Texas, Panama . . . Greenland?

Austria, Ukraine . . . Taiwan?

Philander Knox

Ah, for simpler times when land could be stolen without compunction or rationalization. Nowadays the covetous feel obliged to claim philanthropic purpose. Reports indicate that America’s intelligence services are testing support in Greenland for independence from Denmark. This follows months of threats by Donald Trump to seize Greenland for America.

The playbook has become a cliche. Great power airs plight of oppressed nationalists. Nationalists launch revolution. Great power guarantees success in exchange for protectorate or annexation.

Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston wrote the American edition of the playbook. Jackson sent Houston to Mexican Texas in the early 1830s to secretly gauge support among American settlers there for secession from Mexico and annexation to the United States. Houston reported that taking Texas would be a stroll in the park. Jackson let the Texans know American support would be available if necessary. The Texans revolted against Mexico and defeated the army of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, while U.S. forces hovered reassuringly across the Louisiana border. The Texans applied for annexation and, after a delay occasioned by sectional politics, entered the American embrace.

A second American edition appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Theodore Roosevelt was determined to build an interocean canal. Colombia had the best route but demanded a high price for it. Roosevelt found some nationalists in the Panama province of Colombia. He promised to guarantee their independence if they raised the banner of revolt. They did and he did. In their next breath they gave Roosevelt his canal zone.

Adolf Hitler paid attention. In creating his new reich, he cast himself as savior of Germans who had been denied cohabitation with their fellows. The German speakers of Czechoslovakia were acquired by diplomacy at Munich. Anschluss with Austria sufficiently exaggerated the desire for reunion of that branch of the family to cow the Austrian government into submission. The invasion of Poland would cure the wound upon the German nation inflicted at Paris after the First World War.

Vladimir Putin employed a similar script against Ukraine. Russian Crimea had been criminally severed from Russia during the Soviet era. It was grafted back by invasion in 2014. The Russians of eastern Ukraine must be returned to their mother, and so they were in 2022.

In none of these cases was the rationalization spun from thin air. Americans in Mexican Texas did prefer to live in an American Texas. Most of them at least. Many Panamanians did want a country of their own, believing they had been neglected by the government of Colombia. The Germans of the Sudetenland and some of those in Austria were thrilled by Hitler's vision of a greater Germany. The Russian majority in Crimea wished their handoff to Ukraine had never happened.

Yet in every case the rationalization was a rationalization. The Americans in Mexican Texas had gone there voluntarily. Many had gone illegally, intending all along to hijack Texas from Mexico if they could. Roosevelt wanted a canal. If Columbia had lowered its price, he would happily have guaranteed its continued rule of Panama. The way Hitler treated and Putin treats the people in their own countries gives the lie to any profession of concern for other people.

Power is as power does. The United States took Texas and the Panama canal zone because it could. If it takes Greenland, it will do so out of concern not for the people living there but for American leaders' perception of their own country's interest.

Hitler’s German nationalism stood a distant second place to his personal megalomania. Putin's regard for the Russian diaspora matters less than his reckoning of what's necessary to keep himself in power.

Xi Jinping may or may not be a student of aggressors past and present. But his decision to attack Taiwan or refrain from doing so will be based on his assessment of what will benefit China and himself, regardless of what he might say about the effects of his decision on the people of Taiwan.

“Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue,” wrote Francois de La Rochefoucauld. Maybe. But it's also annoying. And the only person it risks fooling is the hypocrite.

Better advice was given to Theodore Roosevelt by Philander Knox, a hard-headed corporate lawyer before becoming attorney general. Knox listened to Roosevelt labor to find a legal basis for his collusion with the Panamanians against the Colombian government. “Oh, Mr. President,” Knox interrupted, “do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”