It is tempting to discount all of this as trolling because, well, Trump is trolling. We are all experienced hands now when it comes to Trump’s nonsense, so we are rightly skeptical that he will pursue Greenland, Canada, or the Panama Canal to the extremes he has suggested. And yet, he is also serious enough about these ideas—or at least serious enough about whatever cracked strategy lies behind them—that he’s willing to ignite bitter feuds with several key allies right as he’s about to take office. And that, in fact, reveals an important truth about his approach to foreign policy more broadly, which is driven almost entirely by his desire to appear strong—or, more to the point, his fear of looking weak. This is why he picks senseless fights with smaller allies while avoiding brawls with the strongmen he so greatly admires.
Trump’s powers of media manipulation are often overstated, but—conscious or not—he has always had a knack for conjuring distracting baubles. It’s not clear that he benefits by diverting attention from serious issues (what he will do about China, Ukraine, and the wider Middle East) onto unserious ones like taking Greenland. But he has successfully and effortlessly focused the attention of the media away from those issues while providing red meat to his base, which is suddenly eager to acquire a giant, largely uninhabitable island in the North Atlantic.
But if you happen to be a Republican looking to backfill Trumpism this week, there are economic and geopolitical arguments for his imperialistic turn. Even if the 55,000-odd Greenlanders were the kindest, smartest, or most attractive people in the world, they would be of little interest to any world government. But Greenland possesses vast quantities of minerals and oil, as well as a position in the North Atlantic that has become increasingly significant as ice caps melt and governments begin vying for a larger prize: whatever treasures lurk beneath the Arctic. The Panama Canal, meanwhile, is a vital shipping route, and taking control of it would allow Trump to do one of the few things he clearly loves to do as president: punish his enemies and reward his friends via access fees.
