Donald Trump’s recent proclamation about reshaping North America to have Canada become the 51st state is but one proposed land grab by America’s new President. This may be just another of Trump’s distractions, more attention seeking, or a negotiation tactic from the man who once penned The Art of The Deal. It is worth considering the historical context of such plans and how complicated it might be to actually incorporate Canada into America’s existing political institutions.
The 50 existing U.S. states would no doubt consider Canada, were it to become a single state in the union, an enormous threat to the influence of other states within the Republic. Canada would be America’s largest state in terms of both population & land mass, and its second largest economy. Its influence would be massive and fundamentally alter the balance of power within the United States.
The most acceptable scenario might be for each of Canada’s provinces to join the union as separate states. Although getting them to submit to a new delineation of powers would be a tall order. Canadian provinces are fiercely independent and protective of their powers in a way that might make even the most fervent “states rights” advocates in the U.S. blush. This is true not only in Quebec, the centre of Canada’s largest francophone community, where the separatist Parti Quebecois have a commanding lead in current polling—but also in Alberta and Saskatchewan, who view Ottawa and Quebec as parasites leeching off their oil wealth.
That perspective would hardly be tempered by Washington replacing Ottawa as the national tax collector.
Provinces having to reassess their own weight and powers within the United States might therefore cause the greatest resistance. While Ontario could nestle between New York and Pennsylvania as the fifth largest sate and be able to assert itself, the union would be less advantageous for tiny Prince Edward Island, with a population of only 180k. PEI has a sweet constitutional deal within Confederation; it is guaranteed four seats in Parliament even though its population warrants less than a single seat elsewhere in the country. The U.S. is most unlikely to be as generous.
The next challenge would be the idiosyncratic spirits of Canadian voters, who are unlikely to submit to America’s binary party system. Canadians live in permanent revolt against Duverger’s Law—that single member districts using first-past-the-post voting will lead to a two party system. By contrast, Americans—both structurally and mentally—live in permanent compliance with it.
Indeed, the threat of a multi-party democracy may be just the thing to ward America off.
Aside from its one constant in the shape-shifting cockroach that is the Liberal Party, Canada’s system is frequently in flux. Currently, the House of Commons hosts five political parties, with an array of distinct and federally unaffiliated ones. The Canadian electorate sees different parties serving distinct purposes at each level of government—with exerting regional identity as its core feature.
Behind our polite demeanours, we Canadians are essentially a nation of cats resisting organization. We are incapable of even negotiating free trade agreements within our own borders. While Washington may hold a stronger whip hand than Ottawa, it would also be importing a new set of demographics and interest groups that Canadians may be ill equipped or disinclined to accommodate.
For example, the United States is not about to become a bilingual state. Even with Canada’s roughly 8 million Francophones, there would still be more Spanish speakers in the U.S.
Would Francophones be able to speak French in Congress or the Senate? Would citizens be able to engage with Washington in French? Or to have federal court cases conducted in French, before a Francophone judge?
Denial of such rights might only ignite Quebec separatism. Would Washington allow Quebec to hold a referendum on sovereignty in a nation that fought a bloody civil war when several southern states tried to secede back in the 1860’s? Quebec is a water resources superpower and Hydro-Quebec is the world’s 3rd largest producer of hydro-electric energy. Is this something that the U.S. government would be willing to give up once it gained control over Canada? The potential to return Quebec to the volatility of the 1960’s and 70’s would be dangerous, and perhaps even violent. It certainly was in the heyday of the FLQ (Quebec Liberation Front), which murdered a Quebec Cabinet Minister and sparked declaration of a national emergency leading to suspension of Habeas Corpus and hundreds of arrests.
Alongside Francophone rights are protections and agreements Canada has with its indigenous peoples. Section 35 of our Constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada as affording a range of cultural, social, political, and economic rights to the indigenous. These include the right to land, fishing and hunting rights, and exemption from taxation. These groups might very well resist having to accept new terms with Washington that look more like the lot of American Indian tribes.
It is doubtful that Trump has any understanding of these issues or their complexity. He simply points at what he wants and expects to get it—as he so often does. That is why he is a billionaire President. However, while Canadians may share a weakened sense of national identity than their American cousins, the one thing that tends to bind us is our “affable anti-Americanism”—which may ultimately prove to be a force even more powerful than even Trump’s irrepressible will.
Of course, the concept of American expansion throughout this continent is nothing new.
George Washington was once criticized for not continuing the revolutionary war to drive the British completely out. The term “Manifest Destiny” was coined by New York City journalist John Louis O’ Sullivan. He used the term in the context of America’s annexation of the Republic of Texas. Manifest Destiny represented the idea that it was America’s right— destiny in fact—to expand across all of North America. Politicians and citizens of the United States even called for Northern expansion by claiming control over British held territory, including what is now Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.
After the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), many Americans were distrustful of continued British presence in North America. Following the War of 1812, during which the White House was razed to the ground, the fate of remaining British colonies was uncertain.
Since they were not then unified as a nation state, they were vulnerable to American aggression and interference. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that these colonies could easily be absorbed into an American system, just as Donald Trump calls for now.
Many British North Americans also wanted to expand into the territories to the west and north, making up what was known as Rupert’s Land. This would reduce the chances of annexation into the United States. The British adopted an official policy of neutrality during the American Civil War (1861-65). However, they worked surreptitiously to aid the upstart Southern Rebels. Newspapers in the northern Union states suggested that territory lost in the American South could be offset by expansion into what is now Canada.
North Americans reacted in diverse ways to the concept of Manifest Destiny. Some welcomed the American “emancipation” of British North America, just as nearly 20% of Albertans do today. Indeed, during his 2022 CPAC speech given during the Trucker’s Convoy, Donald Trump vowed to free Canadians from authoritarian tyranny if he ever regained the Oval Office. But back in the 1860’s, much like today, those faithful to the British maintained the tradition of Loyalist support for the Crown, just as they did during the American Revolution.
Canadian fears of American expansionism increased after the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in March of 1867; but the threat of American invasion subsided after Confederation in July of 1867. It also eased under the leadership of the federal Conservative Party and Sir John A. Macdonald. He implemented the National Policy of 1879, which protected Canadian manufacturers from the threat of American competition. The National Policy also contributed to Canadian efforts to push west and north. The growth of the Canadian Pacific Railway also helped in this regard, as did the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, which sparked immigration and settlement into the West.
Manifest Destiny led to a growing sense of national identity in British North America, and may ultimately have the same galvanizing effect in Canada today. This culminated in the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 and the Confederation movement. As Britain began to adopt free trade policies, the cost of defending and administering its North American colonies became prohibitive, especially post-abolition of slavery throughout the Empire.
Other factors fed the British desire to reduce its role in the Canadian provinces. These included the emergence of responsible government in the Canadas, repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and defeat of the Confederate Army in 1865.
The concept of Manifest Destiny occupied an important place in the colonialism of 19th century North America. It factored into Canada’s efforts to push west and north, settling the Prairie Provinces and the Arctic. The solution to the threat of American expansionism proved to be Canadian expansion. Manifest Destiny speaks to the shared pasts of Canada and the United States as nations that formed after British colonization of this continent. It has thus become a common theme in efforts to trace the similarities and differences between Canadians and Americans.
It is easily argued that there is something fundamental to the American DNA that leads to empire building. Expanding westward must have seemed perfectly natural to many Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. Like the Massachusetts Puritans who hoped to build a “city upon a hill”, courageous pioneers believed that America had a divine duty to stretch the boundaries of their noble republic to the Pacific Ocean. Independence had been won in the Revolution and reasserted in the War of 1812. The spirit of nationalism that swept the nation in the ensuing two decades demanded more territory. The “every man is equal” mentality of the Jacksonian Era fuelled this sense of optimism, just as “Make America Great Again” is the made-in-America global response to globalism, inspiring a renewed sense of Manifest Destiny under President Trump.
With the territory up to the Mississippi River claimed and settled and the Louisiana Purchase fully explored, Americans headed west in droves. The religious fervour spawned by the Second Great Awakening created another incentive for the drive west. Indeed, many settlers believed that God himself blessed the growth of the American nation. Native Americans were considered heathens. By Christianizing these tribes, American missionaries believed that they could save souls and so be amongst the very first to cross the great Mississippi River.
For others, economic motives for Manifest Destiny were paramount. The fur trade had been dominated by European trading companies since colonial times. German immigrant John Jacob Astor was one of the first American entrepreneurs to challenge dynastic Europeans and became a millionaire in the process. The desire for more and brought aspiring homesteaders to the frontier. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, the number of migrants only increased.
At the heart of Manifest Destiny was the pervasive belief in American cultural and racial superiority. Native Americans had long been perceived as inferior, and efforts to civilize them were widespread since the landing of the Mayflower. There is simply no doubt that the Native tribes encountered by Europeans at the time of first contact were between 30 & 60 centuries behind Europe technologically. They had not yet even discovered or invented the wheel. They were in their own way as primitive as the tribes found in the deepest darkest corners of Africa. Although not to the same degree, Hispanics who ruled Texas and the lucrative ports of California were also seen as “backward”.
Expanding the geographical boundaries of the United States was in many ways also a cultural war. In this sense, little has changed on this continent since those early days. The desire for southerners to find more lands suitable for cotton cultivation would eventually spread slavery to these regions. Manifest Destiny touched on issues of religion, money, race, patriotism, colonization, national security, and morality. These clashed in the 1840’s as a truly great dram of regional conflict began to unfold. Such forces ultimately led to the American Civil War. In its aftermath, there was once again a renewed sense that a united America had a Manifest Destiny to expand throughout the North American continent, and northward particularly.
As we have seen, U.S. expansionist goals stem historically from the concept of “Manifest Destiny”. Some founding fathers argued that the destiny of U.S. greatness came from western expansion, and additional territorial control. The concept was first credited to Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, supported by some founding fathers and subsequent presidents who championed U.S. expansionist policies. Not all agree, with detractors positing that many such policies were unconstitutional, illegal, unethical, or just plain morally wrong.
The U.S. was founded by the original 13 former British colonies that won independence from the British. The remaining 37 became states after having been territories, part of a land purchase, acquired through a treaty, or annexed through war. The first was the Northwest Territory created by Congress in 1787. The Northwest Ordinance outlined the process for admitting a new state to the Union and guaranteed newly created states would have equal rights as the original 13. Might this bode well for Canada & Greenland?
In 1803, Jefferson advanced U.S. westward expansion by purchasing nearly 828k square miles from France for $15M via the Louisiana Purchase. This immediately doubled the U.S. land mass, adding territory that would comprise 15 states. Negotiated by founding fathers Robert Livingston and James Monroe, it was considered one of the largest land deals ever made.
Monroe declared the importance of “Manifest Destiny” in an 1823 speech before Congress, after a major victory had been negotiated by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams with Spain.
Adams completed the Spanish Purchase in 1821, paying them $5M Spanish dollars. The U.S. thereby acquired Spanish Florida, West and East Florida territories, and land stretching across the Rockies all the way to the Pacific Ocean. This ‘treaty’ was a crucial step in fulfilling America’s Manifest Destiny, expanding U.S. territory for the first time from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. In 1842, a treaty with Great Britain partially settled a conflict over the U.S./Canada border involving the Oregon Territory, which included what are now three states in the Pacific Northwest.
President James Polk won the 1844 election using the slogan “54, 40, or fight”, referring to the nation’s northern boundary with Canada. Polk was an ally of Texas General Sam Houston and instrumental in garnering support from Congress to declare war against Mexico in 1846.
Two years later, the U.S. defeated Mexico in the Mexican American War, resulting in Mexico ceding 55% of its Northern Territory through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The U.S. added 525k sq. Miles to its domain—land that would eventually comprise 10 Southwestern states.
In 1867, the federal government purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2M, adding another nearly 600k sq. Miles to U.S. western expansion. Some expected this acquisition to lead inexorably to annexation of Canada. Alaska was first under U.S. military control but became a territory in 1912 and a state in 1959 along with Hawaii, which had been annexed by the U.S. at the turn of the century. In 1898, the U.S. won the Spanish-American War, thereby gaining Puerto Rico and Guam as territories and control of the Philippines for $20M. The Philippines was briefly a U.S. territory and commonwealth. In 1899, the U.S. partitioned part of the Samoan Islands with Germany. The eastern island group of American Samoa thereby became the southernmost U.S. territory. In 1917, the U.S. paid Denmark $25M for nearly 134 sq. Miles of the Virgin Islands, which became yet another American territory.
During WWII, the U.S. established a military presence in Greenland, where its northernmost military base remains to this day. Donald Trump Jr. just visited there. The U.S. military also gained control over the Marshall Islands from Japan in 1944, assuming administrative control. In 1983, the U.S. and Marshall Islands signed a Compact Free Association, which was later amended in 2004. In 1986, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands became a U.S. territory. Major U.S. military operations are now based there and officials are dealing with alleged Chinese spies and illegal border crossings.
The most recent iteration of America’s Manifest Destiny now sees Donald Trump making international headlines, suggesting that Canada become the 51st state and that the U.S. might purchase Greenland. He posted this on his Truth Social account on 6 January 2025, after Justin Trudeau announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister of Canada:
It is believed that Greenland could enter into a Compact of Free Association with the U.S., giving the U.S. expanded military access. Trump has said the island is needed for national defence against China and Russia, which have been conducting joint air patrols in the Arctic.
China’s Coast Guard has claimed it entered the Arctic Ocean last fall; the Pentagon has warned about the Sino-Russia Arctic strategy, according to Reuters.
Both the outgoing Canadian PM and his likely successor, WEF acolyte Mark Carney, oppose Canada becoming part of the U.S. So does CPC leader Pierre Polliviere, who according to recent polling is all but assured of forming a massive majority government following Canada’s next national election. The majority of Canadians recently polled also oppose annexation to the United States. Greenland and Danish officials remain similarly skeptical about Trump’s stated plans. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to create new states and establishes guidelines for that process. Presently, the Trump led Republican Party has a majority in Congress and the Senate, as well as holding the White House. Could this be the opportune moment for America to once again assert its Manifest Destiny by annexing Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, which it constructed during the Teddy Roosevelt administration along with over 130 military installations in the region to protect it.
The late Jimmy Carter gifted the canal to Panama in late 1970’s despite the objection of Ronald Reagan, who was not yet President. Panama then allowed Hong Kong to acquire the Canal in 1996, just in time for it to fall into Chinese hands the following year, after Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control pursuant to the treaty of 1897 that ended the Opium Wars with Britain. The net effect is that the Panama Canal was built by and for America, but is now controlled by China.
As Donald J. Trump takes the oath of office on 20 January for the 2nd time, he has seen fit to throw down a few gauntlets and in the process anger a few allies. Among them are the Danish people and many European leaders who have questioned Trump’s motives and rationale when it comes to Greenland. I am not going to defend either Trump’s actions or those of European leaders or their citizenry. However, given the extreme importance of the current state of affairs with Trump’s pronouncements on Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal, it might help to explain why Americans elected him, why they like him so much, and why he is reasserting American Manifest Destiny.
There are 7 basic reasons.
First is the unshakeable American sense of self-preservation. Eight years of Barack Obama’s largely do-nothing blathering and four years of Joe Biden’s ideological meddling made Americans realize deep down in the marrow of their bones that it was time for a strong leader; one who spoke directly, if not always with a firm grip on the facts. Every tribe, be they primitive or sophisticated, knows that it must choose strong leaders who have their best interests at heart and who will protect them when threatened. Americans are well aware of the concept after throwing off British rule via armed revolution.
Reason two is loss of faith in American institutions. The Left has long abused the Right’s willingness to give the Obama/Biden Administrations the ‘benefit of the doubt’ regarding their professed love of country. Attempts to reshape the country’s very culture through coerced DEI, CRT, allowing men in women’s sports and private spaces, and radical multi-genderism, have all taken their toll.
Reason three is growing secularism. While it is true that membership in organized religion is waning in America, faith in God or a higher power is not. Trump knows this and that because the U.S. is largely a Christian nation, his many transgressions will be forgiven. Hate the sin, love the sinner. Americans were clearly appalled by persecution of their religious brothers and sisters under Obama and Biden.
Reason four is the economy. Inflation robbed many Americans of their buying power, and the Biden Administration did little to correct the problem they created. Within hours of his inauguration, Biden cancelled government support for the Keystone XL pipeline, resulting in a surge of transportation costs, all of which were passed along to consumers throughout the supply chain.
Reason five is a full on frontal assault upon traditional American values and a faux accusation that America is systemically racist. The majority of Americans know this to be false but kept hearing it from Biden officials, leftist media, and Academia.
Reason six is something that even the left is slow to acknowledge: that America’s borders were purposely left open to migrants who claimed political asylum at unofficial crossing points and were allowed to remain in the U.S. rather than returned to their countries of origin. The system of protecting Americans was replaced with one putting immigrants first.
Americans have simply had enough and demand that their borders be secured—and perhaps even expanded—under a new President.
Reason seven is probably foremost on the minds of many Americans: foreign policy and rejection of the left’s belief that America should be globalist first and nationalist second. This is something that most Americans know cannot happen because of their constitutional duty to protect America’s interests at home and abroad.
Finally, we come to the present situation. Will the U.S. and the Trump administration succumb to a fever to pursue a policy of Manifest Destiny, ahead of its own domestic security? Can the new administration walk that fine line of separating what looks like imperialism from shoring up democracy by protecting areas of the world that are now on everybody’s radar? I speaking of course of the relationship between Canada and the U.S., between Denmark and the U.S., the U.S. and the good people of Greenland.
Granted, this is not the Cuban Missile Crisis or bifurcation of East and West Germany.
Neither is it the Louisiana Purchase or sale of the Dutch West Indies. The Canada-Greenland-Panama Canal issue is nonetheless a major test for the Trump administration. It will determine what America’s true global ambitions are and show the world how it will deal with both allies like Canada and tyrants like China.
What Donald Trump is clearly signalling to the world through his reiteration of American Manifest Destiny is that the U.S. is already in or is about to begin a Cold War with China.
“Make America Great Again” was a slogan coined by the late Ronald Reagan, but it has since found its greatest expression in the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. The greatest legacy of Reagan’s Presidency was winning the Cold War with the Soviets by taking decisive action at the very time when the enemy was most vulnerable. It may very well be that Trump senses a parallel moment now in China’s global hegemonic aspirations. He might see a unified North American continent, a fortified Greenland, a repatriated Panama Canal, and a United States of Americanada as key tactical pieces of a plan to defeat globalism and thereby Make America Great Again.
Now is the time for clear heads, outstretched hands, and earnest diplomacy. But make no mistake, there is a Cold War afoot, and Trump plans to win it. For him, that is his own Manifest Destiny.
