that they will. With threats of war not being off the table, it sounds like strong-arming the vote may be in order. And, so far, most of the opinions I’ve heard from Greenlanders (if those interviewed are representative) have been a polite, “No thanks!”

Whether we can afford to buy Greenland from Denmark with our massive debt that we can barely manage any longer—now that credit agencies are downgrading US credit and interest is quickly rising—is another equation based on how a Greenland purchase will cash flow because of Greenland’s resources, which also notably include vast fisheries and apparently significant uranium deposits that are highly wanted for reactors for all those wars ships and submarines plus the nuclear plants are already needed to run all the new AI systems and crypto-currency systems. That is barely to mention other rare earths needed for electric car batteries, computer chips, etc. So, there are a lot of reasons for an imperial lust for Greenland. An empire in the the process of rebuilding wants what it wants.

Greenland would also be hugely strategic in the minds of aspirational US leaders because it would give the US total military control of an almost continental-sized chunk of real estate on the perimeter of the Arctic Ocean, which is very close to Russia via a route “over the top” of the world. Good location for nuclear missiles to get there more quickly and keep Russia on a hair trigger. We already have a base there with Denmark’s and Greenland’s permission, but having Greenland as a US state or territory, would strengthen the empire’s control of the arctic with its vast resources and summertime shipping routes. And what member of the MIC wouldn’t crave control from the West of the Arctic Ocean via Alaska to the East via Greenland? Sea to shining sea.

Not surprisingly, there are a lot of Greenlanders who want Greenland to stay just as it is, and we know that certainly won’t happen if it is acquired and mined and drilled and fished extensively by all US citizens who want to set up business there, once it is as much everyone else’s land as those in Greenland because that is how free movement among these united states of America works: (I don’t have to live in Alaska to fish in Alaska.)

“I don’t trust the guy,” said Bilo Chemnitz, who drives a snowmobile at the local ski slope in the half-light of winter. “I want Greenland to stay like it is….”

After Mass at the red-painted Nuuk Cathedral, Ida Abelsen pointed her finger toward her mouth, in the universal gesture of “gag me,” saying, “I don’t like the way he talks about Greenland.” (MSN)

Not everyone in Greenland wants it to become the mining capital the US and a greater military outpost. I don’t think, until Trump sent his son there this year, Trump ever asked anyone in Greenland what they want. What matters is Trump wants it, and I’m sure plenty of imperial Neocons want it, too. Still, the two voices quoted above are not entirely representative:

There are also some here who are Trump curious — who want to hear more about how their lives might improve with closer ties to the United States.

Be careful what you hope for. Of course, closer ties to the US coupled with new independence from Denmark do not have to mean statehood. Many of the few who live in that hostile land are looking for some other kind of business deal that might be struck with Trump and the US that doesn’t cede Greenland to the US.

Those lives today are not bad: free health care, free education for all, and for the needy, subsidized housing. As a self-governing territory of distant Denmark, Greenland has limited self-rule but is also a welfare state. A third of the gross domestic product and half the state budget are supplied by Denmark, about $500 million a year.

Does’t sound like Greenland is cash flowing well enough at present to even pay for its own living, much less make a return on investment. However, the dynamics envisioned by Trump would be far different than those of green-thinking, sustainable, European Denmark or even than the Biden Administration. Start pumping that oil and scratching out those rocks as well as expanding fisheries, and Greenland can make a lot of money, but is that what the majority in Greenland want for themselves? And to what extent will those simple individuals participate in this new world for the barons of industry.

Greenland is like an extreme Alaska. Bigger, emptier and more remote. Its vast, ice-capped open space covers more than 836,000 square miles. The weather is gnarly.

And the population is minuscule. Greenland is home to 56,000 people, with 20,000 in the capital, the rest scattered in coastal hamlets. This is no hot-tubbing tourist hot spot, like Iceland. There are few roads. People travel by boat or plane or not at all.

Trust me: Trump can and will change all of that if he gets what he wants. He is a luxury real-estate developer, and there is probably a wealthy niche market for Icelandic style luxury hotels with their own self-contained environments … at least, in the summer. Those who live there now will find plenty of jobs folding the sheets and making the beds, but it is doubtful they will own the big hotels that offer Arctic tourism.

Some Trump backers in the United States imagine that acquiring Greenland could be one of the biggest real estate plays ever. Such as buying Alaska in 1867, when America snapped it up for a cool $7.2 million from Russia.

I’m not saying the acquisition shouldn’t be explored, but I am saying the people who live there should have the final say, after Denmark has agreed to sell its interest, provided the local residents approve. At least, the Danes seem to agree with me on that:

Danish officials have responded to Trump by emphasizing that Greenland will make its own decisions. “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said

Given that use of the US military for this acquisition is not off the table, according to Trump, I’m not sure a strongman approach of any kind is off the table either, especially when you hear some of his big supporters talk. (I’m thinking heavy sanctions and tariffs.)

As the Arctic warms, faster than the rest of the planet, a new “Great Game” competition is afoot among the superpowers — China, Russia, the United States — seeking to exploit resources and new commercial shipping and military sea routes through the ice-free summer seas….

“It makes America dream again, that we’re not just this sad, low-testosterone, beta male slouching in our chair, allowing the world to run over us,” said conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who accompanied Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on a visit to Greenland last week.

Yeah, I just wonder what the Inuits and other Greenlanders are dreaming about as we crave Greenland’s resources and likely care very little about what its people want.

“It is the resurrection of masculine American energy,” Kirk said on his podcast. “It is the return of Manifest Destiny….”

“This is a great opportunity for Greenland,” said Kuno Fencker, a member of parliament and its foreign affairs committee, from the dominant Siumut Party. “We know Donald Trump. He’s a politician. He’s a businessman. You shouldn’t take him literally. But you should take him seriously.”

Some Americans like to be big, flex their muscles and really don’t care who they walk all over because it is their “manifest destiny” to do so. A few of them even view themselves as the world’s natural ruling class or ruling race, and Trump has always appealed to them. Trump, in the very least, likes to keep those possibilities in imperial play, while some of his strong-armed supporters love that opportunity to flex and breathe deep (maybe even enjoying the smell of napalm in the morning):

“My mom was asking me, seriously, if I thought Trump was going to declare war against Greenland,” said Poul Pedersen, a sociologist at Greenland University.

Trump risks that keeping that strong-arm possibility in the playbook may diminish interest more than compelling it by fear:

Fencker, the lawmaker, conceded that Trump’s “loose language” left some here confused whether the president-elect was wooing or threatening….

“That we are even discussing this [whether he is serious about using the military as an option] is distracting,” he said.

Would Trump apply economic and political pressure on Denmark to cede control? “Umm, I think he is already doing that,” Fencker said.

So, perhaps to Trump, these are just areas on the Risk game board, and it’s all about winning the game by putting America first, regardless of the humanity directly involved, for whom there homeland is far from just a game board for billionaires to play on. The rationalization for the moneyed elite would be that it IS a game, and to the winner go the spoils because …. the manifest destiny of the powerful.

One thing that is not the least surprising from Donald Trump is that …

“He is already dividing people here.”

That seems to be the Don’s modus operandi. This particular division comes from stirring up old colonial grievances between the more indigenous people and the colonizers who remain and the rest who more recently came. Those people comprise 90% Inuits who moved there in the 1300s to hunt reindeer, abundant seals and fish, 7% Danes, and the rest are mostly cheap Thai and Philippine laborers.

It’s possible if Trump doesn’t go all conquistador, some sort of Faustian bargain might be struck with a newly independent Denmark to make Greenland another US territory, but I’m sure Trump would love to take all.

Oh, oh, Canada!

“America first” may easily mean “trample all over anyone you want to in order to get as much as you can for Amerika.” I am certain it does for some of Trump’s flexing followers—including those who advocate racial lines of conquest.

Trump’s additional plans of northward, non-military expansion seem dead out of the starting gate; but, at least, he is so far restricting himself to just exercising as much economic force as he can to gain control. All of Canada lies within his potential grasp, as he sees it and is up for grabs on the billionaire game board.

A poll of Canadians this month, however, revealed that 90% of Canada wants nothing to do with becoming part of the United States. (The very fact that they’re taking such a poll shows they are taking the threat somewhat seriously.) If Canada did join this imperfect union—improbable as that is—it wouldn’t likely be as the 51st US state because the new State of Canada would dwarf all other US states; so each province would likely become a new state of the Union.

To get Quebec to cooperate with that deal, the US would have to agree to become bilingual by making French its equal national language to English, the latter not even being official in the US. We’d have to give both languages new official status, or the French would fight for independence. That was the deal Canada had to make when it drafted its constitution. That would draw US Spanish speakers into the fray, once we’re deciding official languages. That should all get hostile in a hurry, but I doubt Trump is thinking that far about the human realities. In the game of Risk, there are no human realities. Cardboard doesn’t argue back against the taking.

Officially accepting these other languages in order to get Quebec not to go to war by declaring its own dependence from the whole grand bargain (something it already seems inclined to do with anglophone Canada at times), would certainly bust MAGA to bits. Start trying to subsume entire nations, and things get hostile, especially if 90% of Canadians don’t want to join.

“Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that 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 international border and the U.S.’s second-largest trade partner.

He sounds like he is sucking up to the MIC with that statement, the group of Deep-State influencers, many in MAGA claim to hate. So, how will division within MAGA not form there? Better for whose national security? Canada has no one trying to take over its territory, but becoming part of the US would make it fair game in a nuclear exchange between the superpowers.

Canada is more secure the more neutral it remains, and it already has the protection of NATO and already sometimes assists in US military endeavors via NATO. So, clearly the Trump administration is thinking of US security the way the Neocons and other MIC folk think about it—security by being the biggest empire with the most power and longest reach. You can be sure the MIC crowd are slavering for this already. Again, there are a lot of resources to be gained for the US along with a lot of strategic positioning for the military around the new frontier of the Arctic Ocean.

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.

Once you start playing with boundaries of this size, the whole world destabilizes. If there is one thing Trump hates, it’s normal behavior, so breaking longstanding norms is something he loves to do. However, once you start messing with territorial integrity, you almost inevitably start wars by getting people worked up about boundaries and who is in control. Does the US really need to be endlessly bigger? Is it not OK to let people self-govern on a smaller, slightly more culturally personal scale the way they want to, rather than to conglomerate, which is the US answer to everything?

Even if more than 50% of Canada voted to become part of the US, which I cannot possibly imagine, given the attitudes of most of the many Canadians I have known about America, think of the hostile divisions you would still have inside of that joined nation.

Having once managed a 1,000-membership ranch campground in the US where 973 of the memberships were owned by garrulous Canadians, I have come to the firm conclusion that Canadians are far from the subdued, peaceful lot that people keep saying they are. I think they must have hired excellent PR people to gain that reputation because that was certainly not my experience, especially at board meetings where they were the most contentious bunch I’d ever dealt with. I’m not sure how they all keep from killing themselves up there. I’m guessing lots of Molson to settle things back down for those who live past the meeting. My wife used to say, “Geeze, crack a Kokanee and camp!”

The flip side to pressuring the redrafting of national boundaries is that …

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 at a time when Russia is pressing forward with its invasion of Ukraine and China is threatening Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory.

Of course it will. If America justifies it, why not Russia and China? Those two are not going to sit back and watch the US expand its imperial reach over vast regions of the world that bring it closer to Russia and do nothing. Force does not have to mean military force. Trump has already said he’ll use economic pressure, which includes even higher tariffs (which means higher tribute paid by Americans to America but also means a huge drop in Trade for Canadians selling into America). Perhaps he’ll also add America’s favorite weapon—sanctions—if they don’t comply.

“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 powers, comes as international allies were already grappling with the implications of his return to the world stage….

“I think he’s feeling a lot less unencumbered than he was the last time. There are no restraints. This is maximum Trump,” … said [Gerald Butts, outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s former top adviser].

Well, Trump is nothing if not interesting, and he’s clearly emboldened to do things in even more aggressive ways, which likely does mean treating the world like it is his Risk game board. When has it not been that way for a narcissist ruler with messianic complexes and high imperial ambitions? (He has said he’s God’s chosen, and many of his religious followers believe he is.)

There is the thought that, with actual enemies in the world, the US might be better off with Canadians and Danes as allies than with them being pissed off at us for talking like we’ll send in the storm troopers or use tariffs (or maybe even sanctions) to put them in a headlock and strong-arm their lands into our direct rule. (And, really, does the MAGA crowd want to add a vast blue state, stretching across the entire north? With the exception of the maritimes, the addition of Canada could liberalize the US even more. After all, the conquered Canadians who love to elect Trudeaus wouldn’t become subjects, they’d become voting citizens of the US, and they’ve tended to elect a lot more liberal governments than conservative ones over the past century.)

I’m pretty sure they are going to increasingly resent the US talking as if this is even a possibility, since most Canadians I know have never sounded like they have a high opinion of Americans … and certainly not like they wish they could become Americans. Some Americans—maybe Trump—live under the delusion that most other nations secretly wish they were us! That’s beyond laughable if you’ve ever travelled. I’m not even completely sure that most Hawaiians want to be “us.” There are certainly a number who don’t. It’s not even always clear that most Texans still want to be us.

So, you start playing with those mega-MAGA-sized game pieces, and many who aren’t so sure they want to be part of the US start seeing their opportunity to seize the day for themselves. And then how will the Puerto Ricans feel—long a territory but never a full state—if Canada crowds in ahead of them? Of course, Trump, I’m sure, will sweep them in quickly, too, if he can … and Guam and any other region that can be cobbled into a fully recognized grand global empire, but is that what the anti-immigration MAGA crowd will want? We already have Bannon at war with Musk. Isn’t sweeping everyone in with full state status like massive amnesty to full citizenship on a scale never seen before? I’m surprised they haven’t already realized this. What Musk pushed for that got him into MAGA-trouble was nothing compared to this!

Trump has always thrived on negative energy. He loves to officially start a good boxing match. He loves to stir the pot, and this is a LOT of stirring. He loves to create reality TV that is based on creating conflict between competitors. That’s all fine when it is just fun and games, but deciding the nationality of others is not fun and games. Even his style of White House leadership, according to many present, was to get his advisors going in a good fight and then just sit and marvel at how they ripped into each other in the Oval Pit. So, maybe this is just more negative-energy, adrenaline-feeding fun for him, even if leads to no accomplishment. Just create a good reality global television production where you are the center star of every broadcast. He certainly knows how to do that.

Creating chaos for its own sake

With that in mind, and speaking of the fighting French,

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

While we’re going big and loving to stir up other nations for fun and possibly nothing else, let’s rename the Gulf of Mexico, the “Gulf of America” because that accomplishes nothing … other than to stroke America’s newly rebloated ego. It doesn’t make the gulf any closer to belonging entirely to America … unless we turn Mexico into a southern state, then we’ll, at least have it 3/4 surrounded. That also appears to possibly be in the Trump play book. Certainly taking back the Panama Canal is in the playbook. Perhaps we should have never let it go of, given its massive trade and military strategic significance … but we did. Now we’re taking it back. That is certain to provoke greatly in Panama, but they’re small, so who cares! What are they going to do? Storm us?

All of this is hypocritical, if not either hysterical or hyperbolic, given that Trump campaigned on ending wars, not launching a whole new agenda of conquest that includes threatening wars. It risks alienating allies and certainly gins up his “citizens militia” groups for armed conflict. Trump promised he would be the president who starts no new wars and ends old ones; but it looks like he doesn’t care if he starts a world full of wars in that you never know where stirred conflict will eventually go.

Even warmongering, Neocon John Bolton sees all of this as militaristically reckless:

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.”

He said Trump has never liked Trudeau, and was clearly enjoying trolling the Canadian leader as he railed against the nations’ trade imbalance.

But Bolton said the president-elect’s expansionist talk about Canada and Greenland 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.”

That doesn’t matter, of course, if you’re just doing it for the fun of creating more negative energy to feed your depleted soul what it craves and make yourself even more the center of global attention—the new czar everyone talks about.

Well, I guess we’ll see how all that goes after the flag is raised from half-mast to full mast at noon Eastern Standard Time today. Tomorrow the deportation raids begin, but where it goes from there, nobody knows—not even Trump because other sides will respond however they want to tariffs, possible sanctions and threats of military acquisition.

All war plans become obsolete on the day they become official.