Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations says recent U.S. military action in Venezuela shows that Greenland and Canada need to take threats to their sovereignty seriously. “The president has created a whole new guessing game of who’s next,” Bob Rae told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday. “An attack on Greenland would be an attack on NATO, it would be an attack on a friendly state, Denmark, and frankly it’s astonishing that we have a president who is not just speculating, but now saying he’s planning on doing it.” On Jan. 3, U.S. forces abducted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife in a daring military operation. For the sake of national security, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for taking over Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO-ally Denmark. Trump has also openly mused about turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state. “I don’t think they’re musings, I think he’s got a view about who we are and what we’re all about, that is that he can run the country better than us,” Rae said of Trump’s 51st state rhetoric. “I think we all just sort of shake our heads with a sense of amazement, but we have to go beyond just that amazement and then recognize that this guy is for real, and the real is not pretty or legal.” Rae says Trump’s actions in Venezuela and his threats against Greenland and Canada all align with a new U.S. National Security Strategy, which seeks to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” “The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity—a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region,” the new national security document explains. Rae, who served as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations from August 2020 to November 2025, is also a former member of parliament and Ontario premier. “In our own self-interest, we have to work with other countries to do everything we can to stop the United States,” Rae said. “We’ve never had a president of the United States ever who was determined to treat his neighbours in this way.” From a legal and foreign affairs perspective, Rae thinks the current U.S. administration is “out of control.” “The way he’s talking is unprecedented,” Rae said of Trump. “The fickle finger of fate can point to us just as surely as it can point to Denmark or anywhere else.”
