By all accounts, Trump is deadly serious about Canada becoming the 51st state. (Let’s assume this is true for the purposes of this discussion.) How is this going to play out?
Is he going to give up and quit talking about it? That doesn’t seem like him…
Is he going to order a military invasion? Will his generals actually obey such an order?
Is he going to hope that the trade war brings Canada to their knees, and they beg us to let them in?
And for extra credit, apply the same set of questions to Greenland/Denmark.
He’ll blabber about it for a while until the next shiny thing catches his eye, at which point he will stop talking about it and move on; in the meantime his followers will latch on to the first remotely pro American thing Canada would have done anyways, and declare that Trump’s brilliant negotiating powers made Canada back down and concede (whatever it was the Canadians did of their own accord).
Trump is setting the tone for his administration, or one of the following ones, to annex Canada. Any other interpretation is soaked in willful ignorance to his direct words and actions.
At the end of the day, Canada can supply enough food and energy to keep our people fed, and the lights on, even if we need to sacrifice something in terms of luxury items, like fresh fruit and vegetables in the winter. And it wasn’t all that long ago we had to do that anyways, so The North Remembers.
The problem will be, how many people will lose jobs, and thus need assistance getting that food and energy? We will be shifting our export market to other countries, but that’s a long process, and jobs will be lost in the short and medium timeframes, at least.
So Canada will face a choice: become American, or become even more socialist than we already are. I know which option I’d bet on us taking.
So enjoy Trump being responsible for the creation of a solidly anti-American Socialist State right next door.
Canada has no interest in becoming part of the US, and the same goes for Greenland.
Were Trump to try to take over Canada by military invasion, by coercion, or by any other means, he would be immediately impeached and convicted, or removed under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution. A president has no right to invade a foreign country without provocation. Now if Canada asked to become the 51st state, that would be different.
This talk is is all for show to demonstrate how strong he is and that he can get whatever he wants. I don’t think it will never happen.
I don’t think this would happen, because of (but not only because of) this reason:
…but also because trump in my opinion has no stomach for being an actual wartime President. There’s a maxim that most bullies are also cowards, and I think that definitely applies to trump. But he is also colossally lazy, and being a wartime President would mean giving optimistic speeches to the American public, sitting in war rooms having to listen to strategy and make decisions as Commander in Chief, and generally having a level of engagement that trump would not want anything to do with.
I think this also partly (but by no means completely) explains trump’s fealty to Putin. It’s much easier to be aggressive and take a negative stance toward one who is much weaker and less likely or able to punch back.
I think, as Babale says, either the trump admin or trump’s followers will latch on to the slightest thing that Canada does or says that could be interpreted as capitulation, and declare a full and stunning victory.
A military invasion would be an overt act of war against a sovereign nation. Whether Britain would back them with military force is anybody’s guess, but Canada is part of NATO, so it would seem that other NATO members would be obligated to come to their aid. Otherwise, what’s the point of that alliance?
The War Powers Resolution act of 1973 says he can do exactly that.
NATO has always worked on the assumption of unanimous consent. NATO would simply fall apart, and in any event, its European members have no capability whatsoever to effectively intervene.
The way I see it is that Trump is seeing this as a continuation of Manifest Destiny and that the goal is to lay claim to the riches of the Artic once it totally thaws and can be exploited. Why else would you even want Greenland? He sees that Russia is already pursuing the Artic and he wants his (our) piece of the pie.
He also sees China doing the same thing in the Sea of Japan/China, which I believe is his reasoning behind renaming the Gulf of Mexico, its preparation for a long struggle.
You may not give the guy credit for being too bright, but I believe this is his vision to control the hemisphere in the new world of climate change. It’s a blatant power grab and he should be taken seriously. Doubt that he will invade Canada, but if Canada was to block land access to Alaska or blockade the St Lawrence seaway look out.
And that is right next door. I think Mexico figured him out right away becasue they are very familar with his type. The Candaians have caught on now. So now he has two hostile neighbors.
Bloodshed. The outcome will be bloodshed. A lot of the people saying he’s all bluster were also the people who said he wasn’t going to get elected in 2016, then they said that the “real” conservatives would constrain him, then they said January 6 wasn’t an attempted coup, then they said he wouldn’t get re-elected. Now they’re saying he won’t attack Canada.
He won’t get a rebuke because he has never threatened or even mentioned anything about an invasion. This is all coming from social media chatter. In any case if the UN formulated any such rebuke the US would just veto it.
That rationale might be why Russia and serious players are interested in the Arctic - but Trump and his followers are too stupid and short sighted to be thinking long term like that. The sea ice is melting - but probably not so quickly that it’ll be a commercially significant for new mining / shipping routes in Trump’s remaining lifetime much less during his presidency.
I am concerned that he might attack Canada and / or Greenland in order to secure some twisted legacy of expansionism - but my greatest comfort is my belief [hope] that he and his administration are way too incompetent to pull off an unpopular invasion. More likely they’d started some military build-up, but do some key steps fraudulently and then find themselves mired in some type of court battle for the next several years.
I do think he is purposefully using the threats against Canada as a type of [abusive] leverage so he can sound tough and demand concessions to show the MAGA masses he has ‘won’ some type of deal that he envisions.
sorry if you underestimate how much NOBODY rational in the US wants rump to even threaten Canada, let alone invade. but some of us are too wound up trying to plan for social security and Medicare going away and we are f*cking exhausted. seriously.
can we stop letting the trusk team divide us? the people of the US are not the enemy of Canada, at least not most of us.
I’m in the camp that believes Trump will attempt to take military action against Canada.
I agree that he’s lazy. I agree that he doesn’t have anything like a recognizable political philosophy that would justify the annexation according to some larger principle, however misguided. I agree that at this point he’s just blustering and blathering because he has a personal grievance against Trudeau and is venting his considerable spleen.
But.
The number one, overriding quality in Trump’s personality is his desire for petty vengeance in service to his many grudges. Yes, he’s greedy; yes, he’s insecure; yes, he’s endlessly power-hungry. But above all of that is his mental enemies list, and his desire to see those people suffer.
Right now, Canada and its allies are telling him No. He hates being told No. When someone resists him, he shoves back. It’s who he is. It’s how he operates. And the more resistance he gets in response to his jabbering about Canada, the more he’ll double down on it. And eventually he’ll box himself into a situation where he has to shit or get off the pot. He’d rather die than back down, so he’ll have to take action.
Woe betide us all.
Edit to add: I meant to include an asterisk, related to my phrasing in the opening sentence. I specifically said he’ll “attempt” to take military action because there’s a part of me that questions whether the military would go along with such a nakedly aggressive and unjustified order. I lean toward yes, but I’m not convinced. It would be a royal mess, one way or the other.