Opinion: Donald Trump’s Nonsensical War on America’s Borders

Teddy Roosevelt was hardly a shrinking violet. The Rough Rider, outdoorsman and survivor of an assassination attempt in 1912 (he famously continued delivering a speech after being shot), was a contradiction; the man who never met an animal he didn’t wish to shoot was also an intellectual.

Equal parts thoughtful and heedless, Roosevelt was a president for a nation rising to take its place among the leaders of the nascent 20th century. It was Roosevelt who fulfilled the long-held industrialist dream of shortening the shipping routes for goods flowing between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts by overseeing the construction of a 51-mile engineering impossibility known as the Panama Canal.

In 1999, the canal reverted to the Panamanian people. Now, another American president wants it back. Oh, and apparently he also wants Greenland and Canada.

It’s a surprising Christmas list for a landlord who will soon, once again, oversee a nation that has enough trouble managing the real estate portfolio already in its possession. While seeking consent has never been Donald Trump’s strong suit, I find it galling that he’s making noises about violating even more boundaries. Trump possesses all of Roosevelt’s bluster but none of his subtlety. One president advised the nation to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The other told Billy Bush that when you’re a star, they let you do it.

I don’t expect Panama, Greenland, or Canada will allow Donald to grab what isn’t his. (Nor do I think Santa will be particularly kind to the man in the long red tie.) But while his territorial ambitions may be mystifying to many of us, I’m more concerned by what it says about the man, and the nation he’s just been elected to lead, that he would even voice these ideas.

It’s one thing for loud Americans to traipse across the world in brash slogan T-shirts demanding par-lee-vouz English. It’s quite another for that country’s leader to behave in a similarly boorish fashion. We are a powerful nation; the idea that we are the “leader of the so-called ‘Free World’” has never been quite apt. We are, and have been for the better part of 100 years, the leader of the entire world. As such, it’s mortifying to watch this ham-fisted grotesque flap his tongue in ways unbefitting the leader of the “indispensable nation.”

Roosevelt understood this. The “big stick” he carried was only ever a last resort. He deployed America’s assets strategically and diplomatically. He had no need of a Truth Social account.

With Trump, though, there is no speaking softly. There is hardly coherent thought at all. It’s a jumble of bizarre and outlandish threats; the whipsaw nature of his demands insults the world, though I worry it insults our nation more. Not because we should not compete to achieve our ends, but because we are more likely to achieve those ends through cooperation and mutual understanding than through threats, particularly because Trump’s threats are so often utterly devoid of substance.

I do not subscribe to America First if it means America Only. I do not subscribe to threatening to punch one’s neighbor in the nose if they do not give me their garage. Our might is, well, mighty. But it is limited. And it is often ineffective when operating against the wishes of those in its sights.

Foreign leaders do not have the luxury of ignoring the United States. We are too big. Too disruptive. Our influence is too great for them to simply turn a blind eye to any single president’s ambitions. Instead, they must suffer the indignity of dealing with, as our former president’s former favorite North Korean once called him, a dotard. There’s a reason Roosevelt’s face is on Mt. Rushmore while Trump’s is on a mugshot. The reason is that we are at our best when we are at our most humble. When we bumble and wave our arms around like madmen, we are more apt to get the world’s attention but less apt to be taken seriously.

Perhaps it’s not credibility Trump craves at all, only headlines. If that’s the case, hopefully the leaders of Canada, Panama, and Greenland give him all the attention he wishes and none of the land. At best, perhaps they’ll give him some souvenir candy. It’s more than he deserves, but what he deserves cannot be printed here. Instead, I choose to speak softly.