By Huang Wei-ping 黃惟冰
US president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he would not rule out military force to “take back” the Panama Canal or to take over Greenland, adding that sovereign control over those two areas is of the utmost importance to US national security.
Trump has made such statements before. He openly expressed his interest in Greenland and Panama on several occasions during his first term.
Simply put, Greenland’s strategic value to the US can be found in laying along the shortest flight paths between Europe and North America, and being the absolute best location for the US military’s deployment of ballistic missile early warning and interception systems — some of which are already deployed there. The importance of the Panama Canal is far more evident, including for naval vessels. Every day, several US Navy vessels rely on the canal to cut down on time traversing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
As for Taiwan’s location, it possesses advantages similar to Greenland and the Panama Canal. With the Leshan radar station, we can see the airspace situation stretching from the Korean Peninsula in the north, down to the furthest islands of the South China Sea, as well as deep into inland China.
Such information is extremely important for the US’ operations of intercontinental ballistic early warning systems and interception missions in the Indo-Pacific region.
Moreover, a report by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies in October showed that, based on trade data, about one-fifth of the world’s trade passed through the Taiwan Strait. In other words, were the Strait to come under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control, it would be tantamount to putting a chokehold on large trading powers, such as the US and Japan.
When comparing Greenland and the Panama Canal with Taiwan, it goes without saying that if Trump is insistent on his ideas for the former, then he simply cannot sit back and watch the CCP take control of Taiwan.
Huang Wei-ping works in public service and has a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
Translated by Tim Smith
