From Panama Canal to Greenland, Trump defines a ‘new geography’ for American security

Making Canada the 51st state. Retaking control of the Panama Canal. Buying Greenland. Donald Trump made a series of Christmas pronouncements that legacy media dismissed as classic bravado unworthy of serious consideration, but those who advise the President-elect say there is a more calculating intent behind his recent social media flurry.

America’s soon-to-be-47th president is laying the groundwork, they say, for a new strategic map designed to guarantee the security of America and western democracies in an era in which an aggressive China is imposing influence far outside its traditional Pacific region.

“I think Trump is looking at the world from a new geography standpoint and asking how do we increase the zone of countries that are truly committed to freedom, and how do we make sure, how do we provide a very deep security belt around the United States,” former Trump State Department policy adviser Kiron Skinner told the John Solomon Reports podcast in an interview slated to be aired Friday.

In that mission, Trump is trying to educate the public with his provocative statements about the need to look at the world in a new light as American influence in Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia has waned under the Biden administration, experts said.

The Cold War paradigm that dominated more than a half century is no longer operative. A nuclear North Korea, an aspiring nuclear power in radically Islamist Iran and a Beijing communist government that craftily placed its contractors on the entries and exits of one of the world’s most important shipping passages requires a jarring change to strategic thinking, something the State Department has lacked for years, experts said.

Intentionally provocative

“People forget that this issue has been a key one for President Trump. He has talked about the Panama Canal throughout the campaign, and he repeatedly and correctly noted that this remarkable geostrategic asset was frittered away gratis under Jimmy Carter,” Seb Gorka, who will soon join the National Security Council as Trump’s counterterrorism chief, told Just the News. 

“The fact that the port facilities at both ends of the canal would fall under the control of entities tied to China was never part of original agreement with Panama,” Gorka added. “The President has been clear that America’s economic might and full pallet of tariffs tools may be used to guarantee that the canal is operated in ways that comport with the economic and national interests of the United States.”

Trump’s posts on Christmas Day were intentionally provocative, designed to push Americans to think bigger and to create an environment for deal-making when he comes president, retired Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said.

"He always goes in from a position that gets people's attention. And then once people kind of flail around ... people settle down and they start having a realistic, adult discussion," Shaffer told Newsmax on Thursday

Calling unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “governor," suggesting Canada would become America’s 51st state and proclaiming America will buy Greenland from Denmark set the stage for making realistic security gains in the near future, one of Trump’s former advisers predicted.

"We're not going to be taken advantage of"

"These are strategic areas that the United States needs to have dominant influence over," former Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates told the Just the News, No Noise television show on Thursday night. "Start with the Panama Canal. That was President Reagan originally. That was the hallmark of his 1976 primary campaign. It's ours. We paid for it, and that is all true. It was President Carter who subsequently just unilaterally gave it back to Panama."

"We pay exorbitant fees. Meanwhile, Panama has gone into agreements with China for special economic zones on either side of the canal. That's intolerable. All that has to change," she added. "As for Canada, which should be a great partner to the United States, hopefully they'll be under new leadership next month, and ... we could really dominate the world energy market."

She predicted Trump's comments on Greenland might soon expand the U.S. military relations there to an energy and resource collaboration like what America struck in Saudi Arabia with the company Aramco. "Think about Aramco, for example, in Saudi Arabia, how successful that was of a partnership between Saudi and the United States," she said The "am" and Aramco stands for America, that you can develop resources that way and keep China out.

"There are lots of reasons that the former and now President-elect should be talking about these places. These are all direct interests for national security for America, and thank heaven he's doing it," she added.

Hyperbole aside, Trump views countering China’s aggressive influence operations from Greenland to Panama as a high priority, former CIA analyst and ex-NSC chief of staff Fred Fleitz said.

"It reflects Trump's approach to U.S. national security that we're not going to be taken advantage of, we're not going to be walked on, we're not going to look the other way while China slowly and quietly buys influence to strategic resources," Fleitz told Newsmax.

The bullish strategy has some academics like Skinner are excited that foreign policy is returning to the discipline in practice decades ago: First define the American interest in each geographic region and then execute a messaging and diplomatic strategy to achieve those goals.

“Trump is saying the geography is different. We're going to have new and different partners,” Skinner said. “I think as an intellectual, it is the most exciting time to be in this space, the foreign policy world, because we're now in a minute when not everything is settled, everything's up for a reevaluation. It's about long time.”