Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States of America, has been expressing a desire to annex the territory of other countries—including that of some allies, such as Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. (He has also repeatedly talked of making Canada, one of the United States’ oldest and closest friends, into a 51st state.) Trump declared in his State of the Union address to Congress that he intends to gain control of Greenland “one way or the other”—and even sent Vice President J.D. Vance there in late March, to make a pitch for Greenland to consider US leadership by claiming that Denmark is “failing” at securing the Arctic island.

It seems that Greenland is still in the minds of the Trump Administration, though in a more low-key way that has not dominated the news cycle as much lately. According to the Greenland newspaper High North News,[1] the administration has been doing small, subtle, low-key activities like moving Greenland to US Northern Command for all US military operations, for what the Pentagon claims is “part of US homeland defense.” (The map was previously drawn so that Greenland was under “US-European Command.”)

All this, even though Greenland’s prime minister has said: “We don’t want to be Americans… we are not for sale.”[2]

The reasons for the land-grabs that Trump desires are obscure; these countries have been close allies to the United States for decades, if not centuries. Access to potential sources of rare earths has been mentioned as one possible reason, as has oil. But the United States can simply buy those items from these same countries, negating the need to annex them. Some other motives seem to be behind this reawakened urge for empire among Trump and his team—and there seemed no better person to explain it all than historian and author Daniel Immerwahr of Northwestern University, who wrote the 2019 best-seller, How to Hide an Empire.[3]

In this interview, Immerwahr goes into the reasons for this Trumpian fixation on territorial expansion, be it Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, or somewhere else. He talks about what Trump’s territorial ambitions mean for international relations in general—and whether rival countries may follow his path, leading to a new age of annexations, colonies, and empires.

And Immerwahr points out that there are a number of problems with imperialism—which not only has inflicted harms on the colonized, but has also worked out poorly for some of the colonizers, as can be been in the aftermaths of World Wars I and II.

(Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.)

Dan Drollette: A short time ago, former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that “everyone is understandably talking about Iran, but the rest of Donald Trump’s policy agenda continues to goose-step on.”[4] Trump’s been talking about possibly annexing Greenland—whether it wants it or not. And Trump’s talked of making Canada a 51st state, taking back the Panama Canal Zone, moving Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and turning their land into a real estate development that he says would be a “Riviera of the Middle East,” and changing the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.”

Daniel Immerwahr: And also renaming “Mount Denali” as “Mount McKinley.”

Drollette: Oh, yes—yet another one.

How serious do you think Trump is? Is his administration really going to attempt to acquire Greenland? Or is he making these statements just to distract his political opponents from all the other upheavals going on in his administration?

Immerwahr: The Trump administration is known for proposing a lot of things and only doing some of them, so I think it’s really hard to get our heads around which of these are trial balloons and which are dead serious.

As a member of the public, it’s possible to err in both directions: It’s possible to chase after something that was never really serious in the first place, and it’s also possible to not take something seriously that turns out to be a reality.

My sense is that some of these proposals are not fully thought-out, such as Canada’s becoming a 51st state. I mean, that would be an enormous state, and a Democratic one. So, it’s hard for me to believe this is something his administration would want.

However, the first Trump administration did talk briefly about annexing Greenland. And while that seemed like a passing fancy at the time, all the reporting this time around suggests that Trump is insistent and persistent about Greenland. Whether that will result in annexation, I don’t know.

The larger question is whether the administration would back these attempts with force or economic duress.

Daniel Immerwahr. Image courtesy of the author.

Drollette: So, at first it sounded like Trump was just saying whatever it takes to stay in the political limelight…

Immerwahr: Yes.

Drollette: …but some of his actions make it sound like he’s more serious this time—such as his saying in the State of the Union address to Congress that he intends to gain control of Greenland “one way or the other.”[5] Didn’t Trump even send vice president Vance there in late March, to make a pitch for Greenland to consider US leadership by claiming Denmark is “failing” at running this island?[6]

Immerwahr: Yeah. Meanwhile, there are two obvious hurdles: The wishes of the people of Greenland, and the willingness of the government of Denmark to sell Greenland. And I think both of those constituencies are firmly against Trump; Greenland’s prime minister said something to the effect that “We don’t want to be Americans. We are not for sale.”

But the United States has the world’s most powerful military and is an extraordinarily large and difficult country to say “no” to. Trump knows that, and he’s exploring the options.

If it came down to the starkest possible scenario—“Give us Greenland, or we’ll invade”—I don’t know what would happen. It would be such a stark deviation from so much US policy since 1945. Of course, that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t capable of doing that. He sharply deviates from long-held norms all the time.

Drollette: Why do you think he wants Greenland?

Immerwahr: That’s one of the more baffling aspects. But historically, there have been two major appeals of empire to US leaders. One is strategic: “If we control this bit on the map, then that makes it easier to defend that bit, or to attack this other bit.” The other is economic, as in: “This part of the Earth has the kinds of things that we like, such as minerals or oil, and controlling it will give us more secure access to them.”

But both of those are confusing with regard to Greenland; they don’t seem to really apply. On the one hand, the United States has already had a large base there for some time, and no one’s proposing to kick that base off the island.

And the US already has access to Greenland’s resources, simply by buying them. The government of Denmark has long said: “Look, we’re open for business. If you want to buy things from us, we’ll sell them to you.”

So, the historical logic doesn’t seem to apply.

Before 1945, territorial empires were far more extensive, and the threat of territorial annexation was omnipresent. Back then, people did argue along the lines of: “If we don’t colonize this place, then Germany might take it instead. Or Japan might. That would mean we’d be prohibited from buying resources from that colony.” In that kind of world—where great powers are competing with each other to annex territory—you can at least understand the urge to lock down an important trade partner.

But we don’t live in that world—at least, not now. And in fact, the thing that would most likely pitch us back into that violent and unlovely world would be what Trump seems to be proposing, which is for the United States to start annexing large swaths of land again.

Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black and a US Navy MH-60R Seahawk helicopter aircrew transit through the Nuup Kagerlua Fjord on August 21, 2024, near Nuuk, Greenland. The Delbert D. Black partnered with the US Coast Guard, Royal Canadian Navy, and Royal Danish Navy during Operation Nanook, the annual military readiness exercise among the allies to enhance defense capabilities in the Arctic. Image courtesy of Petty Officer 3rd Class Anthony Randisi / US Coast Guard.

Drollette: Why do you think it’s come to the fore now? What puts Greenland on the radar politically?

Immerwahr: I’m genuinely unsure. Some of the things Trump wants, he’s wanted his whole political career. Other things his MAGA base wants. Still others, the Republican establishment wants. Those are three different forms of consistency.

But this seems to defy all three: Trump does not have a long history of seeking annexation; I see no interest in this among the MAGA base; and I see none from the Republican establishment, either. Whatever support there is for annexation seems to be a sort of reflexive support for whatever Trump happens to say. I don’t see much autonomous interest from anyone other than Trump.

There is a Silicon Valley idea that the US could use Greenland to create a base for outer space—a sort of dress rehearsal, escape-pod fantasy. But that seems to be marginal, and not a deep part of the MAGA constituency.

Drollette: Sometimes our president just develops a momentary obsession about an idea?

Immerwahr: There does seem to be something arbitrary and fanciful about this. We could say, though, that the turn toward annexation is at least compatible with something that Trump does seem deeply committed to—which is the dismantling of what is often called the “liberal international order.” That is the notion that the great powers are meant to achieve their aims through commerce rather than conquest.

US presidents since 1945 have claimed that these are the rules of the road. And Trump is uncomfortable with those rules, mainly because of his discomfort with how trade is conducted within it. So, those two things are consistent—being uncomfortable with aspects of the liberal world order and wanting to take Greenland or Canada.

There is also an element of Trumpian psychology to it: The liberal international order has been, at least in theory, an important intellectual and legal constraint on US power, and Trump just doesn’t like constraints of any kind. He perceives the liberal international order as a potential threat to his power. It’s similar to his “I don’t like experts because they might recommend the opposite of what I want.” He’s omni-directionally defiant.

Drollette: I haven’t heard the phrase “omni-directionally defiant” before.

Immerwahr: I think I may have just made it up. I can always retract it.

Drollette: No, no, I like it. I think it does really sum up his bent: defiance to anything and everything.

And by the use of the word “liberal,” you’re referring to the idea of a rules-based order—one that stresses international cooperation?

Immerwahr: Yes. I know it’s confusing, because the word “liberal” has a distinctive meaning within the US domestic context, where it generally tends to refer to those of us on the left side of the dance floor. But within the context of international politics, “liberal” usually refers to classical liberalism—John Stuart Mill-style stuff. And in the context of “liberal international order,” the “liberal” is a belief in trade and openness to trade. Think of The Economist magazine, whose origins go back to that same Mill era.

In theory, one of the tenets of the post-1945 world is that countries that trade with each other are less likely to invade each other—and countries that can access resources via trade are less likely to seek colonies in order to get them. Once again, the emphasis is on the idea that there are rules to trade, there are contracts: “I promise this, you give me that.”

People who care a lot about stability and trade are often interested in rules, because it’s a lot easier to make deals—especially long-term deals—when there’s a feeling of stability in the economy. You feel like everyone has agreed on what’s legal, what’s not legal, what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate.

And while Trump is famous for what he calls “the art of the deal,” he seems less interested in the kind of macroeconomic stability that, according to economists, allows deals to flow.

He’s often more interested in the short-term deals, the one-offs. Once you’ve dealt with Trump, you’ll never deal with him again, because you’ve realized he won’t pay his bills. He stresses short-term gain, rather than the kind of iterated forms of contact that most people prefer.

Drollette: And I guess that can be seen in other areas too, such as his approach toward Iran: “This is a one-off strike, we don’t need to do it again. These bunker-buster bombs will only be used this one time.”

Immerwahr: Yeah, that’s right. What got some of us very nervous about Trump’s strike in Iran was the fear that it would be impossible to limit it to a single tit-for-tat exchange, which is how he presented it.

Although let me say that this episode was not particularly Trumpian or unusual. The George W. Bush administration had a similar fantasy that politics in the Middle East could be altered cleanly with airstrikes: You just zap a few targets and it would be done.

It’s not always the case that bombing foreigners makes them more compliant, though. It often just hardens their resolve.

Drollette: Getting back to Greenland and territorial expansion, what do you feel Trump is thinking? Is he in thrall to the old Manifest Destiny, empire-building kind of thing? Or is he reflecting something new and different?

Immerwahr: Well, let’s just say that Trump is not a keen student of history, though he does make enthusiastic historical references from time to time. In his first administration, he was quite taken by Andrew Jackson, and in his second administration, the guy is William McKinley.

But while he talks about these figures, it’s never seemed to us historians that Trump’s historical enthusiasms were particularly deep or informed.

Still, I think that he is right to sense an affinity between his worldview and the worldview of the Gilded Age, which is when McKinley was president. He is clearly drawn to historical actors and episodes that precede the liberal international order—like the original America First movement, which was one of the last bastions of resistance to the liberal international order, right on the cusp of US entry into World War II.

I think that kind of annexationist—or screw-your-neighbor—outlook came more easily to politicians in the 19th century, and Trump senses a kinship.

I think that he’s a very perceptive politician—more than we’re prone to give him credit for—who is able to pick up on threads and then knows how to package them.

He has sharp instincts, is good at sensing the political winds and understanding what might be possible—or what thing might connect to what other thing. Outside observers used to think of him as dumb, because he doesn’t articulate things in a fully thought-out or internally coherent way. But he does good crowd work, he’s good at channeling political forces, and he’s a master of social media—even though it’s kind of weird sometimes.

**Drollette: **Speaking of social media, did you see that map that he posted on Truth Social of Canada and the United States? They’re both all red, white, and blue. [It subsequently appeared on other social media as well, such as X / Twitter.)

Screen shot of Donald Trump’s January 7, 2025 post to Truth Social.

**Immerwahr: **Surprisingly enough—and Trump had no idea of this—there was something similar during the McKinley era. In the 1890s, the McKinley Tariff was so economically damaging to Canada that there was some nervousness among high-level Canadians that it might lead to the annexation of Canada. And one of the ways that fear played out was the republication of an allegedly US-generated map looking very similar to Trump’s map, which showed Canada broken into US states.

That fear wasn’t wrong. The US Secretary of State at the time was indeed hoping that McKinley’s tariff would force the Canadians to become part of the United States. (See figure below.)

Alleged New York World map reprinted in a pamphlet distributed to the Toronto Branch of the Imperial Federation League, as it appeared in John Hague’s Canada for Canadians (Toronto: Hart and Company, 1889). Public domain image.

Drollette: One oddity about the Trump map was that it did not include Mexico or Puerto Rico.

Immerwahr: In fact, I commented on that very thing to the press. It’s interesting that it’s not a maximalist map of the United States, it’s a selective map of the United States. By that, I mean it imagines the United States growing to incorporate Canada, but also shrinking so that it no longer has Puerto Rico.

And we know from leaks of behind closed-door conversations that Trump has fantasized about de-annexing Puerto Rico, perhaps selling it off.[7]

Drollette: So, it’s his vision of a *larger *United States and a whiter United States.

**Immerwahr: **Think about what connects all of these spaces that Trump has fantasized about: the Panama Canal Zone, Canada, Greenland, and a cleared-out Gaza. These are not all-white spaces by any means, but you can see how in Trump’s mind, they could be re-made as such.

First, it’s not Panama he wants to take, but the Panama Canal Zone, which historically had been a white-controlled and nearly all-white space.

Canada is obviously multi-racial, but I think in Trump’s mind it is less so.

And as for Greenland, I sense that Trump and his allies feel that it is empty enough that it could be a blank canvas in which to create a society full of the kinds of people Trump likes.

This fantasy was explicit with Gaza, where Trump’s territorial dream involved the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, so that it would contain no more Gazans.

It’s not that unusual of a fantasy, historically. Many past US leaders have envisioned North America—or at least the part controlled by the United States—as a predominantly white space where Indigenous people will be dispossessed. The idea was that they would just vanish into the sunset somehow, whether pushed there by wars or by natural extinction. And often that was accompanied by a sense that, while there might be people of other racial origins in the country, like African-Americans, they would be firmly subordinated. This would be essentially a white space, though perhaps with some Black help.

Drollette: I guess that Trump doesn’t seem to have a hostility to all foreigners. I mean, his current wife is from Slovenia, his first wife is from Czechoslovakia, his grandfather immigrated from Germany, and his mother came from Scotland. It seems that foreigners are okay, if they’re from what he considers the right part of the world.

**Immerwahr: **It’s true. Trump is reanimating the explicitly racial fantasies of 19th-century politicians and intellectuals—fantasies which were rightly scorned by the later 20th-century politicians and intellectuals. Of course, there are still people who have quietly held onto such fantasies. But the general rule has been to collectively reject such ideas, because we know how dangerous and violent they turn out to be.

Trump famously says the quiet part out loud. So, he’s comfortable in saying: “The problem with Gaza is Gazans. The good thing about Gaza is it’s nice real estate, so we’re going to put the right people in there and send the wrong people packing, and then it’s going to be a great place.”

That’s what these 19th-century racist fantasies were all about: “This kind of person belongs here, that kind of person doesn’t.”

One reason we find them reprehensible now is that we know that, when it comes down to it, people don’t just happily move because someone else wants their space. Undergirding these fantasies has always been the threat of violence: “We don’t want you here. And so we will seek to remove you. Ultimately, that might come down to just killing you.”

Drollette: Is this just Trump, or is there a genuine new social movement?

**Immerwahr: **I’m not sure how many of Trump’s supporters really feel excited about his Palestine plans.

A huge part of Trump’s pitch has been to those who feel left behind racially, by which he means largely white people. “I see you,” he promises. “This government is for you.” So you could regard these kind of white territorial fantasies as aligning with his domestic politics, which are about a kind of restoring of dignity to white people, particularly white men.

But I think that while there are a lot of people in Trump’s base who feel that they’ve been pushed aside and want a restoration of their status, they have no view whatsoever about what to do with Greenland.

Drollette: Do you think that in some ways, Trump is echoing Vladimir Putin’s try to grab Ukraine? Trump thinks: “Here’s a strong man who just takes what he wants?”

Cover of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, which was a New York Times critics’ top books of 2019 title, and winner of the Robert H. Ferrell Prize.

**Immerwahr: **One other interpretation is that we are entering a more annexationist period in world history.

To some extent, annexationism is old news. It’s not true, as people sometimes imagine, that territorial empires have been entirely wiped off the map. The United States still has Puerto Rico and four other inhabited territories. But it is true that, for the last couple of decades, powerful countries have not—largely—resolved their differences by trying to take each other’s land.

For example, the US invaded Iraq and overthrew its government, but there was no appetite within the George W. Bush administration for seizing Iraq and making it a permanent part of the United States.

But one worry about a reversion to annexationism is that the strategy is contagious. We all have reason to be deeply worried that Putin’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine will become, not an aberration, but a template. That would lead to a relaxation of the “no land grabs” norm, especially because several of the most powerful countries have territorial interests that could be resolved by invading and taking other countries. They could justify it by saying that “If we don’t do it, then someone else will, and we’ll be locked out.” The early 20th century was marked by that kind of thinking, which led to World War I and World War II. I don’t want to see them again, both because those wars were unspeakably bloody, and also because now we have lots of nuclear weapons.

Drollette: When I was living and working overseas, people would sometimes tell me that: “You Americans have an empire; you just don’t admit it.”

Immerwahr: Yes, and no.

Historically, if you asked: “Has the United States ever sought to take territory beyond its borders,” then the answer is absolutely “Yes.” That’s how a country occupying a small part of North America wound up with a much larger part of North America. That’s how it ended up taking Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, Alaska, etcetera. You could also point to the roughly 750 bases that the United States has outside of the States as another territorial ambition.

But I think you’d nevertheless have to acknowledge that since the end of World War II, the United States has not sought acreage.

By and large, there’s a huge difference between colonies and those military bases over which the United States claims jurisdiction but not total sovereignty. Often, those bases are wrapped in legal ambiguity, they have a sort of semi-sovereignty. The United States sometimes has jurisdiction over crimes committed by its people on the base—and sometimes even its people off the base. But that sort of extraterritoriality is different from overthrowing countries and taking all their land.

The United States hasn’t pushed to annex large swaths of land since World War II. The United States let go of its largest colony, the Philippines.

So, yes, the US has outsized ambitions that involve seeking influence and controlling processes throughout the world. But, no, it has not sought territorial conquest in the last few decades.

I think a better way to put it is that while the United States still has colonies, its bid to dominate other parts of the world largely does not take the form of territorial conquest.

Or, you could have said that until now. What Trump is suggesting—that’s colonialism.

Drollette: What lessons can we take away from the age of empire, when it seemed that every country wanted a colony—as seen by books with titles like The Scramble for Africa, The Rape of Nanking, and The Anarchy. Are we on the verge of rehashing what happened in the 19th and early 20th centuries?

**Immerwahr: **Lord, I hope not. The age of empire was not a particularly happy time, for a few reasons.

First, empire is not a particularly effective form of government. The history of empire is full of maltreatment of the colonized, sometimes because the imperialists are hostile to the colonized, sometimes because they just don’t care what happens to them. For example, the history of India under the British features many massive famines. Some of those seem to have been easily preventable. But they weren’t prevented, because the British didn’t regard the lives of Indians as mattering all that much. So that’s one danger of empire: the danger for the colonized.

But there’s another danger of empire: the danger to the colonizers. If you think that the appropriate way to seek power is to seize foreign lands, you quickly run into the problem of your neighbors doing the same thing. And then you start getting into fights: “Is this my land? Is this yours?” That is how we ended up with World Wars I and II; they were fights between expansionary powers over who got to expand where. And they were the most violent wars that we’ve ever had.

There’s a related argument that scholars make frequently: Empires end up re-visiting the violence done to the colonized on the colonizers themselves. So World Wars I and II were essentially the colonial powers doing the same things to each other that they had been doing to colonized peoples in Asia and Africa: The same industrial killing machines that they’d used to mow down anti-colonial revolts they used to mow down each other. This is just to say that even for the colonizers, empire hasn’t been a particularly good bargain.

Endnotes

[1] For more, see “Trump Places Greenland Under US Northern Command” in the June 24, 2025 issue of High North News by Astri Edvardsen (English translation by Birgitte Annie Hansen) at https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/trump-places-greenland-under-us-northern-command

[2] See article on PBS.org website titled “ ‘We’re going to get’ Greenland, Trump said in his address. Prime minister says island isn’t for sale,” no author, March 5, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/were-going-to-get-greenland-trump-said-in-his-address-prime-minister-says-island-isnt-for-sale

The article goes on to say “On the streets of Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, where the temperature was 4 degrees blow zero (minus 20 Celsius) at midday Wednesday and the bright sunshine reflected blindingly off a layer of fresh-fallen snow, people are taking Trump’s designs on their country seriously…”

Greenland’s prime minister posted to Facebook: “We don’t want to be Americans, nor Danes; We are Kalaallit. The Americans and their leader must understand that. We are not for sale and cannot simply be taken. Our future will be decided by us in Greenland.”

[3] See February 13, 2019 book review by Jennifer Szalai, “ ‘How to Hide an Empire’ Shines Light on America’s Expansionist Side” in The New York Times at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/books/review-how-to-hide-empire-daniel-immerwahr.html

[4] “Everyone is talking, understandably, about Iran. But the rest of Donald Trump’s policy agenda continues to goose-step on. Radical changes in social spending, immigration policy and tariffs — changes that will hurt tens of millions of Americans — are either about to start or are already happening.” From Paul Krugman’s Substack post of June 23, 2025, titled “MAGA Will Devastate Rural America” and available at https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/maga-will-devastate-rural-america?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

[5] To see video on C-Span of Trump’s comment that we will get Greenland “one way or the other” during his March 4, 2025 State of Union address, go to https://www.c-span.org/clip/joint-session-of-congress/president-trump-says-he-will-take-greenland-one-way-or-the-other/5155802

[6] “Top takeaway: Denmark ‘has failed’ at keeping Greenland safe, JD Vance says” by Lauren Villagran, USA Today, March 29, 2025 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/28/vice-president-greenland-vance-denmark-has-failed/82711507007/

[7] “Book: Trump wanted to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland,” Jared Gans, The Hill, September 16, 2022 https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3646395-book-trump-wanted-to-trade-puerto-rico-for-greenland/