Donald Trump’s prospects for the Nobel Peace Prize and Mt. Rushmore-scale greatness took two self-inflicted hits last week — one on the use of force to achieve U.S. objectives and the other on the origins of the war in Ukraine.
First, Trump repeated an ambition from his first term, that the U.S. should acquire Greenland from Denmark. Given its strategic location near the Arctic Ocean where Russia and China also have intentions, and its abundance of mineral resources vital for America’s economic and military security, making Greenland a part of the U.S. as a state or a possession is a worthy goal, akin to the Louisiana Purchase from France and the acquisition of Alaska from Russia.
However, those vast expansions of American territory were accomplished through traditional state-to-state real estate transactions. Although property purchases are in Trump’s business bailiwick, he has threatened to use his presidential powers to take the island by force from a loyal NATO ally, without regard for the wishes of the people of Greenland, who want complete independence from Denmark.
Trump has also focused his attention on the Panama Canal, which was built by the U.S. under President Teddy Roosevelt and transferred to Panama by President Jimmy Carter. As with Greenland, there are considerable economic and security factors that make return of the canal to U.S. control strategically desirable. Not least is China’s growing role since 2017, when the Panamanian government switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China.
Asked whether he would rule out using force to acquire Greenland and/or Panama, Trump responded, “No. I can’t assure you on either of those two. I’m not going to commit to that. It might be that you’ll have to do something.”
If Trump adheres in office to a policy that contemplates the use of force to achieve his strategic objectives, he will be emulating the approach of the world’s strongmen he has long admired. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping know how to take what they want and are willing to use force to get it. They will obviously savor Trump’s legitimizing their methods, practiced by dictators and aggressors for centuries, that might makes right.
Even if Trump’s imperialistic-sounding rhetoric is merely a ploy to gain leverage in an eventual negotiating process, it already runs afoul of Article One of the United Nations Charter: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force.” Putin seemed to think threatening Ukraine would cause it to capitulate. Xi, invoking his 2005 Anti-Secession Law, warns Taiwan and the U.S. that China will use “non-peaceful” means to take Taiwan if “peaceful” methods fail.
Trump is effectively telling Greenland and Panama that he is imposing his own China-style anti-independence law. Instead of brandishing American military might against friends and allies in violation of international law, Trump would be well advised to warn aggressive powers that America will act in accordance with the U.N. and the customary international law principle of collective self-defense.
China is already poised to act militarily against Taiwan when it judges the opportunity is right — that is, when the U.S. is least likely to come to Taiwan’s defense. And Trump’s position on Ukraine will affect the fate of Europe, with major implications for U.S. credibility (and, thus, for global security generally). It will be watched not only in Moscow but in Beijing, Pyongyang and Teheran.
But Trump can only get Ukraine right if he correctly understands how and why it got into its current predicament — that is, why Putin decided to invade it, first in 2014 and then in 2022.
Trump continues to make statements about the origins of the conflict that do not reflect the historical record. He told journalists last week: “A big part of the problem was Russia, for many many years, long before Putin, said, ‘You could never have NATO involved in Ukraine,’ No, like that’s been written in stone. Somewhere along the line, [President] Biden said, ‘No they should be allowed to join NATO’. Well, then Russia has someone right on their doorstep. I could understand their feelings about that.”
Trump’s account omits some key facts.
After the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Europe persuaded Ukraine to give up Soviet-era nuclear weapons in exchange for a strong security commitment from Washington, Moscow and London. In 2008, the U.S. convinced NATO to state its willingness eventually to welcome Georgia and Ukraine as members. Later that year, Russia invaded Georgia and the Bush administration and Europe did nothing.
Six years later, after Barack Obama promised Putin he “would be more flexible” after his 2012 reelection, Russia seized Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Neither the Obama administration nor the first Trump administration did anything to persuade Putin to reverse his illegal land grabs. The U.N. Charter’s prohibition against “the threat or use of force” means that war is the responsibility of the aggressor, not the victim as Trump’s comments would suggest.
Xi is the other major power conducting his expansionism under the pretense of restoring his country’s lost honor. Chinese Communist leaders have successfully used that ploy in a half dozen places in Asia without resistance from the international community. Its ally and protectorate in North Korea also tried it in 1950 when it invaded South Korea but was stopped by a U.S.-led U.N. coalition. Allowed to remain in power (unlike the aggressor regimes that waged World War II against Western civilization), it has continued to threaten South Korea, Japan and even the U.S. Now it has sent at least 12,000 troops and huge amounts of military assistance to support Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.
History will reward Trump for halting the downward spiral in international relations, but it can only be done with strength and clear vision, not by following the lead of dictators. Trump may understand that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but the rest of that quote is, “… that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of The Vandenberg Coalition.
