He simply wants to make America bigger
https://www.wsj.com/politics/the-painting-that-explains-trumps-foreign-policy-c387323a
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
236 points (98.8% liked)
News
27164 readers
4802 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
So is the poster in the illustrative photo
Exactly. Makes Putin look less bad for annexing Ukraine
This is his (stupid and selfdefeating) way to tackle four problems:
- US industry, especially those close to him, needs rare earth minerals. Canada and especially Greenland might provide those.
- Climate change will render large parts of the US uninhabitable in a few decades time. The US therefore needs Lebensraum. Now that’s a word he and his right-arm-raising friends love.
- Combining 2 and 1, the Arctic is melting. Exposing all sorts of new mineable goodies, and opening up new waterways. That will provide new economic opportunities as well as create new military threats. Owning Canada and Greenland would go a long way towards mitigating that.
- Trump sees a future in which a few large power blocks control the world. Currently, the US is one of the smallest of those: only 350 million where China and India are over 1 billion each, Europe is more than 500 million, etc. So the US needs to expand and grow its population size.
He's much too stupid for any of this, so I assume we're talking about the architects of project 2025 and/or putin?
Point 1 will be underscored regularly by his oligarch cronies, like Musk, Bezos and Brin - those that want to build rockets, electronics and batteries. They would love for the US to become totally independent of China, in minerals but also production capacity and price levels.
Point 3 will be mostly military talking points, and although it’s not in the media much, the race for the Arctic has been on for a while.
Points 2 and 4 are about raw power on the world stage, and that’s something Trump does understand. He doesn’t believe in cultural, diplomatic or economic power - only military. It also rhymes with nazi ideology about Lebensraum, a homeland for the ‘pure race’ that derives its global power from its purity. It might also involve a breeding ideology.
100%. T rump is just a tool that they put in place to do their bidding and to be a fall guy when the people finally get off their asses.
I think that's why they have musk around. Not only is he doing a lot of the controversial stuff but he's loaded
Could find some lebensraum in Russia instead?
- Expand and grown population size by deportig?
The Canadians are our homies, why would orange want to hurt our homie? They've been with us thru thick and thin, and now orange wants to fuck things up for us? Don't think we want this either dear Canadians, those ball guzzlers just regurgitate whatever orange says. Even if it hurts us, by Canadian goods only until orange leaves office, if not sooner because homies should only kiss, not attack.
Republicans also question Trump's strategy, noting annexation would add millions of liberal-leaning voters and complicate American politics.
You mean millions of insurgents literally trying to murder every Republican politician and burn America to the ground. Not sure why their voting habits would be relevant in the face of that.
I think a lot of Americans are completely unaware of just how fucking furious we are at this flippant talk of destroying our country and subjugating our people. Even a lot of the ones who are unsympathetic to Trump don't understand just what this kind of talk means to us.
It’s not confusing - they know climate change is real and they want more northern territories for when the shit hits the fan so they have somewhere to go
Can’t stop big oil though because you can’t run a military on batteries yet and besides, muh Raytheon stock
I mean it really isn't confusing if you look at it through the lens of Putin told his lackey to fuck up everything he could concentrating on wrecking our strongest trading and defense relationships.
Seen through that lens it's very clear what the agenda is: Weaken the US and its allies.
You don't try to understand insanity, you treat it.
Don't you have to understand it somewhat to treat it?
That depends on the method of treatment.
Kinetic lobotomy
I vote open up the skull to study the brain, the old fashioned way.
It's not really confusing. His whole strategy, as we saw during his first term, is to do and say so much outrageous stuff that no particular scandal can stick with him. He also thinks being a bully is being a good businessman.
I doubt he would actually want to annex anywhere, but it's easy ragebait that he can keep bringing up to keep news on that and off of his crimes.
Bull pucks. The man isn’t playing 4-D chess with the News, he’s not even do a deliberate Gish-Gallop. He’s just saying the first thing that pops in to his head. And right now that’s I want to go down in history as the greatest president ever. He thinks if he expands the US he’ll be bigger then Jefferson.
I don't agree. I think he will really do it. Spewing out everything at once is benefitting him/project 2025 but it would be a mistake to think it's just talk at this point. That's why Canadian politicians are being so strong on this. It's really happening.
Agreed. The outlandish stuff is actually a little bit safer. Actually dangerous geopolitical stuff that might kick off something he can't control, because it might realistically happen, he avoids like the plague unless it carries some kind of strong benefit to him personally. He just likes to talk shit because it's fun. I don't think it is any more complicated than that.
I suspect that this is why Musk was brought in. Musk is actually willing to take an axe to the main pillars of the building, in a lot more energetic and systematized fashion than Trump would be inclined to.
"Canada only works as a state," Trump said Thursday. "We don’t need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states anywhere. This would be the most incredible country, visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S. Just a straight, artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many many decades ago. Makes no sense. It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state."
They're all "artificial" lines Donald
Trump sees the world through the lens of autarky. It's like the man fell out of the 18th century. He thinks nations are these self-sufficient organisms living on the planet, competing for resources, etc. He thinks trade means dependency and weakness, rather than mutual benefit and specialization. The man has never had to share anything with anyone in his entire life; it's not surprising he would have such a warped world view.
That is what he means by "Canada only works as a (US) state." The US really could make a decent play at autarky. The US gets about 30% of its GDP from trade; Canada gets 70%. It's foolish to try to do it overnight. But if the US wanted to make an attempt at autarky, and made the transition over decades? The US could pull that off. It would mean being poorer than we would be otherwise. We would have to accept more expensive and lower quality goods, but we could do it. The US has a large enough land area, population, and resource base that it could, on its own, maintain an industrial society completely from domestic resources.
Canada? It would have a much, much harder time at autarky. If both the US and Canada forever closed all their international borders tomorrow, Canada would end up a lot worse off than the US. Canada, as an island nation unto itself, would have a really hard time surviving.
Of course, there's no damn reason that nations need to survive by autarky. They're not independent islands. And we all grow richer by specialization and trade. But that fundamentally is not how Trump sees the world.
Yet the line south of Texas is inviolable, sacred, a proud bulwark...
It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state.
Wrong word, Donald. You mean "coveted." You don't cherish Canada, you covet it.
"We don’t need anything they have [...]"
I say again, "okay, Dougie, blink the lights a bit."
Shut down 4 red states for the weekend and see how it goes.
Each province should be a state! We will be come blue as a country and can have Medicare for all and high speed rail.
The cost both monetarily and in manpower to invade Canada would be astronomical
Don't forget the cost on the souls of the American people for the betrayal.
Why believe Congressional Republicans at their word when they say they don't support this talk or don't know where it is coming from? They're collaborator filth. They will "suddenly" fall in line when something actionable is put forth.
They could show their disapproval by impeaching Trump. They would never though.
It's not confusing, he's a megalomaniac who thinks foreign policy should resemble a game of Risk. Outside a tight circle of influence, everyone else is disposable meat that annoys him and deserves whatever punishment they receive. It's not new behavior.
How tight is that circle? Mr Trump seemed to abandon Mr Giuliani at a crucial time, and I thought the two were thick as thieves.
Giuliani was a useful idiot with a law degree and a certain amount of 9/11 good will. Better idiots with fewer ethical standards and law degrees are throwing themselves at him, and he doesn't need to pretend to give a fuck about American lives or first responders now that he's in power. Like everyone else who rode the 9/11 wave and thought it was amazing for poll numbers and easy fundraising.
It might be confusing dumb muricans, but its pissing canadians off
Republicans: I vigorously maintain that dementia is, in fact, pretty fucking cool.
Climate change will make the southern 2/3 of the USA unlivable within a few decades. Canada has a lot of land. Trump’s teamwants it and the resources within.
25th Amendment anyone?
25 Trump, then 25 Vance.
Then Johnson after.
For prompt service, please take a number and wait in line.