Americans taking over Canada, Panama and Greenland - are these real threats?
 Not since 1989, when America's 82nd Airborne Division came calling to arrest Panama's head of government, General Manuel Noriega, to answer domestic drug charges in Miami, has Panama been so threatened by America.
Hopes that the Hutchison sale of container terminals would placate the US and solve the problem have been dashed. Partly because China has delayed the sale and partly because American pressure on Panama has not relented.
“To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal. We’re taking it back,” affirmed US President Donald Trump in his speech to Congress - after the Hutchison deal was announced.
The Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) launched an investigation into the world’s shipping chokepoints, including the Panama Canal, which could theoretically impact the future ability of Panama-flagged ships to call at US ports.
The FMC said it is investigating “constraints that have affected transits” through seven chokepoints: the English Channel, Malacca Strait, Singapore Strait, Panama Canal, Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal.
What's odd about this is that it is not an issue in either the American nor the international maritime sector. Of all things world shipping community complains about, the administration of the Panama Canal is not one of them.
In fact, it is fair to say that the Panama Canal has been the greatest maritime success story of the 21st century. From 2016, it has quadrupled its throughput in TEU terms. Pre-expansion, which was a difficult and close-run thing, only 4,500-TEU ships could transit; post expansion the limit is 17,600 TEU.
While the Trump administration's national security concerns are groundless as far as the canal is concerned, there are a number of Chinese Belt and Road Initiatives that do bear watching. But having container terminals at either end of the canal has no influence on Canal transits. Though now that Hong Kong is in Beijing's control, Hutchison would be vulnerable to Mainland pressure to do the bidding of the new powers that be.
If that was not enough jingo-ist gunboat diplomacy from the US, then one can add threats and/or offers to take over Canada as a 51st state, and make Greenland a US territory like Puerto Rico or Guam.
To be fair, a Greenland takeover is not that controversial if done in the way the US Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917 or the way Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. As far as Greenland is concerned, the country is on the cusp of independence for its 55,000 people. That's the population of Tunbridge wells in Kent or Flagstaff, Arizona. If the US would pay US$1 million to each voter, it would just come to what USAID supposedly paid India's farmers to encourage them to switch from fossil fuels to renewables.
A Canada takeover is more complex, and its hard to say whether President Trump is serious, or making a move in a trade war game. Perhaps, getting a better trade deal is Plan A and taking over Canada is Plan B.
Working on Plan A, Mr Trump has made curious, counterintuitive choices. Already on record as disliking the immediate past Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a woke-ish economic illiterate, he now professes to prefer Trudeau's super-woke successor Mark Carney, a central banker, and high priest of the international Deep State.
In short, Mr Trump's favourite - Carney - is the least favourite among his fellow MAGA folk, who are in no mood to join in his quest for Net Zero. They would far prefer, without the slightest doubt, his Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, who talks the same language of Elon Musk. Pierre Poilievre wants to be rid the country of bureaucratic gatekeepers and rekindle prosperity so that Canada no longer rank below Mississippi in per capita GDP.
Perhaps knowing little of Canadian politics, Trump blundered. Without knowing it, his 25 per cent tariff against Canada gave the ruling Liberal Party government a priceless gift - the prospect of victory when the conservatives were a shoo-in to win the next election.
But the tariff gave the back-footed Liberals cause to celebrate because "national unity" has been their historic cause, expressed by the Canadian Liberal version of Thomas Jefferson. He was 19th century Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier who famously said: "The governing motive of my life has been to harmonize the different elements which compose our country."
Translated in practical terms, that meant only Liberals could muster enough French and English votes to rule Canada most of the time. The Conservatives, aka Tories, are mostly an English party, occasionally able to muster enough French votes, alienated for a time from the Liberal establishment for personal reasons, but never embracing conservatism as a philosophy in any numbers. So despite the 25-75 French-English split, the Tories only ruled when the Liberals had become too odious to bear.
And such a time had come to pass when Trump announced his tariffs which gave the despised Liberals, after a decade in office, a new lease on life - and the prospect of ruling Canada for another 10 years.
So why this odd counterintuitive preference for Carney over Poilievre? Trump said he did not care that Poilievre said bad things about him, which meant that he did, knowing his gift of mendacity. That was certainly not reflected by Poilievre in one-to-one podcasts with Dr Jordan Peterson. There was tough talk a press conferences about meeting his tariff with Canadian tariffs, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that Trump would complain about. Carney has said worse.
But putting one's MI5-MI6 hat on, devious thoughts and methods come to mind. Is Trump, by supporting Carney, thinking there are enough Never-Trumpers in left-leaning Canada to swing the vote to Poilievre and defeat the woke forces and restore commonsense government to Canada?
Or more deeply Machiavellian, is it possible that Carney's election will bring about woke-ish voodoo economics that drives Canada deeper into the poverty zone that American annexation will look less like a threat than a rescue by the US Cavalry?
Until recently, one of China's Belt and Road projects had to do with the expansion of the Panama Canal and related infrastructure to improve global trade routes. Given current pressures, such projects have been discontinued.
But they continue elsewhere in Latin America. Argentina officially joined Belt and Road in 2022, with projects focusing on energy, transportation, and infrastructure development.
In Chile, there has been collaboration on mining, renewable energy, and infrastructure projects. There has been development of hydroelectric plants and other energy infrastructure in Ecuador. In Peru, China has invested in mining and transportation infrastructure, including railways and highways.
So national security is worrisome, certainly enough to bear this activity close scrutiny. But while that is so, it is hard to know where President Trump's true feelings lie, or even if he knows himself as they shift from one move to another depending on how the bargaining works out. |
