The Trump plan to annex Canada and Greenland as the US 51st state

Trump’s latest remarks are what’s known as GUBU: Grotesque, Unprecedented, Bizarre and Unbelievable. His wish to annex Canada and Greenland is yet more proof of his megalomania, egomania and avarice. Trump’s imbecility, insanity and inanity are laid bare.

During the election, Trump was controlled by his camarilla. They managed to avoid him saying such inflammatory and idiotic things. Now that Trump has been re-elected there is little need for them to stop him from making such asinine remarks. People will start to see that Trump is dafter than ever. His senile dementia may accelerate. As he becomes ever more unmoored from reality, his decision-making may turn out to be increasingly erratic. The Cabinet might be obliged to depose him on medical grounds

To stay with the Greenland theme, Trumpists are like lemmings. They may follow their rodent-brained leader over the precipice.

With rhetoric like this, it is plain why Trump and Putin are kindred spirits, and why he 'fell in love with Kim Jong Un.' He has a bromance with every sadistic tyrant. Is he merely being a provocateur?

Donald J Trump has proven that he is a hyper-nationalist with his ultra-aggressive rhetoric. Such belligerence comes with a poisonous cocktail of ignorance and arrogance.

Trump’s speech was a breach of the Monroe Doctrine. By this, the United States recognised extant European possessions in the American continent. One could argue that Greenland is part of North America and not Europe. Nonetheless, the US accepts European control of some segments of the American Continent.

Trump’s desires are striking parallels with the actuation for Putin’s illegal wars. The difference is that the US has no historical claim on Greenland whatsoever. Russia can at least cobble together some feeble claim on Ukraine. Happily, it is doubtful that Trump will launch an illegal war of unprovoked aggression against Denmark over Greenland.

The Danes have long been a seafaring people. They sailed west and encountered Iceland in ancient times. They sailed further west and found an enormous island. They misleadingly called it Greenland so people would want to settle there. This is false advertising of a kind that Trump uses.

Denmark should claim the US as their land. The Scandinavians were the first Europeans to land on the east coast of North America. The Native Americans and the First Nations people of Canada were already there. But Trump thinks they do not count.

The Scandinavians who landed in North America dubbed it Vinland because of the vines there. The Scandinavians did not stay many years. Soon tales of a land to the west of the Atlantic were assumed to be sailors’ yarns.

Denmark has so much to teach the USA. The USA would be lucky to become a colony of Denmark. Denmark is often top of the Human Development Index (HDI). In terms of education, income equality, air quality, public transport, healthcare, suicide rate etc… Denmark is a marvellous place to be. Denmark is also blessed to have a constitutional monarchy.

Yea, it is the oldest monarchy outside of Japan. The country has a queen who is originally Australian and a king who is French on his father’s side. This European Union state is prosperous, clean, safe and very free. People are banging on Denmark’s door because it is such an alluring place to live. Even so-called poor people in Denmark live well.

The Greenland issue might cause Americans to meditate: why do Western Europeans no longer shift to the USA in serious numbers? The USA was founded by people from Western Europe. Gore Vidal asked in the 2000s, ‘When is the last time you met a Swedish immigrant?’ Life in Western European countries is so much better than in the USA for most people. It is true that people in Eastern European lands like Ukraine would still like to move to the United States. In fact, most Ukrainians who emigrate move to other European nations.

President Kennedy changed the immigration rules in the early 1960s. Until then the National Origins Act favoured Western European nationalities. Each year the US would take a number of immigrants from a country up to 1% of the number of people of a certain national origin. For instance: if there were 100 000 Finns in the USA then the USA would take up to 1 000 more Finns a year.

The United States amended its immigration policy partly because by the 1960s fewer Western Europeans wished to immigrate to the US.

President-elect Trump said that Canada should become the 51st state of the United States. He also expressed his desire to take over Greenland which is a territory of Denmark. These moronic statements underscore criminal lunacy. His imbecility and inanity in his second term will be even worse than in his first.

Almost no one in Canada wishes to accede to the United States. By almost any metric Canada is a better place to live. It has a higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, a higher GDP per capita, a cleaner environment, a more educated population, less crime etc…. If Canada became part of the US, then it would have to subsidise other states. Moreover, Canada’s sensible gun laws would be overturned.

Canada has been a good ally of the USA for over 80 years. Both are members of NATO. Trump’s remarks are worrying and offensive. He is weakening the democratic peace theory that democracies do not fight each other.

Joining the USA is not easy. Puerto Rico has been a territory of the US and not a state of the USA since 1899! In 2010 Puerto Ricans voted that they wished to be admitted to the United States as a state. The US Congress has refused even to consider it. For a state to be allowed into the Union this requires a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Congress. There are other US territories in limbo like this.

Donald J Trump’s utterances about Greenland show his drang nach Osten. He said, ‘We need it for our economy and our security’ as though this would be justificatory of wresting the island from the Danish Crown. One nation’s so-called necessity does not warrant invading another country. Trump’s policy seems to be ‘smash and grab’. He tried that as a ram-raiding businessman and managed to go bankrupt four times. He is notorious for his intimidatory statements. They sometimes work.

In his first presidential term, Trump mooted the notion of purchasing Greenland. Trump started out as a property magnate. This so-called deal maven was in fact a failure at striking deals. He did not even read the book The Art of the Deal which he pretended to have authored.

A journalist asked Trump whether he would exclude the possibility of taking Greenland by economic coercion or military force. Trump said he would not rule it out. This is odd for a man who said there would be no wars on his watch.

Denmark has been a NATO ally of the US for decades. Trump’s daft remarks are insulting to his Danish allies. Does he want to Nuke Nuuk?

Greenland is the largest island in the world – if you exclude Australia on the basis that it is a continent. The more land a country has usually the more natural resources it has. Greenland is rich in minerals and rare earth metals such as lithium.

Greenland has strategic significance because of its location. Russia has the largest Arctic coast and is moving more military assets into the high north. Because of global warming, the Northern Sea Route is navigable for more months of the year than ever. Russia is hoping more oil tankers and merchant ships will ply this route. They will deliver Chinese manufacturers to Western markets in particular.

The US military is already in Greenland. There is no need for the US to annex it.

There are indigenous Greenlanders as well as people of Danish stock in Greenland. Greenland was in EEC but left in 1986. The EEC has since become the European Union.

It proves how dim Trump is that he thinks a country is a property deal. Greenland is not for sale. What about national self-determination? US President Woodrow Wilson was the proclamator of this principle in 1918. The Greenlanders shall determine their future. They wish to associate with Denmark. Trump shows not the slightest regard for the inhabitants of Greenland. He has no concept of human rights.

Trump’s threat to invade Greenland shows he is driven by fantasies of blood and gold. He has always been a bully, coward and thug. He has proposed armed robbery on a national scale.

Taking another sovereign state’s land by force is a gross breach of international law. Threatening military force is also against international law. The US signed and ratified the Pact of Paris in 1928 vowing not to do the above. It is sometimes known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact after the US Secretary of State Frank B Kellogg who signed it and his French analogue. The United Nations Charter also states that the threat of war and not just war is illegal. Threatening war was one of the crimes that Nazi war criminals were convicted of at Nuremberg.

Buying land is not a new concept. The USA bought much of its land. There was the Louisiana Purchase, and the Gadsden Purchase and Florida was purchased. The US bought Alaska. Seward’s Folly as some called it is now claimed to be invalid by some in Russia. As it was the 19th century there was no regard for the people who lived in these areas. In 1917 the US bought the Danish West Indies. They are now called the US Virgin Islands. President Wilson did not care a fig for what the people of the islands wanted. Perhaps because they are black.

No sovereign state willingly cedes land for nothing in return. The US would react in horror to any suggestion of giving up any of its soil.

Trump’s words are distressingly reminiscent of those of other aggressors. He has evinced total disrespect for internationally recognised borders. His foolish remarks aggravate global instability. He has also undermined NATO. European NATO countries will wonder if they can trust the United States.

Trump’s words can be exploited by Russia. Some Putinites construct a plausible argument: Russia is not guiltless, but it is on a par with the actions of the United States. It is a tu quoque argument.

The author is a political analyst from the UK