WASHINGTON — Why is President-elect Donald Trump so committed to acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal that he’d be willing to use military coercion to get them?
The short answer is that Trump is jockeying for geopolitical supremacy over what he believes are an expansionist-minded China and Russia, two former top Trump national security aides told USA TODAY.
But Trump’s concerns are also heavily influenced by something he often does not acknowledge – climate change, and its growing impact on U.S. national security.
Trump has had his eyes on the massive but remote arctic island since his first term. He doubled down on that – and his interest in the coast-to-coast Central American waterway that is the Panama Canal – in recent weeks as he prepares to take office.
On Tuesday, Trump went even further, refusing to rule out either military or economic coercion when it comes to taking control of the canal, which is owned and operated by Panama, and Greenland, a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark.
More:Trump refuses to rule out military force to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal
“We need them for economic security,” Trump said at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
“The Panama Canal is vital to our country,” he said at one point. At another: “We need Greenland for national security purposes.”
Greenland: the key to the mythical Northwest Passage
When it comes to Greenland, Trump said he thinks Denmark “should give it up, because we need it for national security. … I’m talking about protecting the free world.”
“You look at you don’t even need binoculars,” Trump added. “You look outside. You have China ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen.”
John Bolton, Trump’s point man on Greenland in his first administration, said American political leaders have been interested in gaining control of the island for more than a century.
“Trump didn’t discover Greenland,” Bolton, who was also Trump’s first National Security Adviser, said in an interview. “The U.S. has been worried about it for a long time.”
To understand Trump’s interest in Greenland, Bolton said, just look at a map of the world from the vantage point of the North Pole.
Four NATO countries – the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway – have territorial claims that cover half of the Arctic Circle, Bolton said. “Russia covers the rest.”
The U.S. already has a military base on Greenland, but having more control of the entire island would enable Washington to better protect its interests in the region – including critically important shipping lanes – against expansionist efforts by Russia and, more recently, China.
China has become increasingly aggressive in the region as climate change reduces much of the impenetrable Arctic Circle ice to water, Bolton said. That makes the mythical Northwest Passage – a shorter shipping route between North America, Europe and Asia sought by explorers for 300 years — now a reality.
The gradual opening of the Northwest Passage has allowed more and more military and commercial ships to cross over or near the North Pole in recent years, potentially reducing their voyages by thousands of miles.
“So who holds that defensive capability across the Arctic Circle is critical,” Bolton said, “especially with global warming making the famous Northwest Passage now something that’s real, and with China’s interest in becoming a global power.” Bolton said.
‘Who knows what’s under there?’
There is also the enormous bounty of precious resources believed to be buried under the ocean floor of the Arctic Circle, and on Greenland itself.
“It’s never been explored. People thought it was covered with ice. But as the ice melts, just like the Russian tundra, who knows what’s under there?” Bolton said.
In his first administration, Trump administration officials believed Greenland potentially had critically important “rare earth” resources that were now becoming harvestable thanks to ice melt driven by climate change.
Recovering them would make the U.S. far less reliant on China, which has much of the world’s stores of such materials used in computers, cellphones and other high-tech devices, according to Bolton and a second administration official, Charles Kupperman.
“I’m not an expert on that, but that’s why do have a clear national security interest there,” Bolton said.
The Panama Canal: ‘China is basically taking it over’
On Tuesday, Trump criticized former President Jimmy Carter for ceding control of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian government even though the U.S. spent vast sums of money and manpower to build the 51-mile waterway out of a mosquito-infested swamp.
Over the years, Trump said, China has virtually taken control of the strategic waterway, giving Beijing a huge economic and military advantage over Washington.
“We gave it away for $1 but the deal was that, you know, they have to treat us fairly. They don’t treat us fairly. They charge more for our ships than they charge for ships of other countries. They charge more for our Navy than they charge for navies of other countries,” Trump said Tuesday.
Trump also claimed that the biggest beneficiary of that is China, which he said, “is basically taking it over.”
“China is running the Panama Canal,” Trump said, adding that it “makes a lot of money from one of the most profitable structures ever built, because you have ships lined up back to Florida, frankly, and they just keep going through and the numbers are staggering, half a million to a million dollars a ship.”
Trump didn’t mention it, but the reason for the ship backlog is, again, climate change.
According to a United Nations report from February, transits through the Panama Canal “have plummeted 49 per cent compared to its peak, due to dwindling water levels as a result of a severe, climate-change-induced drought.”
‘It’s our canal, we paid for it and Carter got rid of it’
Kupperman, Trump’s deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration, agreed that China’s massive investment in infrastructure at the canal poses a potential security threat to the U.S.
“The Chinese definitely have a strategy to create a large presence in the Western hemisphere. And it’s not just in Panama, its throughout South America and other places as well,” Kupperman told USA TODAY.
More U.S. control or influence over the canal would not only help the incoming Trump administration counter China’s efforts to expand its influence throughout the Western hemisphere, but also benefit the U.S. in terms of global trade leverage and military strategy, Kupperman and Bolton said.
Kupperman first worked on Panama Canal issues for Ronald Reagan’s first Presidential campaign in 1980.
Back then, he said, Reagan defeated Carter, in part, by attacking his agreement to give control of the Canal to Panama.
“He said it’s our canal, we paid for it and Carter got rid of it,” Kupperman said. “So it was a political statement in 1980 and I think Trump’s trying to resurrect the feelings that existed when the canal was first returned to Panama.”
