Head-on | Dealmaker Trump will disrupt the world order

United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to do several things on his first day in the Oval Office at the White House on January 20, 2025.

He says there’ll be “hell to pay in the Middle East” if Israeli hostages, still held by Hamas, aren’t released before his inauguration as the 47th US president next Monday.

In a veiled message to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump says the days of America sending weapons to Kyiv to fight Russia are over. An early meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the cards.

Trump has pledged on day one to pardon up to 1,600 people accused of taking part in a riotous attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 following Joe Biden’s presidential victory in November 2020 that Trump still contests.

Tariffs on China are high on Trump’s first-day agenda. But what has startled even those accustomed to the maverick 78-year-old Trump’s bellicosity is his offer to buy Greenland from Denmark, take over the Panama Canal by military force, rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, and threaten to make Canada the 51st US state by “economic force” if necessary.

Are these mere rantings of a convicted felon who has been impeached twice by US Congress and still faces several criminal cases which Trump says he will block when he gives himself a presidential pardon during his second term?

As a bemused Washington Post reported: “The president-elect promised to usher in a ‘golden age of America’, speaking at a press conference from a gilded room decorated with an elaborate grand piano and chandelier. He painted a dystopian picture of the current state of the nation, calling the United States ‘a horrible place’ and making multiple inaccurate claims about the Biden administration’s policies.”

Trump has always been a narcissist. He has long had a chip on his shoulder that America’s business, political and social elite don’t take him seriously. That sense of grievance makes him moody and aggressive by turns.

Though an avowed supporter of Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza, Trump last week shared on his social media platform TruthSocial a provocative video interview with Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, a longtime critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Professor Sachs, speaking at a Cambridge Union event, said: “Netanyahu had got us into endless wars and because of US politics, he has got his way.”

Sachs added that Netanyahu had followed a systematic strategy since 1995 to “target and eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah by targeting their supporting governments in Iraq, Iran and Syria.” Netanyahu was described in the video interview as a “deep, dark son of a b*tch.”

Did Trump repost Sach’s sharp criticism of Netanyahu as a bargaining chip ahead of hard negotiations with Israel over a peace deal in the Middle East? That deal includes getting Saudi Arabia on board. For the Saudis, an independent, sovereign Palestine co-existing in peace with Israel is non-negotiable.

Without the Saudis, Trump can’t push it to join the Abraham Accords. In 2020, during his first presidential term, Trump invited the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Bahrain to the White House to sign the Abraham Accords that normalised relations between Israel and the Gulf states. Without the Saudis, however, the Accords are toothless.

Just as endorsing Professor Sach’s Cambridge Union attack on Netanyahu was designed to set the Israeli leader up for a round of hard negotiations on a sovereign Palestinian state, Trump is crafting his approach to the Russia-Ukraine war and territorial threats to Canada, Greenland and Panama as part of a strategy he first outlined in his bestselling 1987 book The Art of the Deal.

At his core, Trump remains a dealmaker. This is what he wrote in his book: “I like thinking big. I always have. If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”

Trump approaches his geopolitical targets with a two-pronged attack. The first prong threatens coercion – military (Panama) or economic (Canada and Greenland). The second prong offers financial inducement. As he told Greenlanders: “I am hearing that the people of Greenland are ‘MAGA’. Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes a part of our Nation. We will protect it, and cherish it.”

To Canadians Trump layered his threat with this: “Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State. The US can no longer suffer the massive trade deficits and subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat. Justin Trudeau knew this, and resigned. Together, what a great Nation it would be!!!”

Reality Check

Trump obviously knows it is constitutionally impossible to make Canada America’s 51st state just as he knows Denmark will not cede sovereignty over Greenland (which it has held for over 600 years) or that military action to seize the Panama Canal is impractical.

Trump’s real objective is to get the best possible deal from Denmark on exploiting Greenland’s mineral resources. The threats are merely to intimidate Denmark.

With Canada, Trump wants to cut America’s $54 billion trade deficit with its northern neighbour. In Panama, Trump is firing a warning shot to China (whose navy is already larger than the US Navy) to keep clear of the Panama Canal on both the Pacific and Atlantic seaboards.

The key target for Trump is China. He will slap large tariffs on Chinese merchandise and stiffen the ban on selling advanced technology, especially in semiconductors, to Beijing.

But even with China, Trump is willing to cut a deal. He has in the past praised Chinese President Xi Jinping, calling him “an exceptionally brilliant individual who governs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”

While Trump can cut deals that profit the US geopolitically and economically by intimidating Canada, Panama, Denmark, Greenland, Ukraine and Israel, he will find it more difficult to bully China or Russia.

Trump has called Russian President Vladimir Putin “fierce” and “smart”. In a fundraiser ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Trump said: “Putin’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country – really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”

Ending the Russia-Ukraine war is at the top of Trump’s agenda. Zelensky too seems ready to cut a deal though Putin will be tougher to pin down during negotiations.

In all of this, India has sensibly kept a low profile. Trump’s personal chemistry with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is strong. Tariffs could sour the pitch. But like Trump, Modi himself knows how to cut the best deal for India.

The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.