Provocations so outrageous as to be untethered to reality are integral to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s “Uncertainty Doctrine.” So the primary challenge in reacting to those provocations is determining what to take seriously, what to take literally and whether or not to respond at all. The view of some observers is that, because Trump makes so many provocative threats, there is a danger in giving too much credence to those that are unrealistic, since it distracts from other issues that are more urgent and more likely to actually happen.
It’s understandable to apply that logic to Trump’s recent expansionist threats toward Greenland, Panama and Canada. But there are important reasons to take these threats seriously, even if it is unlikely that the U.S. actually moves to expand territorially during Trump’s second term.
For one, Trump is always both the cause and symptom of the developments that have fueled his political rise and return to the White House. In other words, he both shapes the popular discourse, as well as the stances of his followers, and channels underlying political shifts that may not be visible to most observers yet. The fact that he himself is not an intellectual firepower doesn’t change this—in fact, in many ways it makes him more of a frictionless communicator of veiled political grievances.