OPINION:
Was President-elect Donald Trump serious when he said we should retake control of the Panama Canal and annex Greenland? He couldn’t have been serious when he said Canada should be our 51st state. And what is he going to do about Russia’s war on Ukraine, which he promised to end before his second inauguration?
We should know by now that Mr. Trump likes to keep our allies off balance and our enemies feeling more secure than they should. It sometimes seems he believes his own nonsense about his great personal relationships with Russian leader Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping. When push comes to shove, however, Mr. Trump will reliably defend American interests.
Mr. Trump is the biggest bull in the global china shop, a title contested by Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi. Mr. Trump’s beef with Panama concerns American ships being charged outrageous fees to transit the canal. He probably figures that bullying Panama will reduce those fees. It might work. It probably did with Canada.
Threatening 25% tariffs on Canadian products was enough to get quasi-socialist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to visit Mar-a-Lago. (The “51st state” comment was just for fun.) The two discussed topics that were not made public but must have included border security. Immigrants from all over the world aren’t just entering our country illegally through our southern border. They’re also coming in — in increasing numbers — from the north.
Mr. Trump probably mentioned that Canada is one of the worst deadbeats in NATO, spending only about 1.3% of its gross domestic product on defense. What Mr. Trudeau does about the border or defense spending remains to be seen, but Greenland isn’t going to suddenly become part of the U.S.
We lost our strategic base in Iceland in 2006. The Icelanders are proud of that fact because they insist they threw us out.
Greenland is northwest of Iceland. It’s a self-governing territory belonging to Denmark. Mr. Trump has said he wants to buy it for national security reasons.
Having a base in Greenland would be good but not a strategic substitute for the Iceland base. Perhaps Mr. Trump was trying to spur Denmark’s defense spending. He succeeded. Danish Defense Minister Troels Poulsen announced, soon after Mr. Trump’s comment, an increase in funding for Greenland’s defenses of about $1.5 billion. The Danes insist that Mr. Trump’s remarks had nothing to do with their decision to spend on defense. Harrumph. Anything to do with Ukraine isn’t going to be that easy.
In his remarks at Turning Point’s America Fest convention, Mr. Trump said: “President Putin said that he wants to meet with me as soon as possible. So we have to wait for this, but we have to end that war.”
In his Dec. 19 annual television session, Mr. Putin said that Russia was gaining ground in Ukraine. While Russia’s economy is beginning to suffer from exhaustion — and Russian troops have suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine — Mr. Putin seems in no hurry to end his war on Ukraine. He said: “Our soldiers are gaining territory every day. We are moving forward.”
On Dec. 3, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy conceded that Ukraine doesn’t have enough forces to compel Russia to give up its annexed territory in Crimea. He also said that his country “must seek diplomatic means” to end the Russian war. That is a huge retreat from Mr. Zelenskyy’s previous position, which demanded that all Russian troops be withdrawn from Ukrainian soil.
President Biden has been content with a stalemated war in Ukraine. He has always feared “escalation,” and for that reason, he denied Ukraine the aid it needed to win. Mr. Trump has said that U.S. aid to Ukraine may be reduced when he retakes the presidency. Vice President-elect Sen. J.D. Vance has been one of the principal opponents of further aid to Ukraine.
In his Dec. 19 television appearance, Mr. Putin said an immediate ceasefire would only give Ukraine the ability to rearm itself. He said, “A ceasefire means giving the enemy the opportunity to consolidate its positions, to rest and receive the necessary equipment and ammunition.”
That’s precisely what the Russians, now reinforced with North Korean troops and ammunition, would do. Ukraine’s immediate future depends on Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Putin whenever it happens.
Mr. Trump can’t just abandon Ukraine without a ceasefire in place.
As this column has written, Mr. Putin is a follower of Alexander Dugin, who is called “Mr. Putin’s philosopher.” As Mr. Dugin has written in his “Foundations of Geopolitics,” unless Ukraine is retaken, there is no path to restoring the Russian empire. That restoration has always been Mr. Putin’s goal.
In 2005, Mr. Putin told the Russian people that the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” That means that Mr. Putin may accept a ceasefire in place while he plans the next steps in his war on Ukraine.
Mr. Trump will not have a “honeymoon” period with our allies, enemies, Congress or the media. To get anything done, he will have to make many of those people unhappy.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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