Trump’s threats to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland sound like Putin on Ukraine

I meant to write a column about key global flashpoints to watch out for in 2025.

But I soon realized there are two main things you need to observe closely in the new year to assess whether this chaotic world will grow more stable: what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin each want from the world (hint: it seems to be the same thing), and where that obsession will lead them — and the rest of us.

If you judge the Russian dictator and the wannabe U.S. autocrat by what they are saying, each is looking to the past. They want to revert to Cold War behavior — dividing much of the world into spheres of influence controlled, respectively, by Washington and Moscow — or go further back to the great power imperialism of the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s, when large powers simply devoured the small.

Putin has already put his plan into military action in Ukraine and Belarus, attempting to expand Russian overlordship along the lines of the old Soviet Union — or even beyond. That means military or political control, or even annexation, of not only Ukraine, but also the Baltics, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, adjacent seaways, and now the Arctic.

» READ MORE: Trump’s Ukraine policy in 2025 will show if he is a winner or a loser | Trudy Rubin

Over and over, in speeches since 2007, the Kremlin leader has bemoaned the fall of the Soviet Union and extolled the past glories of the Russian empire.

As renowned Russia experts Fiona Hill and Angela Stent wrote in 2022 in Foreign Affairs, Putin “wants the West and the global South to accept Russia’s predominant regional role in Eurasia.

“This is more than a sphere of influence; it is a sphere of control, with a mixture of outright territorial reintegration of some places and dominance in the security, political, and economic spheres of others.”

They added that, as we have seen in Ukraine, “Putin is serious about achieving these goals by military and nonmilitary means.”

This is why Putin has insisted over and over that any talks on Ukraine be conducted between him and Trump without Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. To Russia, Kyiv is irrelevant.

The message to Trump is: Let’s divide a large chunk of the world up between the big boys, you and me.

So it is stunning, if not surprising, to hear President-elect Trump demand that Denmark sell its autonomous territory of Greenland to the United States, and that Panama return the canal to Washington.

“Denmark should give it up,” he said at a news conference Tuesday, “because we need it for national security purposes.” When asked if he would give assurances the U.S. wouldn’t use force to obtain Greenland or the Panama Canal, he responded, “No, I can’t assure you.”

Many assume this Trump tough talk is his signature bluster, which he uses to threaten allies to do what he wants. When he suggested renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum trolled Trump with a 17th-century map labeling the United States “America Mexicana.”

Yet, Trump’s military threats to Panama and fellow NATO member Denmark — however unlikely he is to attack either — raise the question of whether he really yearns to join Putin in establishing geographic spheres of influence.

Down that dream road, the United States abandons NATO and Putin gets Ukraine, along with a U.S. green light for Moscow to dominate half of Europe and Central Asia. Russian TV has already been promoting video of Trump’s news conference threat to use force against Greenland or Panama as proof that their Ukraine intervention was justified. (And Russia insists Greenland is in its sphere of influence.)

As for the U.S. sphere of influence, Trump yearns to resurrect the Monroe Doctrine (which he has praised at the United Nations). Washington invoked that doctrine from 1823 to the end of the Cold War to justify unlimited intervention in Central and South America.

Such a strategy would play right into Putin’s — and Xi Jinping’s — hands.

Russia is a weak country with nukes. But if Trump hands off Ukraine to Putin and fatally weakens NATO, Putin emerges as the winner, and the United States will look like a fading power. As for China and North Korea, they will have learned important lessons: If the U.S. is focusing on its own sphere of influence, it’s time for Beijing to take Taiwan and a nuclear Pyongyang to consider invading Seoul.

Moreover, any effort to reassert the Monroe Doctrine will rally Latin American countries to stand against U.S. imperialism, and probably drive them closer to China. Beijing has long curried favor with big infrastructure and other investments in Central and South America, while U.S. governments paid too little attention. Now is the time to economically and militarily tighten an alliance with the nation of Panama, not push it away.

But it is Greenland where a policy that consists only of threats and bluster is demonstrably wrong.

This icy Danish territory, three times the size of Texas and populated by around 56,800 people, “is critically important for strategic geography,” I was told by Rebecca Pincus, director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.

The island is home to a vital U.S. military installation, the Pituffik Space Base, used for missile defense and space surveillance, and which tracks the movement of Russian nuclear submarines.

Greenland is also situated near newly opened Arctic shipping routes whose control will be under challenge by Russia. Adds Pincus, “It is also home to large deposits of minerals critical to 21st-century technology.”

But it is not simply a piece of land close ally Denmark is willing to sell to the United States.

» READ MORE: To predict what Trump will do at home, look at the strongmen he most admires overseas | Trudy Rubin

The same week Donald Trump Jr. visited Greenland’s capital of Nuuk to dispense MAGA talking points in front of TV cameras, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the island is “not for sale,” adding that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.” Indeed, the people of Greenland have a full say in the future of their island and may one day choose independence. If so, they should be invited to join NATO, not instructed to swallow U.S. rule.

Indeed, the way to improve U.S. security interests is to continue the recent tightening of American ties to Denmark and Greenland. Denmark has just pledged an additional $1.5 billion to upgrade Greenland’s defense but should be pressed to finally meet NATO’s baseline 2% of GDP for defense spending. “There is a need to upgrade the base,” Pincus said, “to confront new Russian threats, such as hypersonic missiles.”

As for mining rare minerals in Greenland’s harsh climate, it will take U.S. investors (and perhaps new local laws) to counter any forays by Chinese companies to buy licenses. Congress could encourage such investment.

If Trump would only recognize the Russian threat. He is in a great position to strengthen NATO by pressing allies to gin up mutual defenses in the Arctic and Europe and spend more on security. But any effort to imitate Putin by threatening to seize territory is a losing proposition. It is bound to boomerang on him and on the United States.