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For decades, experts have accused American presidents of neglecting the Western Hemisphere in favor of faraway conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Both Republicans and Democrats have carried out a policy of either “benign” or “malign” neglect, allowing threats to grow and missing valuable opportunities.
No one can accuse the new Trump administration of neglecting the United States’s backyard. Instead, it’s seen a flurry of regional activity fairly unprecedented in modern times.
Trump devoted a significant part of his inaugural address to demanding that Panama return control of the Panama Canal. It’s not quite clear if he’s joking by repeatedly suggesting that Canada should become the 51st state, but he has made it quite clear he’s serious about taking control of Greenland — considered geologically, if not politically, part of North America — from Denmark. One of his first executive orders renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”