It’s time for the world to consign expansionism, like war, to history
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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A little over 85 years ago, on 1 September 1939, the Wehrmacht attacked Poland under orders from Adolf Hitler, sparking off World War II. At the end of a conflict whose body count from military and civilian casualties is estimated at around 70-85 million, a global world order emerged in which the sanctity of territorial boundaries, democracy and liberal values were enshrined as non-negotiable.
Old institutions were repurposed and new ones set up to protect these values and embed them in social, political, cultural and economic practices. True, this edifice has faced threats from all kinds of actors in the years since, even though popular belief exuded confidence in its doctrines. But the emerging political grammar in democracies across the globe today prompts an unavoidable question: Have we reached a tipping point? This is moot in the light of US President-elect Donald Trump’s public utterances on annexing Canada and Greenland, apart from threatening to overturn an old US-Panama treaty and wrest back control of the Panama Canal, a key waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Some of this might be plain bluster, as has been interpreted by many security and strategic analysts. However, the verity of Trump’s expansionist talk will only be known after his inauguration on 20 January. Assuming the next US leader is serious about his well publicized intentions, multiple repercussions are likely to arise if his threats are carried through.
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