TOGETHER WITH MY wife and sons, I spent 10 days and nights in Washington, DC and in my cherished Boston over the Christmas and New Year period. We saw the sights and caught up with family and friends. Among numerous highlights was a jet lag-fuelled, crack of dawn walk with Larry Óg to Capitol Hill the morning after we arrived in the United States.
While in the vicinity, he and I took plenty of pictures. My namesake made me tear up when, awestruck, he gesticulated at the famous building and asked: “Is this where Uncle Brian used to work?” Our impromptu stroll to this seat of power at a potentially pivotal moment in history was followed by a swift trip on the Metro Red Line to neighbouring Bethesda, Maryland for a delicious breakfast at the incomparable Tastee Diner.
As usual, politics featured on the menu of the discussions I had with relations, old pals and acquaintances. What surprised me most was the degree to which the women and men I encountered, including those who I understand to be ardently opposed to Donald Trump, were fairly sanguine when asked to look ahead to his second term. “We survived the last ride… let’s hope he succeeds and can do some good things… it probably can’t get worse than it has been” were the dominant sentiments. Full-blown despondency about Trump was as hard to unearth as heartfelt tributes to the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were.
Zooming out from the opinions that were espoused in the midst of conversations over beers, there is no shortage of uncertainty to be found in the global audience of stakeholders in Trump II. Just what is he going to do? Speculation is relentless on this front, yet the fact of the matter is that no one knows. Pundits who imply that they do aren’t worth listening to.
The apparently weightier sense of alarm beyond the borders of the US with respect to the imminent tenure of the 47th POTUS was definitely heightened by the comments he made at a press conference this week in Mar-a-Lago. He declined to rule out employing military force to retake control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and averred that he would utilise his country’s financial might to compel Canada to morph into the 51st state.
Further, he revelled in his scepticism of the science supporting the existential threat of climate change and reiterated the “drill, baby, drill” mantra. Finally, and quite worryingly for the already besieged residents of Gaza, he indicated that, if an agreement to free the remaining hostages there isn’t reached by the minute he gets into office, “all hell is going to break out.” That we haven’t the faintest notion what that could translate into makes it even more terrifying.
First, these declarations of intent on external policy warrant parsing to assess their plausibility and what could flow therefrom. Second, this language is very muscular and contrasts with the isolationist messaging that was to the fore during the campaign. It’s America First, both at home and abroad. To what end?
There is, as the soon-to-be ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted on X, not “a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.” It is similarly a sure thing that Trump’s presidency will have a negative impact on the environment and will be detrimental to efforts to arrest rapidly rising temperatures. The tragic plight of those in Gaza could get far worse before it gets better, although Trump will not tolerate prolonged conflict.
Dispatching soldiers to seize the Panama Canal and/or Greenland would provoke widespread fury and be a catastrophic error. It is pretty unfathomable. International law scholars concur that, unless Trump were to order troops in, the US cannot recapture ownership of the canal from the Panamanians.
Greenland may be a different kettle of fish. Trump isn’t the only president ever interested in “acquiring” the massive Arctic island; Harry Truman mooted it, too. Greenland is a constituent component of the Kingdom of Denmark. That said, the Danes have consistently asserted that Greenlanders have the option to be wholly independent if they desire it.
For defence and other aims, Trump wants Greenland. If he were to propose that it become a US territory and simultaneously offer enormous – say, double the current allocation from Denmark – subsidies, permit it to retain the local parliament, provide a security guarantee, promise a substantial share of the spoils derived from natural resources and grant its people the right to live, work and study in the US at least temporarily, a deal could ultimately be done. A carefully crafted statement from Greenland’s foreign minister in response to the Trump family’s overtures is telling. Don’t dismiss this possibility out of hand.
Generally speaking, and this depends on whether Trump will stay the course in pursuit of a controversial agenda, how can such an arguably interventionist bent be reconciled with the mandate many millions of voters gave him to continue America’s retreat from the world? It seems that he is determined to copper-fasten regional hegemony, and he is convinced that, in doing so, he can address domestic concerns on inflation and avoid unnecessary wars at the same time.
This aggressive posturing may not be well received in a milieu where the prevalent mood is isolationist. And the legions of expert, critical observers of Trump now venturing that this rambling rhetoric is a smoke screen deliberately orchestrated to distract attention from the reality that his simplistic slogans will not solve the complex problems of America have a point.
Moreover, as has also been suggested, if Trump does move decisively and to some extent ludicrously – see, for example, his advocacy for retitling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America – to show that the US is supreme in the region, what signal will that send to China and Russia? Each has clear and foreboding ambitions in its own surrounds.
In sum, uncertainty – yes, that word again – abounds. Trump thrives on it. All eyes and ears will be focused on the content and tone of the inaugural speech on the 20th in a desperate search for greater clarity. However, because the uniquely loved and loathed man who pulled off an objectively extraordinary political comeback in 2024 is who he is, the truth is that we are unlikely to be any the wiser on the 21st.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a Law Lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with TheJournal.ie.
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