Hello. As I write, I am winding my way on the train from Zurich to Davos, where world leaders, including Donald Trump, will gather in the coming days. The timing is impeccable. The transatlantic relationship is entering what could be its most serious crisis of the post-war age. Mr Trump’s quixotic pursuit of Greenland is growing more brazen, aggressive and bizarre by the day.
On January 17th Mr Trump announced tariffs on several European countries who had sent troops to Greenland, essentially ripping up two trade deals (with Britain and the EU) in the process. His language is increasingly menacing. “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize,” wrote Mr Trump in a recent letter to Jonas Store, Norway’s prime minister, “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” Mr Store, of course, has no sway over who gets the Nobel prize—but you may as well explain to my toddler that the banana can’t be spliced back together.
Mr Trump and his courtiers have advanced a long, varied and shifting list of reasons for why America should own Greenland. In a recent post Mr Trump said it was essential to his Golden Dome missile-defence shield, even though an American early-warning radar has operated in Greenland for decades. Mr Trump says Russian and Chinese ships are “all over” Greenland, a claim promptly denied by Denmark’s Arctic commander. More recently American officials say that Denmark cannot protect Greenland in the future. That is an unprovable claim, and it could be used to justify the conquest of any country.
This moment is fraught with danger. European leaders are using unprecedented language: “blackmail”, “intimidation”, “threat”. They largely absorbed Mr Trump’s tariff blows last summer, but they may not take these lying down. On June 19th Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, struck a cautious note. He said that he did not think Mr Trump was planning military action and pointed out the many ways in which his country depended on America for intelligence and security. But in Brussels, my colleagues tell me, the mood is sterner, if not mutinous. There is talk of boycotting the World Cup in America this summer, for instance, an act that would echo America’s boycott of the summer Olympics in Moscow in 1980 over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the previous year.
If Europeans do retaliate—and they have many options to do so—it is all too easy to foresee a spiral. The American president could respond by cutting off support for Ukraine, a prospect which Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, floated this week: “The European leaders will come around…What would happen in Ukraine if the US pulled its support out? The whole thing would collapse.” If the tit-for-tat worsens, I can also see Mr Trump threatening to step back from NATO, perhaps beginning by withdrawing some forces from the continent.
This is reckless brinkmanship: Europeans do not want to lose their principal ally, but dismembering another ally to placate a bully, on pain of economic coercion and threats of abandonment, would send shockwaves through European security. What I find no less disturbing is that some non-MAGA figures, like Ted Cruz, a senator who was once a fierce rival, have endorsed Mr Trump’s approach. On January 18th the Pentagon put 1,500 active-duty troops from the army’s 11th airborne division, which specialises in Arctic warfare, on standby for potential deployment to Minnesota, where Mr Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. The fact that this made many Europeans jittery is a sign of the times.
In other news, I was wrong in my prediction last week that America was about to strike Iran. I did not anticipate that Mr Trump would back away from his own red line—Iran killing protestors—based on Iran’s claim to have cancelled the execution of hundreds of prisoners. But don’t expect this to be the end of the matter. American naval power is slowly gathering in the Middle East, with an aircraft-carrier making its way over, along with transport aircraft and jets. If America has more assets in the region, it will not only have more offensive firepower, but also, importantly, the ability to defend against any Iranian retaliation directed at Israel and the Gulf states. A strike may be deferred, rather than cancelled. |