What does the Trump administration want from Vance’s visit?
Tom Bateman
US State Department correspondent
Trump has said the US will “go as far as we have to go” to get Greenland, while he has also declined to rule out the use of force to seize it and other territories including the Panama Canal.
It’s clear foreign leaders in these places, along with Canada, hoped for some time this was all part of Trump’s characteristically brash hyperbole – a kind of maximalist, if coercive, trade negotiating position.
But Vance’s trip along with the president’s continuing comments have made it increasingly clear to them Trump seems serious in his annexationist ambitions.
These threats upend 80 years of established international norms, previously led by the US, that respect the territorial integrity of countries. The rule prohibiting territorial conquest has been a pillar of the post-1945 international order as defined in the Charter of the United Nations to which the US was a founding signatory.
Trump’s claim to Greenland, as well as his sights on other foreign territories, turn back the clock on at least eight decades of American and internationally established policy.