The New Yorker:

What the President’s confrontations with Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Colombia suggest about his expansionist vision.

By Isaac Chotiner

Five days before his Inauguration, Donald Trump had a tense phone call with the Prime Minister of Denmark and made clear that he wanted to take possession of the self-governing Danish island of Greenland. In his Inauguration speech, Trump declared, “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.” Meanwhile, he’s said repeatedly that he intends to take back control of the Panama Canal, and that Canada should become a U.S. state. Over the weekend, he announced tariffs and sanctions on Colombia after the close American ally said that it would not accept American planes full of deported migrants. (The Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, backed down on Sunday night, agreeing to accept the planes.)

Often considered an inward-looking nationalist or even isolationist in his first term, Trump has been sounding these notes of aggression and expansion quite a bit lately. It’s still too early to decipher exactly what Trump intends for his second term, but his increasingly militaristic comments have concerned foreign allies and led to questions about what the next four years could look like in terms of how America exerts power abroad.

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