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In the weeks following his second inauguration as U.S. President, Donald Trump expressed an interest in “annexing” several other countries. Prior to his inauguration, Trump remarked during a January 7th press conference that he was willing to use military force to take over Greenland and Panama, but would rely on “economic force” to annex Canada. This promised economic coercion eventually took the form of heavy tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods that were announced in February. Negotiations would initially delay the tariffs until March 4th, and most of the threatened tariffs would be paused a second time, until April 2nd.
The threat of tariffs and annexation have led to the hardening of borders in North America. The United States has demanded greater security at its U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders, and Panama has committed to further policing its forested border with Columbia along the Darién Gap. The annexation threats against Greenland have also led Denmark to reevaluate its defence policy.
To understand the implications of these changes to defence and border policy, I spoke with Sheila McManus, Professor of History at the University of Lethbridge, member of the Lethbridge Border Studies research group, and co-editor of the recently released volume Challenging Borders: Contingencies and Consequences. As McManus explains, the hardening of borders exacerbates their inherent danger: “In theory there are supposed to be limits on how modern nation-states treat people crossing their borders, but in practice that is rarely the case: any nation-state can decide that they want to kill, abuse, assault, or indefinitely detain border-crossers, and there isn’t a lot that the border-crossers themselves can do about it, and there is little outcry when people are harmed.”
In each case, the U.S. has leveraged the threat of military and economic force to pursue its perceived interests, strong-arming other nations into spending on more defence or border security. The reinforcement of borders and their militarization in Canada, Mexico, Panama, and Greenland will cost those countries exorbitant amounts of money, and not make their borders any more secure.
On February 4th, the White House announced that it would impose 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, with lower 10% tariffs on Canadian energy. Declared under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the measure bypassed the U.S. Congress. Purportedly, these tariffs were meant to address the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across the United States’ borders with Canada and Mexico.
In addition to these motivations, Donald Trump has complained that Canada benefits from U.S. defence expenditures without spending enough on its own defence. Speaking at the Canada-U.S. Economic Summit on February 7th, Justin Trudeau instead suggested that the United States’ interest in annexing Canada was driven by a desire for its natural resources.
Mere hours after the tariffs were scheduled to come into effect on February 4th, Canada and the U.S. negotiated an agreement that delayed them by 30 days, until March 4th. Canada agreed to spend $1.3 billion on reinforcing the border with 10,000 personnel, helicopters, and AI technology. Additionally, Canada would appoint a “fentanyl czar” to combat the proliferation of fentanyl, drug cartels would be listed as terrorist groups, and a Canada-U.S. Joint Task Force would be launched to address the drug trade. Though these measures were presented in February as Canada’s response to American tariffs, they had in fact been negotiated in December during the Biden administration, in anticipation of Trump taking office.
The measures fall under the purview of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), but Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre has called them insufficient, arguing that military troops, vehicles, and surveillance equipment should be deployed to the border.
The stated rationale for the tariffs is straightforwardly nonsensical when it comes to Canada. According to U.S. border officials, only 1.5% of unauthorized migrants entering the United States do so through the Canadian border. Likewise, despite the concern expressed over fentanyl entering the U.S. from Canada, only 0.2% of fentanyl seized in 2024 by border security came from Canada. In any case, Canada’s billion-dollar border proposal failed to prevent the U.S. from enacting tariffs; Canadians will end up paying to make their border more dangerous and inconvenient for nothing.
McManus aptly describes the comic absurdity of militarizing the U.S.-Canada border in order to solve these made-up problems: “My home province (Alberta) has a right-wing premier [Danielle Smith] who has committed to spending $29 million to ‘reinforce’ all 298 kilometers of the Alberta-Montana line, which will mean a lot of heavily armed men and drones are going to spend a lot of time watching the empty prairie between the six existing ports of entry.”
“The key effect of this pointless political theatre will be to reinforce the illusion that there was a ‘problem’ with the border that is now ‘solved’,” observes McManus. “The U.S. needs to be able to say that there is an ‘emergency’ to enact those tariffs under CUSMA [the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement], so if Canada and Mexico ‘reinforce’ their borders then they are helping that narrative. Any money spent ‘reinforcing’ the border would be better spent domestically helping the people who will be harmed during the tariff war. The U.S. has demonstrated that it can’t be trusted, as a trade partner or ally in any sense of the word.”
Mexico secured its own deal with the U.S. to delay the threatened tariffs. By February 20th, 2,500 Mexican soldiers had been deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border as part of its agreement with the U.S. The amount of Mexican military personnel at the border will rise to 10,000 under the plan. Since most drugs flow through official ports of entry, this military build-up has focused on official border crossings. The effects of this policy are unclear given how treacherous the border is already.
“The U.S.-Mexico border is already the deadliest border in the world right now, mostly due to U.S. policies aimed at achieving exactly that,” says McManus, “Are Mexican military personnel less likely to assault or kill migrants heading north, because they are less likely to see them as a racialized, inferior Other? Maybe. Should we then be grateful that they might stop northward migrants before they encounter the more racist and violent U.S. system, or could Mexico and Canada refuse to play the U.S.’s games and instead find a better use for that money?”
The U.S.-Mexico border is the site of a longstanding humanitarian crisis, with the frequent deaths of migrants and human rights violations committed by border officers. Attempts to reinforce the border have failed to achieve a reduction in illegal migration, as McManus explains: “Literally any other approach is more effective than trying to ‘harden’ or ‘reinforce’ or ‘militarize’ the border. Walls and guns haven’t worked for a century […] so they aren’t going to stop migration now and certainly won’t stop them in the future as the number of climate refugees continues to grow.”
“A different approach would require a fundamentally different worldview from U.S. politicians, and a lot of rethinking about what exactly the goal is, what they think borders do and what they want them to do. Do U.S. politicians want to reduce the number of people entering the U.S. from Mexico? If that is the goal, then they unsafe conditions and kick them out again when you are done with them.”
The U.S.-Mexico border has not always been the heavily patrolled and defended boundary that it is today. The collapse of the Mexican economy in the mid-1970s ushered in a transition from a primarily agricultural economy to one focused on manufacturing in Mexico’s northern provinces. This process was encouraged by American capital, which offshored manufacturing jobs to Mexico where wages were lower.
The result was large numbers of Mexicans from southern regions moving to northern border regions to take up poorly paid manufacturing jobs. Forced to migrate to take up positions that paid poorly anyway, many of these people looked across the border for opportunity. Thus, the economic circumstances that pushed many Mexicans across the border were fostered by policies meant to serve U.S. economic and business interests. A similar process has taken place in Latin America.
In addition to Greenland, the Trump Administration has also expressed an interest in taking possession of the Panama Canal. The U.S. has a long history of intervention in the region. In 1903, after Columbia declined to agree to a treaty granting the U.S. land for the proposed Panama Canal, the U.S. militarily supported the secession of Panama from Columbia. A treaty was then made with the newly independent Panama which granted the U.S. in perpetuity the land to construct the canal.
The Panama Canal would remain in U.S. hands into the mid-twentieth century, although this would lead to increasing tensions with Panamanians and the Canal Zone would become more militarized. Eventually, in 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, guaranteeing that the canal would return to full Panamanian control in 1999.
The Trump administration has alleged that Panama is charging Americans ships exorbitant rates to access the canal, and that the Panama Canal is falling under Chinese control. This appears to be the entirety of the administration’s rationale for why “retaking” the canal would be justified. There is no evidence for the claim that Panama is charging American vessels more than those from other countries to traverse the canal.
The basis for the concern that the Chinese are exerting control over the canal is that the Hong Kong–based Hutchinson Port Holdings operates two ports at either end of the canal, and that China invested in Panama through the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
The claims of Chinese control of the Panama Canal are flimsy. The Hutchinson contract to operate the ports dates to before the handover of Hong Kong to Beijing. Regardless, access to the locks and canal itself is operated separately from the ports, and is controlled by the Panama Canal Authority. Nevertheless, Panama would cave to U.S. pressure on March 4th, and Hutchinson would announce that it would sell its ports portfolio to a consortium led by the American investment firm BlackRock.
Evidently, the concern was never ensuring that Panama had control of the ports, since the Trump administration has celebrated transfer of the contracts to a private American company. Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a global infrastructure development project with the stated goal of facilitating trade, comparable to post-war Marshall Plan. Like the Marshall Plan, the Belt and Road Initiative is also intended to extend economic and political influence.
Yet, whatever the Chinese objectives, there is no reason to think that mere participation in the initiative has compromised Panama’s control over the canal. In any case, faced with U.S. pressure, Panama announced on February 3rd that it would not renew its participation in the Initiative when it expires.
A final area of American concern in Panama is the Darién Gap. This densely forested border region between Panama and Columbia is travelled through by thousands of migrants each year as they head northward toward the United States. People originating from locales as distinct as Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and China fly to Ecuador and then travel over land or by boat into Columbia and then Panama through the Darién Gap.
Even before Donald Trump took office, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino committed to reducing migration through the Gap, though he admitted that the migration was not a problem for Panama, but the U.S., since migrants did not remain in Panama.
Donald Trump expressed interest in “buying” Greenland as early as his first term in 2019. Then, as now, he was rebuffed by officials from both Denmark and Greenland. Greenland has long been a Danish possession, although it achieved home-rule in 1979 and a further expansion of self-government in 2009. Greenlanders often express little desire to remain part of Denmark, with many desiring full national sovereignty. They have even less interest in being incorporated into the U.S.
The United States already operates Pituffik Space Base in Greenland—formerly Thule Air Base. Furthermore, under their existing agreements with Denmark and Greenland through NATO, the U.S. is permitted to expand its military presence in Greenland in response to security concerns. Yet, the strategic value of Greenland has diminished over time given technological developments in long-range weapons systems. Annexation is entirely unnecessary if the objective were deploying more American troops to Greenland, but there would be no strategic advantage to doing so anyway.
McManus observes that U.S. imperialism is nothing new, but the international order is less amenable to aggressive expansionism than it once was: “The U.S. has always been an expansionist, imperialist power; what makes the U.S. different than other settler-colonial states like Canada are its European-imperialism-style efforts to claim and seize distant and disconnected territories.
For me, the parallel here is to the Spanish American War and the U.S. grabbing the Philippines (among other claims, of course). The difference between the Philippines in the late 19th century and any attempt to claim Greenland or Panama today is that there are much stronger opposition forces in place and a very different international climate.”
The true danger of American threats to annex Greenland are evident in the divisions it has created between NATO members. Denmark is itself a founding member of NATO, and any military incursion against Greenland would trigger Article 5, which requires signatories of NATO to defend one of their members when they are attacked. Germany and France have already offered to support Greenland militarily in the face of American aggression, but Denmark has so far politely declined.
Of course, since an American invasion of Greenland would involve one NATO member attacking another, the NATO alliance would likely not survive such a conflict in its present form. That said, as in the case of Panama, the threat of annexation itself is likely a bluff; gunboat diplomacy meant to coerce Greenland into giving the U.S. what it wants—most likely access to its natural resources.
The border crises faced by the U.S. are either fictional or of its own making. The situation at its southern border is the result of decades of self-interested policies that have caused destitution in Mexico, Latin America, and elsewhere. Higher fences and more armed personnel along the Rio Grande or the Darién Gap cannot solve this problem. The socio-economic causes at the problem’s root must be addressed, and decades of damage cannot be fixed overnight.
Meanwhile, the “crisis” at the U.S.-Canada border is a figment of Republican politicians’ imaginations. It is just an excuse to squeeze Canada economically for what they want, and an imaginary problem cannot be solved.
The Trump administration has no interest in addressing the actual problems of borders and their militarization. Whether it’s Canada, Mexico, Greenland, or Panama, the threats of annexation and complaints about border security are a thinly-veiled excuse to coerce economic advantage for the U.S.—and not even the average American, but the wealthy and their private equity firms.
Thus, attempts made to placate the U.S. have so far proven fruitless. Canada and Mexico’s commitments to spend billions more policing their borders failed to avert a trade war, and Panama’s willingness to tear up existing investment deals and contracts has secured them little in return. These measures are ultimately wastes of money, and in the long run the American policy will be as self-destructive as those that created the existing crisis at its southern border.
Is there an alternative to the militarization of these borders? While there may be, McManus is pessimistic about the near-future: “It is of course my bias as a borderlands historian to say that we could learn a lot from history about some of the other ways that borders can work, but I have zero hope right now that those lessons will be learned or implemented. […] Designing immigration policies that are flexible and inclusive is harder than just adding layer upon layer of racism or spending ridiculous sums on drones and fences. The ‘war on drugs’ and its manufactured connection to border policy is decades old now, and throwing billions of dollars at the borders clearly hasn’t ‘worked,’ so what else needs to happen before we think about more effective, cheaper, but longer-term strategies?”
Consideration of more effective, long-term strategies is unlikely to happen in the U.S. until there is a changing of the guard. For those countries that find themselves in American crosshairs, they should resist wasting their own money on pointless border policies, particularly since the U.S. cannot be placated anyway. Instead, efforts should be made to seek out more reliable trade partners and allies, so that the silly threats of annexation and needless trade wars can be safely weathered.