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Outside In | Why Trump’s threats over Greenland and Panama Canal may be no joke

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Even though Donald Trump only becomes US president on Monday, he has shown an unmatched capacity to throw cats among pigeons. I’m talking about his suggestion that Canada becomes America’s 51st state, his threat to resume sovereignty of the Panama Canal, his suggestion to rename the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America, and his offer to buy Greenland from Denmark.

For a leader allegedly concerned mainly with the domestic challenges of making America great again, these imply a heck of a lot of foreign policy activity – without even mentioning the imperative to end Russia’s war on Ukraine and ensure Wednesday’s Gaza peace deal holds firm or to return illegal immigrants to the countries they came from.

Most of the world’s commentariat are taking with a pinch of salt Trump’s imperial claims, but they clearly underscore his deep concern over nationhood and national security.

They have also ruffled myriad feathers over other nations’ concerns about protecting their sovereignty. As Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede wrote in response to Trump’s offer/threat: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

The brouhaha aroused by Trump is an important reminder of how importantly most political leaders take the concepts of nationhood, nationality, national borders, national identity and – in particular for Trump’s incoming administration – national security. An overwhelming number of people seem to agree that national identities are real, discernible and important – even though many have very blurred ideas of what the concepts mean. They are founded on ideas of inclusion and exclusion, but inclusion by what measure?

Racial homogeneity? Ask an Algerian Frenchman living in Paris, a Kenyan Asian settled in the British Midlands or an ethnic Russian living in Donetsk in Ukraine. A shared language? Ask a French-speaking Quebecois in Canada, or a Kurdish speaker in Turkey.

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