Playing 4D Chess

 

Trump really is “playing 4D chess.” He learned how to swing a deal as a real estate developer. Consider the Gaza deal. He framed it all as a threat against Hamas: “if the hostages are not freed by inauguration day, there will be hell to pay.” But behind the scenes, the pressure was really on Netanyahu to accept a partial deal. This way, Netanyahu has made concessions, but can frame it as a victory. It’s a win-win, at least for the short term.

He is doing the same with Greenland. Greenland is a financial liability to Denmark, held only for prestige, and Greenland for its part feels colonized. Trump sees the opportunity. Denmark saves face and looks righteous by giving Greenland independence. Greenland can afford this pretense of self-determination now, with US backing. Then it gets to cut a better deal with the US. The US gets to cut Denmark out of any deal, buying wholesale. It’s a win-win.

I think Trump should and will offer Greenland immediate full statehood, to preserve the sense of self-determination.

Now how about Canada? 

Alberta’s situation is like that of Greenland. Alberta has been subsidizing the rest of Canada with their energy resources. At the same time, with their carbon tax and their environmental regulations, the Canadian central government has been hobbling the Alberta energy industry. 

Perhaps Trump was clever enough to check and realize that energy was a provincial responsibility. Perhaps he was clever enough to see that Canada has recognized the right of provinces to separate. Perhaps he was clever enough to school himself on Western alienation.

With his tariff threats, Trump is shaking that fruit from the tree. He can appeal to Albertan alienation. They have the one card to play against the Trump tariffs.

He can offer Alberta a separate deal. He says he wants to annex Canada; but the value to the US is all in Alberta. Moreover, they are more politically aligned than the rest of Canada with the US; they would probably vote Republican. He can now offer them statehood. Alberta gets to escape their subsidies to the rest of Canada, escape the carbon taxes and the environmental regulations, lower their taxes, and start pumping oil like gangbusters. 

Okay, this one isn’t quite win-win. The rest of Canada is left in the lurch, cut off from Alberta’s subsidies and facing stiff tariffs from the USA. 

Unless they quickly end equalization payments, kill the carbon tax, end supply management, cut environmental regulations, and start severely restricting immigration.

All of which would be more or less what the Canadian public is demanding.

So, again, win-win. Unless we are governed by idiots.

Uh-oh.

How Trump Could Actually Do It

 

Here’s how Trump can annex both Greenland and Canada.

Greenland: first encourage them to vote for independence from Denmark. Denmark can’t object: it’s the right to self-determination of peoples, established by the League of Nations and Wilson’s Fourteen Points. And Denmark has already admitted Greenland has this right.

Then, no longer needing to pay off Denmark, the US offers every Greenlander one million dollars to cede sovereignty to the USA. There are only about 50,000 Greenlanders. This would only cost the US $50,000,000,000—fifty billion. Good price considering Greenland’s strategic importance and mineral deposits. Not only would every Greenlander be a millionaire; the US would then also begin developing Greenland’s resources, providing jobs for Greenlanders, and continuing royalties. Like Alaskans, who all currently get an annual payout, a reverse income tax, from resource royalites. On top of this, of course, every Greenlander gains the right to live and work in the USA. The much coveted “green card.”

Why wouldn’t they go for it? It is not as though they are giving up their sovereignty; they are not independent now. And they would never be viable as an independent state.

Canada: there are too many Canadians for a similarly simple deal. But here’s how it could happen. The long Quebec sovereignty debate has established the principle that any Canadian province has the right to separate. Alberta gets a raw deal now within Confederation, forced to pay equalization to most other provinces. They will be especially hard hit by Trump’s stiff tariffs. They are probably most dependent on cross-border trade with the US, for their oil and gas and agricultural products. At the same time, they are most valuable to the US, for that oil and gas. Not to mention the Alcan highway heading north from Edmonton to Alaska.

Canadian nomination meetings and party leadership contests are ridiculously vulnerable to foreign interference, as the Chinese have demonstrated. It would not take that much money for the US to maneuver supporters of Alberta independence and annexation into power provincially, working like China through local shell organizations. Externally, offer Alberta stand-alone statehood, a pipeline south, and a complete lifting of tariffs. Probably attractive enough to convince a majority of Albertans, if the politicians are also pushing the idea.

So Alberta votes for independence and annexation to the US, as Texas once did from Mexico. 

Canada is now, for all practical purposes, cut in two, east to west; and it loses a huge part of its tax and resource base. 

At this point, the attraction of remaining independent diminishes rapidly for other provinces. They should start falling like dominoes. British Columbia will be stranded, in relation to the rest of Canada. They needed a rail link to convince them to join Confederation in the first place. Now that link is gone. 

Saskatchewan tends to move in tandem with Alberta. Saskatchewan will lose its route to market. Saskatchewan will want to join as well, if Alberta has joined. 

If Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan have all left Confederation, there go most of Canada’s natural resources. The attractiveness of remaining in Canada falls further for other provinces, now much impoverished.

Manitoba will probably fall next, wanting to stay with its Prairie neighbours rather than become a remote outpost of Ontario.

If the momentum is now not yet enough to pull all the other provinces in, the game can repeat. If either New Brunswick or Quebec pull out of that rump Canada, it is once again cut in two. 

Target New Brunswick: small enough to subvert without too much financial outlay. If New Brunswick goes, PEI, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, stranded, will likely follow.

And as far as Quebec is concerned, there is no great loyalty to Ontario. Why not try for a better deal with Washington?

Leaving Ontario, and a landlocked Ontario. Not viable. Game, set, and match.

As for the Panama Canal, here’s a gambit: the US could put pressure on Panama by threatening to build a new, and wider, canal in cooperation with and through Costa Rica or Nicaragua; losing Panama virtually all its revenue from the present canal. Then it proposes, to forestall this, a deal with Panama in which Panama still gets a healthy remittance from the current canal under US management.