"China wants to "displace" the U.S., and Russia is gaining grain": what to expect from Trump, explained by an American expert

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What to expect from Trump, explained by an American expert Новина оновлена 05 лютого 2025, 17:36
What to expect from Trump, explained by an American expert. Фото Collage by Telegraf

The Chinese are becoming more assertive in the Arctic, Europe, and other parts of the world.

Even before officially taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump made headlines with statements about taking control of Greenland and the Panama Canal. While the American leader's comments have caused concern, and sometimes even shock, among politicians from various corners of the world, Trump may be pursuing a completely pragmatic goal.

What makes these territories critically important for the United States, and what enormous threat lies in China's growing influence on the global stage? Read below in the interview of "Telegraf" with Andrew Michta, the Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security under the Atlantic Council (Washington).

Andrew Michta. Photo: University of Cambridge
Andrew Michta. Photo: University of Cambridge

Mr. Michta, it’s very interesting to hear your opinion on U.S. President Donald Trump’s statements regarding Greenland and the Panama Canal, as well as control over these territories. Ukrainians are closely following every step Trump takes, but sometimes it’s truly difficult to understand how far he might go in implementing his plans.

— I would separate these statements into two parts.

One is the rhetoric, which has rattled a lot of people, because all of a sudden you have the United Stated president talking about buying or taking over territories. But let's set that aside for a second. Let's talk about why Greenland and Panama are so critical.

When you look at Greenland, the United States has a military base there, which is essentially a monitoring station. This involves approximately 200 American military personnel and around 450 civilians stationed there. I think the Danes have about 70-some of their own soldiers. And this is a critical part in terms of our air missile defense and ability to prevent the militarization of the region by Russia and China. That's number one.

Number two, especially as the ice cap melts, the Chinese have been extremely assertive, pushing to get on the Arctic Council (a high-level intergovernmental forum that addresses issues concerning Arctic countries — ed.). They're trying to be involved in the shipping and navigation. And I think the President Trump is sending a strong message to China saying, "No, we will contest it, and we will not allow you to expand your influence".

Number three, trade. The journey from Europe to Asia via the Nordic route takes about 14 days, compared to other routes. For American shipping, it takes around 20 days. So this is a critically important trade route.

Four. The Danish government has not been very effective in actually managing the islands [which are autonomous areas of a country]. So, it's a strong statement [from the U.S.] that Greenland is a critical strategic region, that the United States is committed to protecting and ensuring, most of all, that the Russians and the Chinese don't get there.

Lastly, there's what we call the GIUK gap, which is Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom. And if you look beyond that, that's where most of the Russian attack submarines are. So the island is very important to our defensive position in the North.

On the Panama issue. When we transferred the Panama Canal under President Carter, we never expected that it would become a Chinese-run operation. And now you have essentially Chinese companies running the canal. Most of the telecommunications and digital infrastructure in Panama is now Chinese, made by Huawei and others.

In 2018, Panama joined the Belt and Road Initiative, which is the new Silk Road that the Chinese are trying to do. And I'm very seriously concerned that if this is not stopped, we will find ourselves in a situation where we have Chinese military installations in Central America. And that is absolutely unacceptable to the United States.

*For reference: in early February 2025, Panama, at the insistence of the United States, refused to extend the agreement with China under the One Belt, One Road initiative.

So you hear a very hard line from the president that this is the Western Hemisphere, this is where the United States "lives," and that we have allowed too much Chinese and Russian influence in the Arctic. So that's another kind of step in the great power competition that you're seeing.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his visit to Panama. Photo AFP
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his visit to Panama. Photo AFP

What tools can Trump use to achieve his goal, for instance, with Greenland? It seems that Denmark is not ready for any negotiations regarding the sale of the island. The Prime Minister of Greenland has expressed a certain openness to deepening cooperation with the United States, but again, selling the island is not on the table.

— Remember how President Trump operated in 2016. He is unpredictable. As a dealmaker, he wants to keep his adversaries on an uncertain footing, and he wants his partners to keep wondering where this is going.

I think you will see serious negotiations about U.S. installations in Greenland. And we will expand our presence there.

Remember, very few people in Europe know that the United States tried to buy Greenland right after World War II for about $100 million in gold, that dollar value. This is not something that Trump suddenly invented. This is something that every geostrategist in the United States understood was critical. What you're seeing is an opening salvo in a negotiation.

And I think with the Panamanians, you're going to see a lot of pressure to decouple from China. The larger question about economic strategy is that for about three decades, we essentially took national security priorities out of economic policymaking.

And, in fact, we built China. We created the Frankenstein, as Nixon allegedly said before he died, because Nixon was the one who really opened up to China (Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the PRC in 1972 — ed.).

Right now we're looking at a country that not only did not become a respectable stakeholder in the international system, but, in fact, is bidding for regional hegemony in the Indo-Pacific, seeking to displace the United States as the primary provider of security.

And if you look at the scale of Chinese naval construction, they're probably building the equivalent of the British navy every four years.

They're intent on doing what every rapidly modernizing power has done. First, you become geostrategically assertive in your own region, then you punch out globally. This is no different from our own experience — the 13 subsistence colonies, pushing and colonizing the continent, becoming dominant in our hemisphere, and then globally.

What is dangerous and different is that the Chinese, unlike the Russians, act differently. Russia is a strictly revisionist state, in my view. Putin is relitigating the end of the Cold War. He wants to rebuild the empire, which includes your country. He wants Ukraine to be absolutely subjugated and subordinated to Russia. He wants to do to you what he's already done to the Belarusians. And then he wants a sphere of influence in Central Europe. This is not rocket science. It's traditional Russian imperial thinking.

The Russians want America out of Europe. They're criticizing us. They're constantly attacking us in every domain they can. But the Russian elite has always enjoyed Western Europe and the nice hotels, the great restaurants and the rest of it. So this corrupt layer of the top elite in Russia is not so much out to destroy as to become a big player in European politics again.

But China, in a very existential sense, wants to replace the whole model of governance. I wrote an article for Politico some time ago called "A free market for unfree people". It's essentially a status form of mercantile market capitalism, where you provide a good quality of life for your citizens, but you control them from the top. Freedom disappears.

The Chinese, with the amount of money they can invest, are playing their own game. So I see China not only as a military or economic problem, but also as an ideological problem.

Russia is not an economic problem set by any stretch of the imagination. Right now they have money to fight your country because energy prices are high and because the Chinese are supplying them. The Russian Federation is a pale shadow of the Soviet Union of yesteryear.

Also, I am very deeply concerned that this alliance between the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, and the Iranians, what I call the "axis of dictatorships," is an existential threat to the West, and we have to confront it.

— So, does control over Greenland and the Panama Canal, to some extent, align with the "America First" policy? After all, as Trump stated, U.S. national security interests must come first. From this perspective, his intentions and statements are understandable.

— Trump has been a kind of bête noire for the European and American elites because he doesn't fit. He never fit in the first place. I mean, none of the political elites in Washington expected him to win in 2016.

And the Europeans, because he doesn't fit the mold of the kind of neoliberal set, spend most of their time hyperventilating about how terrible his statements are. Some of the things he said were, to put it politely, quite unconventional.

But at the same time he was telling the truth to the Europeans, for example on rearmament. His first meeting with Angela Merkel, when he said to her, "How does it make sense that you're sending all those euros to Russia to buy Russian gas? I’m defending you, and you're not spending virtually anything on national defense?" And in a very transactional way, Trump would say, "Hey, you're not paying Angela. What's going on here?"

Europeans, and to some extent American elites, thought that Trump's first administration was just an exception, a blip, and that the Biden administration was a return to normalcy. But it's not that simple. If you look at the reaction of European leaders, the day before the election they were calling Trump Mussolini, Hitler, and talking about the end of democracy. And then all of a sudden Macron invites him to the opening of Notre Dame. And one after the other, world leaders are coming to West Palm Beach (where Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is located — ed.).

Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron. Photo CNN
Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron. Photo CNN

Such a sweeping victory he achieved — for the first time in decades, Republicans won a majority in the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House — indicates that something fundamental has changed. So now the question is: what will the strategy be going forward?

And on the "America first" policy. Can you imagine a Ukrainian politician saying, "No, Ukraine comes second"? Every nation prioritizes its own interests. And yes, he made a slogan out of it, because there is a strong feeling among the American people.

I was recently in Michigan to give a lecture. When you're in Washington, you kind of live in a bubble, but when you travel to the heartland, it's a completely different world. People are frustrated.

For 20 years, as you know, we fought the so-called global war on terror. And we have not achieved our strategic objectives. You saw how the pullout out of Afghanistan was executed. You saw these desperate people running after planes, and American soldiers being killed.

There is a sense that America is no longer taken seriously because we have lost our ability to deter. In other words, I remember in 2022, before your country was attacked for the second time, I was still working for the Department of Defense. We were seeing what the Russians were doing. And we were releasing and declassifying a lot of information to deter the Russians, to tell them, "Hey, we see what you're doing, don't." But they went in. Right?

And then we had 2023, Hamas attacked the closest ally of the United States in the Middle East, Israel. We had a case after the Israelis killed an Iranian general, when Iranians said they were going to hit Israel directly. President Biden said to the Iranians, "Don't do that." But they attacked nonetheless.

So when you talk to citizens in the heartland, you hear this sense of, "Why aren't we respected? Do you know how much the global war on terror has cost? About $8 trillion, according to the Watson Institute at Brown University. Even if it's less than that, it's a huge amount of money. And suddenly we were chasing jihadis over the mountains. And meanwhile, the Russians and the Chinese are arming.

The Russians invaded Georgia in 2008 and suffered no consequences, in my view. In fact, Nord Stream 1 was completed. The Russians then attacked your country and took Crimea. Nord Stream 2 was built.

Every time Putin used military power, there was a lot of talk from Europe. But he scored geopolitical victories. Minsk 1, Minsk 2, and so on.

In 2022, most people thought that Ukraine, A, would be defeated quickly, or, B, would not resist the way it resisted. So if you had collapsed in 2022, what do you think would have happened? I may sound a little cynical now, but probably people would say, "Well, isn't this terrible?" and go back to business [with Russia] as usual.

But something very fundamental happened. Your nation changed history because you stood up and fought. You were also very lucky, because the Russians were incompetent at that time. They had no leadership, they had no logistics, and they had no defense.

But the Russians are learning. And I say this with great pain, but right now they're gaining ground. And that is very dangerous.

More about Mr. Michta's forecast for the war in Ukraine in 2025 will be available in the second part of the interview, coming soon on the "Telegraf" website.