In normal times, the leader of G7 and NATO accusing the US president of an annexation of desire would be a header statement, a multiple explosion of messages, leaving shock waves for months.
These are not normal times.
The repeated conversation between Donald Trump about Canada's annexation is almost widely treated as a joke in Washington. Or maybe as a negotiating trick. If this is not, the US president would face the Himalayan climb to realize.
A consensus in Washington that it can't be serious – right? Normal? -He is reflected in scanty immediate relations with the stunning comments issued on Friday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who heard that he told business leaders that yes, Trump really I like to take over Canada.
Apparently, the US president said a mysterious commentary on his Monday afternoon phone from Trudeau about reading 1908 Setting the Canada border and considering him interesting. He did not develop.
The story was at the bottom of the New York Times home, and its side is flooded with stories about the alleged Unlawful actions by the new administration.
It was half -side on the Wall Street Journal, below the routine economic The news and there was no Washington Post on the main page.
All this conversation did not appear even during the recent congress hearings, in which Canada appeared clearly: one about trade and tariffs, one on minerals.
In the latter, Democrat laughed at Trump for dangerous tariffs for a neighbor who has the necessary aluminum copper, cobalt, graphite, lithium and many others.
“Stable genius decided to start a trade war with (Canada),” said representative of Rhode Island Seth Magaziner, causing the sentence that Trump once used to describe himself.
It was not mentioned to make Canada 51. A change in the political map of North America and the United States electoral map.
The Republican Senator Ted Cruz waved Trump's plan on his podcast this week, calling him the “epic troll … I think he was a chain (TRUDEAU)”.
After his public remarks at the Economic Summit of Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told business and work leaders that US President Donald Trump's comments on making Canada 51. State are a “real thing.” Trudeau comments were heard by speakers.
Olanie road block
The reason for finding this conversation may be his poor policy: Canadian statehood is slightly Down massively Unpopular, according to public opinion surveys in the USA.
It seems highly doubtful that this unloved, very complex and deeply controversial plan would gain a critical mass of support to win the voice in the US Congress, not to mention the extreme long approval of Canada.
Some existing American territories know this from experience. They have been working for decades to get such votes through Congress.
One of the veterans of the battle says that even if there were enough supporters in Congress, actual voices would be a political minefield.
Legislators would have to agree to dilute their own power – transferring about five dozen household places to Canada, and, depending on the number of states introduced, two, four or six seats of the Senate.
“This would fundamentally change the balance of power in this organ,” said George Laws Garcia, executive director of the State Council Puerto Rico.
“So there is something that Congress will just jump for? I don't think so.”
And there is not much time: Trump's party has a thin razor most and may lose it in the middle of the period within 23 months. If he is still talking about unpopular ideas, such as the Canada attachment, Trump may unknowingly accelerate this process.
Weighing the Trump's end game
However, fragments of evidence that Trump is seriously seriously in terms of territorial expansion, they begin to accumulate in a difficult to annul.
He mentioned this in his inaugural speech. He still talks about it – in the context of Canada, Panama, Greenland, and now in gas.
His envoy in the Middle East is Real estate developer And Trump talks about building real estate in gas after moving the inhabitants elsewhere; The son -in -law of Trump, Jared Kushner, wondered something similar months ago.
There is enough evidence to suspect that Trump is no longer satisfied with his current station as the US president two-time that he has imperial ambitions.
Which may not be a surprise, considering that two biographies man, including one written by His nieceAdd the words “Never Enough” in the title.
But some people who examine us global hegemony still do not buy it.
One of the analysts of imperialism in US history tells Canadians that there are no expectations for dividing the nation in their lives.
“Although I would be so happy that I would be your countryman, I wouldn't think about it,” said Daniel Immerbahr, a professor at Northwestern University and author How to hide the empire.
He says that he believes that Trump impresses with shocking people – speaking bizarre things, for fun, or in pursuit of a goal.
Donald Trump has been running in Canada of sovereignty from stupid social positions generated by AI to the threat of “economic force”. Ellen Mauro from the CBC spreads the escalation rhetoric of the president-elect against Canada.
This goal, he said, may be a new trade agreement with Canada or its desirable result in gas or a new security agreement in Greenland and the Panama channel.
However, it does not exclude the possibility that Trump is serious. If so, Immervahr says, he looks no less than returning to the global order, as it existed before the Second World War.
In this approach there is a world in which the United States usually hid their hard power and used soft power instruments such as trade, help and global institutions to exert a huge influence and achieve the desired results.
It would be a return to a world in which great powers threaten the territory of their neighbors – Immerbahr says, remembering China, Russia, and now the USA
Says Stephen Wertheim, a conversation with an annex in Gaza, an analyst at Tatecraft and strategy in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He expressed doubts that the faithful of the magician demanding exercises building a nation in the Middle East with such destructive potential.
He says that the idea of annexation of the territory of the Western hemisphere refers to the 19th century and the doctrine of Monroe, which Trump mentioned in his inaugural speech, talking about the US extension
But whatever Trump does, it's still a moment with a breakthrough.
“To the extent that Trump uses the threat of annexation only as negotiating tricks, we are almost on an unknown territory,” said Wertheim, author of the book Tomorrow the world: The birth of American global supremacy.
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