Other nations are 'actively pissed off' by Trump's territorial ambitions: expert
Donald Trump's talk about U.S. territorial expansion has infuriated foreign allies, according to national security experts.
The president-elect has been musing about retaking control of the Panama Canal, purchasing Greenland and merging with Canada, and CNN's John Berman said leaders in other countries don't appreciate his apparent threats.
"Our friend Ian Bremmer was talking specifically about Canada, but I imagine you could apply it also to the situation around the Panama Canal and Greenland. He said that Canada, but maybe other countries, are going from irritated to actively pissed off about this type of type of talk. What are you hearing in the international community?"
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Evelyn Farkas, a former defense official for Barack Obama and current executive director of the McCain Institute, said other nations had been dismissing Trump's comments as bluster, but she said they're starting to take him more seriously.
"I think that initially there was a tendency to maybe not take it seriously," Farkas said. "Obviously, he's not even the president yet, so the leaders of the world are kind of holding their breath. But I think you saw Panama come out very clearly and say, no way, José, pun intended – you know, you can't have our canal, we control it, not China, not anyone else, and we maintain control over that. The situation with Greenland is actually quite complex because, while Denmark is the sovereign over Greenland, Greenland also has its own government and its own self-government. So those folks have been very clear in Denmark that the United States has no business interfering with the sovereignty of their control or their their governing of Greenland. The people of Greenland and the government of Greenland, they're happy to make a deal with us. We have a base on Greenland, and in Panama we have freedom of navigation. There's no threat, there are assets."
"There are reasons why you would want to have a good relationship with Panama and Greenland, so you could get access to minerals, get your trade flowing through the Panama Canal, make sure that China doesn't get an advantage over us," Farkas said. "Certainly when it comes to Greenland, there's also access to the Arctic, which is now opening up to trade to, frankly, military lines of transit. So we want to make sure that we have the upper hand over China, over Russia, over our adversaries. But, hello, these are allies and partners. We can negotiate this."
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