from Spatial Justice Ch. 9 Shields (ed.) forthcoming
The Russian model for annexation [of Crimea] may be adopted by other major powers that summarily abrogate the sovereignty of weaker states; thus China demands Taiwan accede to government from Beijing, the United States President demands the territory of Gaza, Greenland and Canada. These may be rhetorical ploys but little defended territories can easily be annexed or controlled by force.
Intimidating menaces and stigmatising curses provide a further form of spatial injustice that pits a negative future against lived, practiced space in the present. It creates negative anticipation. Thus at the time of writing, it is impossible to predict the long-term outcomes of American extraterritorial assertions of interest in Gaza, Greenland and Canada. Uncertainty dampens investment. As a spatialisation these may have the quality of a self-fulfilling prophecy (Rob Shields 2008). The American President’s use of rhetorical conjectures concerning other countries that could be annexed or invaded by the United States draws on all of the elements of cursing, menacing and offering hoped-for advantages that create dread rather than enthusiasm in anticipation of the future for these spaces and territories.
This is an attack ad locum on spaces similar to an ad hominem attack that attempts to “poison the well” by impugning a person’s character or reliability. By simply musing on social media “I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state,”1 continuation of Canadian sovereignty is brought into question, and in the case of democracies this contravenes and suppresses the will of the residents. This is obfuscated by other comments such as:
“Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State. They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea. 51st State!!!” (Donald Trump on Truthsocial.com 18 Dec 2024 cited in Knight 2024)
“Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State,” Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Truth Social on Jan. 6 2025. Such is present day continuation of a long history of dispossession and colonisation. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. analysed the claims as follows:
That post contained themes that would later become staples of Trump and his supporters’ claims about Canada. First is the claim that lots of Canadians want to become Americans. Some in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement have explained the absence of a visible groundswell of support for annexation in Canada as a result of a harsh regime of censorship…. Canadians’ supposed secret desire to be annexed might sound familiar to Russians who have heard their leader make similar claims about Ukrainians, says Maria Popova, an expert on Russian politics at McGill University…. Canadian officials have said that the moment they realized Trump was serious about annexation was when he began to raise the history of US-Canadian border arrangements, specifically the 1908 treaty that fixed parts of the border…. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like. And it would also be much better for national security,” ….Trump followed up with a social media postincluding a map that erased the nation of Canada…. “The reference to a meaningless administrative border,” said former Canadian diplomat and international lawyer Sabine Nölke, “is how Putin described Ukraine”…. On the eve of his full-scale invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin provided justifications for taking Ukraine by force, arguing they are the same people that belong under the same flag. (Russian Presidential Press Service/The Associated Press) ….[Trump’s]big idea is Canada is not a legitimate state.” (quoted in Dyer 2025).
-Rob Shields (Univ. of Alberta)
- The recent history of the idea of annexing Canada to the USA has been a proposal of Canadian fringe political movements up to about 2016, but with almost no voter support in elections (Dawson 2023). On January 27 2023, Tucker Carlson (an American television personality who, after failing as a champion of progressive ideas, created a media identity by focusing on conspiracy theories and reactionary “far-right” ideas) provocatively complained “We’re spending all this money to liberate Ukraine from the Russians, why are we not sending an armed force north to liberate Canada from Trudeau?” (quoted in Graziosi 2023). He was attempting to argue against funding Ukrainian defense by reductio ad absurdam. However, it may thus be that the 51st state initiative actually originated in a desire to gain attention via trivialcontroversy in hopes of creating a media debate.