It’s no longer speculative to ask how the post-Second World War world order, led by the United States, will end. It’s apparently already ended.
The U.S. has snubbed its NATO partners and Ukraine itself from purported “peace talks” to end the three-year-old war in Europe in favour of direct bilateral talks between American and Russian officials hosted by Saudi Arabia.
President Donald Trump has actually described Ukraine’s widely admired wartime President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “a dictator” and falsely claimed he started the war.
These lies came directly after Vice President JD Vance’s recent broadside against NATO partners at the Munich Security Conference in which he downplayed the threat of Russia and China to the western alliance and suggested instead that liberal centrism was the real threat.
His remarks were widely regarded as an intervention on behalf of the European far right, particularly far-right political parties in Germany ahead of upcoming elections in that country.
Dreaming of a Gaza takeover
Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz and 36 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are in the midst of new crimes against humanity, new forms of ethnic cleansing and even, potentially, genocide.
In a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump mused about an American takeover of the Gaza Strip by removing its occupants to neighbouring countries and developing the region as a seaside resort. This would very likely constitute a war crime.
White House national security adviser Mike Walz and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles listen as President Donald Trump elaborates on his proposal for the U.S. to take over Gaza on Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Snubbing international law
Trump’s return to the American presidency marks a normalization of this type of threat.
Instead of embracing the international rule of law in the post-Second World War spirit of avoiding another devastating global conflict, the U.S. is building new walls rather than tearing them down while at the same time threatening to annex other sovereign nations and amass new territory.
Trump is obviously unsentimental about America’s longtime allies, including the innermost circle of English-speaking democracies — the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australian and New Zealand — that make up the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance.
A group of countries that wouldn’t normally be fussed about the transition from one American president to another is now very nervous about how far Trump is going to go.
Read more:
Allies or enemies? Trump’s threats against Canada and Greenland put NATO in a tough spot
Anarchy, colonialism
During the first angry weeks of Trump’s second presidency, the U.S. appears to be signalling a return to an anarchic and explicitly colonial imagining of the world. In this regard, Trump’s disdain for the rule of law at home tracks a potentially even greater disdain for the international legal order, one that’s existed since 1945.
The only real connection between the past and contemporary times predates the American-led post-war order of the past eight decades and harkens further back to America’s imperialist and expansionist past and ideas like Manifest Destiny from more than a century ago.
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How the U.S. could in fact make Canada an American territory
Trump, not historically much of an imperialist in his rhetoric, has now doubled down on classical imperialist threats as he repeatedly proposes expanding the physical map of the U.S., musing in particular about Greenland, Panama, Canada and now Gaza.
Greenland holds a strategic interest for the U.S. — there’s already an American airbase on the island — since its location is increasingly important as the Arctic ice melts and amid greater competition from Russia and China.
Panama has been in America’s imperialistic sights more often than Greenland, and was even invaded by U.S. forces in 1989.
Protesters burn posters depicting U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally against Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Panama City on Feb. 2, 2025.
(AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Canada as a 51st state
But Canada? At least Trump agreed at a news conference before taking office that military force was off the table. Instead, Canada only had to worry about “economic force” being used to annex it.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told business leaders that Trump’s talk about annexing Canada is “the real thing,” aimed at obtaining Canada’s critical minerals.
Donald Trump’s threats about annexing Canada and Greenland are causing widespread alarm among NATO allies. This is an AI-generated image Trump posted to his Truth Social account.
(Donald Trump/Truth Social)
Trump’s interactions with Denmark, Canada and Panama all demonstrate a disdain for basic principles of the rule of law at the international level, which is underpinned by the sovereignty of states.
His musings on Gaza, which led United Nations Secretary General António Guterres to warn him specifically against endorsing ethnic cleansing, demonstrate a willingness to break completely with international legal norms.
He’s not only peacocking on the global stage, he is also telegraphing that he holds international legal norms in even lower esteem than the norms of his own country, where he is a convicted felon. This situation is as alarming as it unprecedented.
Read more:
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s gift to Donald Trump, he could be barred from Canada as a convicted felon
America now a threat
Right now, cognitive dissonance in the form of status quo bias poses a real danger in terms of Trump’s dismissal of the rule of law. This means that folks are somehow convincing themselves that the undoing of the global rules-based order in real time is just a blip; things will somehow ramp down and return to normal.
But the evidence is glaringly to the contrary.
Trump is plainly communicating his wishes: a new age of American imperialism. At first few took him seriously. Now we all are. Canada, due to its proximity to and reliance on the U.S., must especially face a new reality in which an American president casually and repeatedly threatens its sovereignty.
Canada, America’s closest ally in terms of shared language, culture and geography, should be the first and not the last to start believing Trump’s threats to annex it.
Read more:
Allies or enemies? Trump’s threats against Canada and Greenland put NATO in a tough spot
Even when Trump is no longer in office, neither Canadians nor any of America’s other allies can be certain someone just like him will not be returned to power by the U.S. voters. That means America’s western allies, like Canada and Denmark, must learn the lessons Latin American and Middle Eastern countries learned along time ago: America is a threat.
The Democratic Party must also figure out how it’s going to effectively resist Trump over the next four years.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Martin Heinrich hold a news conference following President Donald Trump’s announcement he was freezing all federal grants and loans on Jan. 29, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Only an American concern?
Some might ask: Aren’t these American problems for the American people? As Canadians can attest, no. Trump poses grave dangers to the rest of the world due to the unique place the U.S. occupies in the geopolitical system.
Nothing about Trump’s second presidency bodes well for America’s allies and friends, including Canada.
A kleptocrat who regards friends and allies as transactional customers and for whom everything is “just business,” including national security, Trump poses an existential threat not only to America, but to the international world order.
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Publish date : 2025-02-20 04:52:00
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