Allies Are Assets, You Idiots
With their loose talk about Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal, Trump and his followers show they don’t get what we get from those relationships.
BEFORE HE’S EVEN IN OFFICE, Donald Trump is threatening America’s foreign partners. The United States, he says, will buy or take over Greenland (which is officially part of Denmark and doesn’t want to sell), turn Canada into the fifty-first state, and (re)take the Panama Canal.
He’s doing it in the “just joking (or maybe not)” style of internet trolls, which gives the troll an out—“I’m just kidding, lighten up”—while also laying the groundwork for future action if he decides that, actually, he wasn’t kidding. Does he really mean it? And if so, to what extent, intending which actions? Chances are he himself doesn’t know, and hasn’t put much thought into it. But whatever the level of seriousness, it harms U.S. interests.
Nevertheless, a variety of politicians and media rushed to defend the threats, or “sanewash” them by treating them as a coherent policy that must have a smart reason behind it somewhere. Besides the many Republicans who try to paint a rational, intellectual veneer on Trump’s impulses, there’s Democratic Sen. John Fetterman praising the Greenland threats as “smart.” Meanwhile, think tanks put out explainers like “Everything you need to know about Trump’s Greenland gambit,” and newspapers publish reports on public opinion asking, for example, “Do Americans want Trump to acquire Greenland?”—as if it were a normal policy proposal going through normal discussion.
All that misses the point. Whatever Trump’s intentions or lack thereof, threatening allies and partners is stupid and self-defeating. Following up with more verbal threats, economic pressure, or even military force would harm the United States.
Allies are assets. A good relationship means resources and knowledge to help with mutual challenges, access to foreign territory, economic benefits, and avoiding the costs of trying to force a foreign country to do something an ally would do upon request. Some international partners can be liabilities—for example, if they drag the United States into ill-advised wars—but Denmark, Greenland, Canada, and Panama haven’t done anything like that, and aren’t a threat to.
There’s no possible negotiation aided by these threats that will yield more for the United States than the good relationships do. And no possible military action, no matter how smooth, that would leave the United States in a stronger international position.
It’s true that Greenland is important to American national security interests. It’s a large island in the north Atlantic, part of a land-hopping path between North America and Europe. But the U.S. military is already the dominant power there. The region is controlled by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S.-led alliance that includes Denmark.
The U.S. military already has a base on Greenland, active since 1951 (which shows the depth of the relationship). If there were a need to increase America’s force posture on Greenland, the United States could do it quickly, and Denmark would likely help, as would other regional allies, such as Canada and the United Kingdom. From a U.S. national security perspective, this situation is in hand and functioning well. NATO has unquestioned military superiority, with information flowing among mutually trusting allies.
Disrupting this situation would be detrimental to U.S. national security. America’s position would be considerably weaker without local buy-in—and cost a lot more. There’s no plausible scenario in which undermining America, Greenland, and Denmark’s relationship of mutual trust would be a national defense improvement.
Greenland has resources, such as rare earth minerals, and more may be discovered as the glaciers retreat. The easiest, most economically efficient path to exploiting those resources is a development deal with local authorities. The bedrock of security and economic cooperation is already in place, and ensuring locals get a piece of the windfall is almost always less expensive than suppressing their anger over being looted.
A SIMILAR POINT APPLIES TO CANADA, which Trump has been antagonizing with talk of making it the fifty-first state.
The United States gains a lot from its close partnership with Canada: a long land border that requires minimal military protection, extensive support for competition with Russia and others over the Arctic—increasingly important as sea ice melts, opening shipping lanes and easing access to natural resources—plus trusted intelligence sharing as a member of the closely knit “Five Eyes.” There are no potential U.S. national security benefits to disrupting the U.S.-Canada alliance, and many potential downsides.
Per the North Atlantic Treaty, Canada responded to the September 11th attacks on the United States as if they had been attacks on Canada. The Canadians not only housed Americans caught in the air when the United States closed its skies, but also helped defend American airspace against possible follow-on attacks as part of Operation Eagle Assist. And they deployed troops alongside American forces in Afghanistan. Denmark sent troops as well, and like Canada authorized them to conduct combat operations, which not all coalition members did. After Americans and Brits, Canadian forces endured the third-highest total number of deaths, while Denmark saw the highest losses per capita. If they weren’t there, those deaths would’ve been American.
Maybe Trump’s issue with Canada isn’t a security matter but an economic one. Trade, after all, is what Trump focuses on when he speaks ill of Canada, claiming that the United States heavily “subsidizes” its northern neighbor, by which he means that America has a trade deficit with Canada. But that’s absurd, as any economist can tell you, and many have surely told him. Trump has, over the years, often seemed not to grasp the concept of a trade deficit, but it’s not very complicated: A trade deficit means American consumers and corporations voluntarily buy more from Canada than Canadians buy from America. It’s not a problem—if anything it’s a sign of the health of the American economy. At the risk of oversimplifying, my employer has a trade deficit with me (they give me money in exchange for services) and I have a trade deficit with the supermarket (I give them money in exchange for food). We’re all benefiting.
Canada is one of the two biggest markets for American exports—vying year after year with Mexico—buying more from the United States than the twenty-seven EU countries combined, and more than twice as much as China. Canada’s biggest export by far to the United States is crude oil, which goes to American refineries, primarily on the Gulf Coast, to be shipped around the world at a profit for U.S. companies. America would lose out if more of the Canadian crude went elsewhere.
CANADA AND DENMARK ARE TREATY ALLIES of the United States, which Panama is not, but it is still an international partner that yields benefits for America. The United States built the Panama Canal early in the twentieth century. In the following decades, U.S. control caused increasing problems for U.S.-Panama relations, and in 1977 both sides signed a treaty that gave Panama control of the canal after 1999. American commercial and military ships traverse it when they want, and under the treaty, Panama accepted America’s right to use force if any foreign threat tries to disrupt the canal’s operations, so the United States has everything it needs from this arrangement.
Trump, however, claims that China controls the canal’s operations, which is a blatant lie. He claims Chinese spies are active there, which is probably true—they’re active just about everywhere, including Trump’s resort home, Mar-a-Lago—but the United States is in a much better position to counter it with the Panamanians friendly rather than hostile. The same point applies to Trump’s inaccurate claims that Panama controlling the canal hurts America economically. It’s cheaper for the United States if Panama runs it.
The U.S. military could take over the Panama Canal without much difficulty, at least in military terms. But that hardly means it’s costless. The United States invaded Panama in December 1989 after military dictator Manuel Noriega rejected election results. Ousting him took a month and a half, killed 23 Americans (with more than 300 injured) and 314 Panamanian military members, along with hundreds of Panamanian civilians. It cost $163.6 million on top of the normal military budget—more than $400 million in today’s dollars. And that’s just for a limited military operation that partnered with local opposition forces and left shortly thereafter. Maintaining military control of the canal would impose ongoing costs on the United States, especially if any Panamanian insurgency developed in response to foreign occupiers taking their major national asset. Then add the costs to international shipping—including between the East and West Coasts of the United States—when the canal closes, or is damaged, because of the ongoing military operations around it.
The friendly, treaty-governed relationships with Panama, Canada, and Denmark all serve U.S. national security and economic interests. The only thing Americans don’t currently get from those partnerships that they get from Trump’s threats is the bullying itself.
Voluntary, mutually beneficial partnerships are a core component of American power. Trump and everyone going along with him are throwing it away. And for what?
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