Shake-up alert: Panama isn’t the only US ally that Trump has rattled
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. President-elect Donald Trump appears keen to expand on the long-standing American belief in the United States’ “manifest destiny" to dominate its part of the world.
His utterances on buying up Greenland, enrolling Canada as a state and forcibly taking over the Panama Canal all suggest that the US guiding principle under Trump would be ‘Might is Right.’ This might work in the face of a few small nation-states in no position to resist, but would rile bigger powers and also weaken the alliances that have held Pax Americana in place under Washington’s watch. It is not just economic and military might that underpins US leadership, but also its moral suasion, as articulated by its diplomacy and cultural advocacy.
To abandon that, as Trump seems disposed to do once he takes office on 20 January, would be to unravel the power structures that uphold the world order and open up at least a brief phase of instability. India’s stance of being non- or multi-aligned should help it be one of the countries least rattled by any Trumpian overreach.
The 19th century US gloried in the notion that destiny had given it the duty to spread the republican form of government and American way of life across the Americas. Its key role in World War II, the rebuilding of Europe and setting of global rules, coupled with its economic success, domination of the world’s financial system and the rise of Communism, led its leaders to envision its ‘manifest’ mission as a girdle for the whole globe, even if it was not polite to say so openly.
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