KIMBALL SHINKOSKEY

Woods Cross, Utah

Trump making loud noises about adding more territory to the U.S.

President Trump has been making loud noises about annexing new territory to the United States. There are two ways to do this: the democratic-republican way, requiring constitutional legal processes to be followed, and the authoritarian way, which just requires force.

For example, number 47 has talked about taking over Greenland, retaking the Panama Canal zone, and even adding Canada as the 51st state. He has also brought up the subject of “taking” or “owning” the Gaza strip, after it has been emptied out of its millennia-long Palestinian residents.

There are a couple of precedents in American history which might interest those few left in the country who take an interest in rule of law. Thomas Jefferson believed that the Constitution required an amendment through the Article V process to add new land to the United States like the land belonging to France west of the Mississippi, called “Louisiana.” The reason for this was that obtaining such a huge tract of land would double the size of the nation, double the size of the national debt, and clearly diminish the overall power of the original states. Jefferson drafted up the constitutional amendment himself. However, when Napoleon gave signs he might be souring on the land sale, Jefferson threw caution to the wind and presented the deal in the form of a treaty for Congress to approve in 1803.

Fast forward now to John Tyler, president from 1841 to 1845. Tyler wanted to annex Texas, at the time an independent nation sandwiched between Mexico and the United States. Like Jefferson, he understood that such a measure was a huge project requiring the constitutional approval of the people through the amendment process, or at very least through a treaty consent process. However, like Jefferson, he decided to make an end-run around the Constitution and around the treaty pathway too. He repackaged the proposed treaty as a simple domestic policy bill rather than as a treaty. Congress then passed the legislation, and he signed it.

Later yet, Teddy Roosevelt skirted any thought of constitutional/Congressional propriety and militarily secured the Panama Canal Zone in conjunction with Columbian separatists there in 1903-05.

Another way to get land is by conquest in war. In the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848, we obtained California, Arizona, and New Mexico. In the 1898 Spanish-American war, America obtained Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.

America also gained early experience acquiring land by two other means: abrogating treaties with native peoples, which involves taking their lands away from them, and exiling them to less desirable land elsewhere; and federalizing state lands, thus removing those lands from local use and control.

Today the federal government holds legal title to about 55 million acres of Native American land held in trust for tribes and individuals who have “beneficial title,” or the right to use and benefit from the property. The federal government also holds 640 million acres of state-based lands, amounting to 28% of the territory of the United States, with the great preponderance in thirteen western states.

The President appears to be wanting to first intimidate or entice Greenland and Canada to join the United States by means of tariff threats or by his boundless charm. When “negotiation” fails, he will then consider putting “warheads on foreheads,” as his defense Secretary likes to call it.

In Gaza he wants to piggy-back on the success of Israel’s use of American military equipment there. He wants Palestinians to leave voluntarily so that the land is up for grabs. When they leave, the plan goes, that will make room for Trump’s personal real estate development activities there.

The point here is that there is not even a whiff of Constitutional or Congressional involvement in the process of peacefully and lawfully acquiring new land as there was with previous presidents. Truth be told, there is no hint of obtaining Congressional approval for any potential act of war against these countries either. Their fate, as it turns out, is entirely in the hands of the country’s first would-be absolutist dictator who does what he wants and largely ignores both the will of the people as expressed through the Congress and the will of the court system. What’s not to like about such an elegant and streamlined approach to putting more stars on the flag?