Donald Trump shares a trait common with most dictators, a compulsion to expand the territory of their country. He has expressed a desire to take control of the Panama Canal, to purchase Greenland and he even joked about making Canada the 51st state.
Authoritarian leaders invent bogus reasons for expanding their borders, for example Putin falsely claimed De-Nazification of Ukraine as pretext for war.
Trump is falsely claiming that the Panama Canal and Greenland pose serious economic and national security threats to the USA.
Trump’s threat to buy Greenland is especially nonsensical given that it is a semiautonomous state owned by Denmark, a NATO member. Greenland no more poses a security threat to the United States than Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Island.
Maybe Trump, the former real estate developer, thinks that Greenland is a lush paradise where he can build golf courses, not realizing that contrary to the nation’s name, 80 percent of Greenland is covered in ice with only the southern portion being green.
Trump doesn’t have any real intentions to militarily take control of the Panama Canal, he is just trying to intimidate Panama to lower the fees it charges to use its namesake canal.
Trump is using his threats to take control of Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal to energize his base. On Truth Social, he posted an image of an American flag planted in the middle of the Panama Canal.
But the only thing he is accomplishing is making America a laughingstock in the world community.