President-elect Donald Trump has announced he intends to pursue gaining control over Greenland, as well as the Panama Canal, to advance the interests of the U.S. ruling class against its competitors abroad, especially Beijing and Moscow.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, and the Tehran-Hamas pogrom against Jews in Israel, all capitalist powers are scrambling to strengthen their militaries in anticipation of bigger wars to come.
Greenland and the Panama Canal are key in the sharpening competition over trade and military sway, from the North Atlantic to the Pacific. Both Moscow and Beijing are expanding their presence in Latin American and the Arctic.
What became the Canal Zone in Panama was seized by Washington in 1903 as the U.S. rulers sought to impose their domination across Latin America. The construction of the canal gave them control over a key world shipping route. After a decadeslong fight against U.S. domination, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in 1979 to celebrate the treaty that returned the canal to Panamanian sovereignty.
Greenland is a nation of 57,000 people, the majority of whom are indigenous Inuit. It’s an “autonomous territory” of Denmark, and one of the European Union’s Overseas Countries and Territories, but Washington is the foremost military power on the island.
Aspirations for independence have grown in recent years, after decades of subjugation at the hands of the Danish rulers. In the 1950s, Danish authorities took Inuit children from their families to “re-educate” them as “model” Danes. Last year 143 women from Greenland sued the Danish government, saying that Danish doctors had fitted contraceptive coils in some 4,500 women and girls on the island without their consent or knowledge in the 1960s.
“We need Greenland for national-security purposes,” Trump told the press Jan. 7. Washington’s Pituffik Space Base in Greenland includes part of the U.S. ballistic missile early warning system. Control over Greenland “is valuable for projecting power, monitoring activities of rivals and securing shipping routes,” the Wall Street Journal reported, quoting unnamed officials.
Trump claims he’ll use Washington’s vast economic clout, and hints at the use of force, to get control of Greenland.
Growing capitalist rivalry in Arctic Since its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has reopened dozens of Soviet military bases in the Arctic and increased submarine patrols and exercises there.
Beijing has acquired mining operations in Greenland. Chinese capitalists seek control over shipping lanes in the Arctic, which offer shorter export routes than some they now use. Under Trump’s first presidency, the Pentagon successfully pressed the Danish government to block Beijing from financing three airports in Greenland.
U.S. and rival capitalists also covet Greenland’s profitable deposits of oil, natural gas, graphite and other rare-earth elements that are used in manufacturing many high-tech goods.
“Our future and fight for independence is our own business,” Greenland’s prime minister, Mute Egede, said in response to Trump’s remarks, before adding he looks forward to talks with Trump.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says she wants to keep hold of Greenland, but would welcome an increase in the U.S. military presence there. The rival governments of France and Germany both condemned Trump’s comments.
US intervention in Panama Some 5% of world maritime trade goes through the Panama Canal annually, including 40% of all U.S. container traffic.
Trump’s threats to retake the canal are aimed at reasserting control and pushing back Beijing’s growing influence. Both seaports at either end of the canal are operated by CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based company under Beijing’s thumb. Chinese capitalists are expanding investments and political sway across Latin America, long considered by the U.S. rulers as their backyard.
After installing a compliant government in Panama in 1903, Washington gained the rights to build the canal. Repeated struggles against U.S. domination of Panama’s economy and for an end to Washington’s occupation followed. Through their unions, canal workers joined struggles against racist Jim Crow segregation imposed there by U.S. authorities.
In 1964 U.S. soldiers attacked students flying the Panamanian flag, desecrated it and set off a rebellion in the zone, and in Panama City and the city of Colón. More than 20 Panamanians were shot dead.
Ten years after having been forced to relinquish control, U.S. forces invaded in 1989 to oust the government of Gen. Manuel Noriega and installed a more submissive regime. Whole neighborhoods were bombed flat and hundreds were killed.
Trump “thinks he can take whatever he wants,” Isabel Corro, president of the Association of Family Victims of the 1989 U.S. Invasion of Panama, told the Guardian newspaper. But Washington retaking the canal “should not happen and we will not let it happen.” Panama’s government says sovereignty over the canal is “non-negotiable.”
The U.S. ruling families are determined to shore up their faltering place at the head of the imperialist world order, and see Greenland and the canal as key to that effort.