Trump’s Lust for Canada Echoes Putin’s Lust for Ukraine
Expansionist rhetoric, economic grievance, and fantasies of erasing an “artificial” border.
AMERICA’S ALLIES ARE REPORTEDLY STUNNED by two things Donald Trump has done since returning to power. One is his alignment of U.S. foreign policy with Russia. The other is his fixation on annexing Canada.
Here’s the key to understanding these two confounding moves: They’re related. Trump thinks about Canada in much the same way Vladimir Putin thinks about Ukraine. He identifies with his fellow imperialist.
In July 2021, Putin published an article outlining his view of Ukrainian history. Historically, “Russians and Ukrainians were one people—a single whole,” he asserted. “The idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians” had “no historical basis.” He dismissed this idea as an artificial result of “chopping the country into pieces.”
