Late-night comedians have had a field day with Donald Trump’s musings about his administration possibly seizing Greenland and the Panama Canal. Hahahahahaha! That Trump — such a funny guy — you never know what will come out of his mouth next. Pay no attention. You know him, he’ll just say something else outrageous tomorrow!
Well, I’ll tell you who I am certain is paying attention: President Xi Jinping of China. If the U.S. president can decide that he wants to seize Greenland and explicitly refuses to rule out the use of force to do so, that is like a giant permission slip for China to seize Taiwan, which has strong emotional, historical, linguistic and national connections to mainland China.
It took only a few days after Trump’s remarks for this joke to start circulating among China specialists:
Question: “What does Xi Jinping feel when Trump starts talking about taking Greenland and the Panama Canal?”
Answer: “Hungry” — for Taiwan.
Trump’s remarks are reckless stupidity beyond belief. Imagine what happens when his choice for ambassador to Beijing, David Perdue, takes up his post and, in response to some aggressive act by China toward Taiwan, goes to the Chinese Foreign Ministry to lodge a protest. What will the ministry say?
Presumably something like: “You come in here to protest our actions to reunite with Taiwan when your president is threatening to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal by force? We believe Taiwan is an integral part of China — a belief that while you do not share it, you acknowledged in the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué. What is your connection to Greenland? The fact that Donald Trump Jr. went there on vacation once? Tell your president that China and Russia have as much a claim to Greenland as America does.’’
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Vladimir Putin is surely thinking the same thing. How does America get off telling him that by invading Ukraine he has violated international laws and norms by seizing the territory of another nation, while Trump muses about seizing Greenland and forcibly reimposing U.S. sovereignty over the Panama Canal? Ukraine’s territory was once part of Mother Russia, as was Crimea, which Putin has already fully taken back.
No wonder Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told CNBC on Thursday that Russia is “watching the rhetoric on these topics coming out of Washington with great interest.”
Some may think Trump’s remarks on taking Greenland and the Panama Canal are just a joke from an attention-seeking leader with no filter. They are not a joke. They are a prescription for chaos. They have already done more damage than people realize. If Trump persists with them, the joke will be entirely on us and on the world order we established after World War II.
Thomas Friedman is a New York Times columnist.
