AT first, Canadians just shook their collective heads when United States President Donald Trump suggested Canada become the 51st American state.

They rolled their eyes when he posted a fake image of himself standing next to a Canadian flag amid snowy mountaintops — in actuality, the Swiss Alps.

Another Trump post showed a map purporting to merge Canada and the U.S. That prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to respond on social media that there was not a “snowball’s chance in hell” that Canadians would soon become Americans.

Meme wars are one thing, but in the real world, threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a foreign state is quite another. Canadian leaders have stopped laughing, and they now need to situate Trump’s dangerous rhetoric in the language of international law and state-to-state relations.

As a former Canadian ambassador to the Netherlands, and a permanent representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and international courts and tribunals in The Hague, I know language matters.

Trump’s threats make it an opportune time to provide a brief snapshot of the historical context for Trump’s rhetoric, and the necessary 21st-century vocabulary with which to respond and shape the public discourse.

In threatening hefty tariffs on Canada, Trump cited the flow of fentanyl over the Canada-U.S. border, but it was clear it had little to do with fentanyl, particularly since so little crosses the border into the U.S. Instead, it seems he is coming for Canada’s sovereignty as an independent state.

When asked on Feb. 3 how Canada could ward off tariffs, Trump reiterated: “What I’d like to see is Canada become our 51st state.”

Later that same day, Trump paused tariffs on Canada, ostensibly thanks to border measures that Canada, like Mexico, had already announced. But what is still being said by the president of one of the most powerful nations on Earth cannot be unsaid.

At a Jan. 7 news conference, Trump called the border between Canada and the U.S. an “artificially drawn line” — echoing rhetoric deployed by Vladimir Putin as justification for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. His remarks, in fact, were gleefully retweeted by Russia’s propaganda channel RT.

Putin claims the Ukrainian border is the result of “administrative” action under the former Soviet Union, while Trump appears to be invoking the 19th century American concept of “Manifest Destiny.”

He used the phrase verbatim in his inaugural address in the context of planting a flag on Mars, but it is entirely consistent with his plans for, and rhetoric on, Canada.

As John O'Sullivan, the American diplomat who coined the phrase, wrote in a 1845 article entitled Annexation, it’s America’s destiny to “overspread the continent.” Trump appears to be taking that idea to heart.

Arguably the biggest fan of territorial expansion in the 20th century was Adolf Hitler, architect of the Third Reich. Trump reportedly has some of Hitler’s writings on his bedside table. Hitler had this to say in Chapter 4 of Mein Kampf:

“The extent of the national territory is a determining factor in the external security of the nation. The larger the territory which a people has at its disposal, the stronger are the national defences of that people.”

Sound familiar?

But why Canada and not Mexico, you may ask? Likely because he considers Canada less racialized, even though modern-day Canada has a large multicultural population.

In 1848, however, in the midst of the American expansionist era, pro-slavery South Carolina Sen. John Calhoun said:

“We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race — the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race.”

In short, neither the context nor the history informing Trump’s designs on Canada are reassuring for Canadians.

Trump’s dismissive approach to established borders ignores fundamental norms and principles on the sovereignty, equality and territorial integrity of states, codified following the Second World War in the Charter of the United Nations. Canada is a founding member of the UN; its status as a sovereign state is not subject to challenge under international law.

The charter clearly states that “all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

Similarly, the North Atlantic Treaty obliges NATO member states to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

Trump has said he will use “economic force” to annex Canada. The suggestion that an economically devastated Canada could be sufficiently brought to heel has been embraced by the so-called MAGA-sphere, including an influential blogger with ties to Russia.

Threatening economic rather than military force does not make Trump’s efforts at subjugating Canada any more acceptable in terms of international law.

In 1970, in the UN’s Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-Operations Among States, the UN General Assembly unanimously confirmed that “no state may use … economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another state in order to obtain from it the subordination of its exercise of its sovereign rights.” While not legally binding, this declaration represents customary international law.

In 1986, the International Court of Justice ruled in Nicaragua v, United States that:

“A prohibited intervention must accordingly be one bearing on matters in which each State is permitted, by the principle of State sovereignty, to decide freely. One of these is the choice of a political, economic, social and cultural system, and the formulation of foreign policy. Intervention is wrongful when it uses methods of coercion in regard to such choices, which must remain free ones.”

It’s both right and righteous for our elected leaders to say that Canada will never be the 51st state.

But the time has come, especially in the context of Trump’s threats to buy Greenland, seize the Panama Canal and turn Gaza into a Middle Eastern Riviera, to call out his threats to Canada.

Amid Trump’s dizzying litany of outlandish pronouncements, Canada’s leaders must keep track of what Trump’s declarations represent:

A threat to international peace and security;

A threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Canada;

Unlawful coercion and intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state;

A breach of the UN Charter;

A breach of the North Atlantic treaty.

Trump’s threats are no way to treat an ally, but unfortunately for him, international law is on Canada’s side.


This article is republished from The Conversation via Reuters Connect