Robert Kelly
US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been hugely controversial. In the first month, he has chided and even threatened US friends and allies. He seems particularly determined to upset US partners in North America – a bizarre development no one anticipated.
Trump has talked up annexing Canada and Greenland. He has hinted at attacking Mexico over the drug trade. He suggested the US might snatch the Panama Canal from Panama.
The response has been predictable. At a recent US-Canada hockey game, Canadians booed the singing of the US national anthem and fights between the players broke out immediately.
Trump seems to thrive on disruption – even for its own sake.
It is not clear why else Trump has staked out these rather extreme position. Canada, for example, will obviously not join the US unless it is coerced. The US has not had war plans against Canada in almost a century, and it would be shocking if the US public supported an invasion of Canada.
It would create an insurgency right on America’s border and destroy allied trust in the US overnight. The whole idea is so fantastical that one wonders why Trump keeps mentioning it.
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