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FR‘His Greenland message points to an attempt to deal with America’s declining global status and unsustainable imperial overreach.’ Photo by EMIL STACH/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images.
With just over a week to go to his inauguration, Donald Trump is already sabre-rattling. It is, he said, an “absolute necessity” that America annexes Greenland. “People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security.” Not even in the White House yet and the president-elect already has Europe in a frenzy, refusing to rule out economic or military coercion in his desire to secure control over the Danish autonomous territory.
Donald Trump Jr is also in on the act. He ostentatiously visited the island this week, purporting to be a tourist; but he was accompanied by Sergio Gor, the powerful incoming director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, and was seen handing out “Make Greenland Great Again” hats. “Don Jr. and my reps landing in Greenland”, Trump posted on social media. “The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”.
Not wanting to be left out, Elon Musk weighed in on X, writing, “If the people of Greenland want to be part of America, which I hope they do, they would be most welcome!”.
Unsurprisingly, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen gave Trump’s proposal short shrift, stating, “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders”. But all the love bombing comes amid a rising independence movement in the former Danish colony that became self-ruling in 1979. “It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Greenland’s premier Múte Egede said. “Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation — which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era — and move on.” He also floated the idea of a possible referendum, a development that could potentially play into Trump’s expansionist aim.
It would be easy to laugh off Trump’s annexation claims as little more than political trolling aimed at stirring up his MAGA base and usefully diverting attention from more pressing issues, such as the lack of a clear strategy for managing the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. There is, though, more to this story that just Trump shooting off his mouth. In fact, Greenland has long been a serious obsession for the former and future president, who first made a bid to purchase the island in 2019.
But why is Trump so keen on this huge, icy rock where living conditions are so extreme that the tiny population (60,000) of mostly indigenous communities has to rely on fishing and hunting for its livelihood? In fact, it’s pretty straight-forward. For starters, Greenland is rich in natural resources, including rare earth minerals, which are critical for America’s high-tech industries and green technologies.
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SubscribeUnder current arrangements, the USA has control of Greenland as long as it has control of Europe. Today the USA has control of Europe thanks to Europe’s total military, energy, and financial dependence on the USA.
That the USA is now seeking direct control of Greenland suggests the USA worries it might no longer control Europe in the future. Why would the USA worry it won’t control Europe in the future? After all, there is no prospect of Europe ending its dependency on the USA.
The answer is the USA fears Europe will increasingly resemble North Africa and the Middle East in both culture and character. Chaotic areas of the world beyond the control of any state. Both hawks and doves on the Hill have postulated the risk of either France or the UK’s nuclear assets falling into Islamist hands. JD Vance has publicly talked about the risk. Indeed, even the UK state – over a thousand years old and counting – considers its own failure as a realistic risk to the safe maintenance of its civil nuclear facilities in the next 60 years. Let that sink in.
If even the UK civil service thinks failure of the British state is a not insignificant prospect, is it any wonder the USA might begin to plan for a retrenchment from Europe and the securing of key defence assets like Greenland?
Very interesting comment. Saying the UK state is a 1000 years old and counting is a wildly inaccurate statement but I completely catch the general drift.
I don’t think the rationale of your argument is right though. I think it’s more like America has no further desire to be supporting Europe (or to the same extent as it has been doing since WW2) but is still thinking about what it needs to hoover up as it withdraws for the purpose of defending its interests going forward.
Agreed. I suspect Trump is sincere in his wish to Make America Great Again. But he does not choose to do so through military might, nor liberal moral might but by economic might.
View his statements about Greenland and the Panama Canal, his intention to ‘drill baby drill’, and leaving the WHO and other international organisations who seek authority over America, raising tariffs to stem illegal immigration, and his aim of MAGA through the world economy make a great deal of sense.
Substituting economic for physical warfare has some merit. The US has to do something because the status quo was unsustainable. It may or may not work, but something different has to be tried and nobody else has come up with any other new alternatives. I continue to lament the shortsightedness of globalists and progressives whose overly optimistic view of human nature and attempts to unify the planet have created the conditions where we’re legitimately discussing the possibility of WWIII.
If there is no longer a need for NATO to continue pushing Eastward, then all the EU is to the US moving forward is simply a liability. We’ve helped make sure it’s not got access to cheap energy anymore, and so it is no longer a threat as an economic competitor. At this point it’s better to cut it loose, and work on our own strategic depth in our own regional sphere.
Trump probably hasn’t put it together as yet.
Many in the MAGA camp don’t understand the risks of alienating Europe – if it did manage to coordinate its own future, it could forge cooperation with Russia and China at the expense of the US (which is what the French and some German elements often seem to want to do anyway).
Many in the Europe camp, Brussels particularly, don’t understand that they are alienating themselves from the Rest of the World.
Europe has nowhere else to go other than the USA. It can’t forge cooperation with China because China will eat it for breakfast. It can’t forge cooperation with Russia because Russian oligarchs would buy ever greater slices of Europe. And it faces an ever greater tide of the poorest of continental Asia and Africa overwhelming its borders, welfare states, and infrastructure. Europe’s strategic importance evaporated the moment it deindustrialised and failed to innovate.
Great post, especially in light of England having handed over its women to be raped by Moslems — people who consider all those “no-go” zones as forever under Moslem rule. It means that the Moslem invasion of Europe, half successful and stopped 400 years ago, is continuing right now, despite the denials of the Europeans who mock Trump.
I’m inclined to agree. It’s hard to say how bad Europe will get, but based on the lack of energy resources, the lack of military power, and deindustrialization, it could get very bad. Partial or total collapse of the EU is a strong possibility at this point, and in the event that happens, the great powers will probably pick the continent apart into pockets of influence. The Greenland issue suggests which way the US, or at least Trump’s people, are leaning strategically, that is the northern nations, the Arctic, which still has some resources and less dysfunctional governments. He’s also basically assuming, as we all should at this point, that climate change is going to happen and we should be planning out how to deal with it, not how to stop it, and putting an acquisitive eye towards the unoccupied north makes a lot of sense for a lot of reason, nor is Greenland the only sparsely populated island the US might try to entice into the union. There’s also Iceland, the Svalbard archipelago, and the islands off the northern coast of Canada. Trump or one of his people may have actually thought this out enough to propose a compromise with the Democrats to admit Puerto Rico and/or DC at the same time, which might actually work.
It’s even conceivable the world situation gets so bad that the USA does what it used to do in order to claim disputed and unoccupied territory, that is send in a bunch of colonists to build farms, towns, mines, and other stuff in numbers that eventually overwhelm the local population and then simply wait for the colonists to demand annexation. The US got most of the American southwest by doing this as the American colonists clashed with the local population and the Mexican government and the US used one such incidence to start the Mexican War. They also did this with the Oregon territory which had been a part of British Canada. The American claim to the area was pretty flimsy, but the British, having already fought two expensive wars with the US, the first a total loss and the second inconclusive, sensibly decided to negotiate a partition of the territory. The US had its own version of imperialism, and given subsequent history, it was far more successful. More recently, this is how Zionism succeeded in Israel. The Zionist Jews bought land in ancient Israel and migrated legally with the approval of the Ottomans and then the British protectorate until they outnumbered the people who were there before and claimed the right of self rule. They’re still using the same tactics today with the settlements. The dogma of the neoliberal world has frowned on such activities, but this method works, and we live in a time where we all are probably questioning the old dogmas and our old notions of what’s right, wrong, and acceptable in terms of geopolitics and national interest. There’s a lot of land in Antarctica as well that is uninhabited and where the claims are essentially just paper.
Surely Europe is not so naive as to think that their years of welfare and industrial expansion on the backs of the USA defense machine (and thus the IS taxpayers), combined with their ongoing sanctimonious attitude towards the USA has been forgotten by Americans?
The continued postwar involvement in Europe was hardly altruistic. The Marshall plan allowed Europe to develop which was beneficial for the US because its immense industry had a lot of excess capacity back then. Thus, the demand from a Europe that needed rebuilding significantly expanded the US economy.
Perhaps more important was preventing Europe to be taken over by communism. Even if the Soviet Union did not simply capture all of Europe, they were afraid that poor living conditions would drive Europeans towards communism anyway. Planners in the US not only feared that the entire Eurasian landmass would fall to communism but some also secretly feared that the rapid technological, industrial and economic development of the Soviets would surpass that of the US. It would have been a troubling sight if Germans had started fleeing to the GDR instead of the other way around. So keeping a prosperous Europe under its wing was very much to protect US geopolitical interests.
When the cold war was ending US industry could no longer compete with European and Japanese industry. Thus we see that the dollar reserve currency was transformed into a FIAT currency allowing the US to offshore and outsource their production and sell its debt. For this reason everyone, including Europeans, kept investing in the US market, now increasingly financialized. This position is a big part of why the US can spend so much on its military in the first place. Moreover, if it didn’t, it might undermine the dollar based world economy itself.
to be fair to the US, it didn’t adopt protectionism during the 1970/80’s when German and Japanese cars effectively destroyed Detroit. Western Europe’s overall GDP and growth compared well with the US when it was just the the EEC (European Economic Community). Once it changed into the walled garden that is the EU it slowly went downhill. And boy, did they made it painful for us here in the UK to leave the garden. Not sure where the EU goes from here.
The Europeans are successfully destroying their industry, their infrastructure (remember the blown up dams in Spain), their agriculture, and, finally, replacing their own population with people from Africa and the Middle East. To demand after this that the US continue to provide Europe with a comfortable existence is astonishing impudence.
P.S. It would be easy to laugh off Trump’s annexation claims as little more than political trolling aimed at stirring up his MAGA base and usefully diverting attention from more pressing issues, such as the lack of a clear strategy for managing the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. – Fazi, do you already see Trump’s strategy for managing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East? Tell us, please!
Surely, there needs to be a special mention for their determination to raise their own fuel prices, which helps with their industrial decay.
Glad to see UnHerd making a serious attempt to analyse the situation.
Don’t forget that Trump could claim UK citizenship instantly by virtue of his mother being born there! He is one half British!
I guess Trump has a natural affection for the nation of his mother’s birth and the origin original motherland of the USA. And he can hardly like to witness the corrosive impact of mass migration into the UK and Europe as a whole, and the consequent dilution and corruption of its history, culture and democratic traditions. It is hardly surprising that he feels less and less affinity with a nation and its continent that seem hellbent on replacing their ancient ethnic homogeneity with a destructive and divisive multiculturalism and utterly foreign values.
No wonder he wants to incorporate Greenland as an important buffer zone between the USA and an increasingly divided and hostile Europe, and as a strategic territory to defending itself from invasion via the Artic route and protecting its many interests there.
Makes perfect sense to me!
Currently, Greenland, with its sea routes over North America, is politically connected to Brussels.
Europe, with the EU, has employed the architect of its decline.
If I was a Greenlander I’d vote to be American – then grab the passport and jump on the next plane to sunnier climes. Ditto if I was Canadian.
Maybe Trump does believe in climate change after all – a couple more degrees and both countries will be massively wealthy.
Most of the USA is horrible during the summer, only survivable with air conditioning, it’s not much better in the winter with temperatures regularly below -20C though I suppose both Greenlanders and Canadians would be more used to that.
Spheres of influence dominated by the USA, China and Russia. Together these countries have about 1.8 billion people. That leaves around 6.4 billion elsewhere, including some big countries (India, Indonesia, et al). I suspect the World will become more interesting and complex than a three sphere model predicate.
Carve. Carve like its Xmas every day
Yep, don’t forget about Turkey…
True. It will be more complicated – and Europe and India will probably seek to be the centres of their own blocs – but the basic point that the world is heading towards a multipolar system with trade blocs and political spheres of influence seems entirely plausible. Globalisation and a US led unipolar world have proved unsustainable.
Perhaps after a period of friction the various blocs will come together again constructively to deal with global issues and to maximise growth. Possibly but History is discouraging. The last time – when the late nineteenth century surge in globalisation went into reverse and blocs formed behind tariffs – two world wars followed.
It’s not a headcount.
The new multi-polar world is supposed to be one of strategic alliances and diplomacy. Domination is the old unipolar way.
Abandoning Atlanticism might be the geopolitical mistake of the century in the long term. According to the World Island Theory of Halford Mackinder, having some control over the Eurasian landmass remains essential because it is simply the biggest, most populated landmass with the most resources. From this perspective America is just a distant island with only a few hundred million people, despite its recent technological and economic dominance.
Of course we might wonder how relevant this is today. But some influential Russian intellectuals do believe in it. In their eyes Europe should be drawn into the Eurasian sphere of influence with China and Russia and away from the US. They argue that this would undermine the Atlantic dominance of the world and everything it stands for.
If one does agree with this theory it can be argued that the US does not necessarily have to associate with Europe for influence in Eurasia. However, to deny the benefits of deep historical and cultural ties between Europe and America in favor of purely transactional relationships is a mistake as well I think.
Mackinder has to be read in conjunction with Spykman’s Rimland theories.
Trump is being entirely pragmatic as European politics in most parts has seemingly sacrificed national interests including economic ones already to America or to China, by de- industrialization in the name of “Green” policies.
The main threat remains China and Trump is thus interested in Eurasia via the Arctic and the Pacific.
Globalism European and Progressive style is only suiting CCP.
I would have expected Fazi to talk of CCP influence in Latin America and especially their investment in Panama. Oddly the Democrat State Department didn’t spend in reviving the Canal, though going into areas as far as Bangladesh and Syria on behalf of Islamists.
CCP stepped in and Trump is very correct to thus go back to Monroe Doctrine to curb CCP.
The time has come for European leaders to come together and form a united bloc. The European Commission will naturally demand to be in control. They should be dumped, sacked, no pensions, nada. But of course, this won’t happen, when you have the likes of Starmer and Macron (who will want to be in charge). Europe could be so much better.
Indeed. But how can the Europeans come together ?
Brussels firmly controls the political power and more importantly the European Central Bank. The elected leaders of the nation states can easily be brought to heel (and often are) by closing off their debt funding. (as Italy and Greece discovered ). The EU structure is very similar to the centralised Soviet Union. As I see it there are 2 options but would be interested to hear others:
1.Become a proper United States of Europe. (would require a civil war)
2.Revert back to the EEC model of cooperating states. (means unwind the Euro currency)
Neither option is palatable.
It’s perhaps the consequence of twin assessments:
The EU block is unreliable and about to go through its usual violent political contortions. Its market is less and less interesting from an economic point of view, far too many regulations (most, disguised protectionism for their crony champions) for dwindling returns. Not to mention has gone from 35% of world trade to less than 13% in 40 years. US multi’s have been neglecting the EU market for a while now, but still, heads in sand, much.
China and Russia have unapologetic Monroe doctrines of their own, going back decades, uninterrupted.
When Trump is presented with fact, he does not do ideology, he adapts to fact. That much at least is a constant.
And the fact is that Europe is increasingly irrelevant in the world order. Governed by old people for old people, averse to any form of risk, increasingly poor and ill equipped to defend the antiquities hidden under the eaves.
It is with terrible sadness that I recognise our best chance in Britain is incorporation. As a dilapidated raft escaping the EU sinking ship, we are going to get caught in the turbulences, again. And have never been less prepared in our recent history.
Musk’s obsession with the UK is far from innocent.
Why do I think of Orwell’s 1984, divided between the three great powers of Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania with its European outpost, Airstrip One?
Vastly overstating the importance of Russia going forwards. Now a tier 2 country and not in the same league as the USA and China.
Don’t speak too soon. Russia is a goldmine. The only thing holding it back is the endemic corruption. And that could change.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, thirty years from now, Europeans are emigrating eastwards to escape the disaster their politicians have brought on them.
Thirty years? Ten more like!
Russia is heading towards an Islamic state, 15 % and rising.
Birthrates of whites need to rise, or they need to deport millions.
How can the writer say the Russian threat was largely ‘imagined’, given the history?
Russia was content with the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, yet Merkel used them to buy time to rearm.
How did that work out?
Fazi was referring to the cold war behaviour of Europe, when Russia controlled eastern Europe after murdering millions of its citizens in the first half of the 20th century. It’s perfectly reasonable to fear Russia – it has never renounced its imperial ambitions and has acted with extreme irrationality towards Ukraine recently.
Russia and Ukraine had different views of the Minsk Agreements wiht Russia hoping to use them to control Ukraine. Putin’s misjudgments are obvious from the cack-handed initial invasion.
Because it was. If the “history” you’re referring to is the 1956 and 1968 squashing of the democratic uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, I would put it to you that asserting dominance over a country in your sphere of influence is a very different thing than invading countries outside of it, and there hasn’t been a Russian (or Soviet) leader since Stalin that would have risked it.
Good article but I have to point out that while Trump’s rhetoric is of course a bit mad regarding Greenland, the only reason it appears to be an affront to the decaying and self-important European order is that Greenland happens to be an erstwhile Western outpost of Europe on the USA’s doorstep.
How important one thinks this is depends, it appears, on where one resides on the political spectrum: when Argentina rattled its sabre at the Falklands while the USA had Barack Obama in the Whitehouse, he was entirely happy to talk about Las Malvinas as if Argentina’s claim had already been settled: a ludicrous and diplomatically obtuse position for the leader of a major ally to take.
If Starmer doesn’t change direction, we may find Trump swapping Greenland for the “special relationship”.
Then what will Mr Fazi say?
Greenland. With 60000 residents, and artic location, you know it’s on Russias to do list. What can 60k greenlanders, or peace mongering Danes do about that?
Greenland could gain independence from Denmark, and therefore Brussels.
Come to think of it, Denmark gaining independence from Brussels, as well, would help everyone.
So why hasn’t Russia done what you imply yet? Maybe the tales of Putin’s desire to conquer the world are a bit foolish.
Many here seem to make the assumption that Trump’s changes (to the extent he manages them) will be permanent.
I’m not sure the author’s claim of an Americas and N Atlantic focus matches with the facts.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/09/us-air-force-island-fortress-navy-army-pacific-china-taiwan/
This would inject some sense into the otherwise nonsensical. And Europe has, as Thomas says, been panicked by the US over a largely imaginary Russian threat, if half-knowingly. The real threat to the US, and the best thing for Europe and Russia, was a Russia fully integrated into Western Europe. Everything has been done to prevent that, while rationalizing it as due to Russia’s evil, occasionally by manufacturing utterly cartoonish Russian plots lifted from James Bond scripts.
An irony, given the centuries of theft by the US from European corporations, initially well-known, then covert via key commercial IT corporations and professional service firms. Europe has been fatally weak and stunningly naive since 1945. But then, it thought itself to be merely locked in a battle with the Soviets, grateful for the Marshall Plan after the war. The idea that its bestie should use this co-operation to pilfer its key assets, and at times hobble its most effective business corporations in the name of assisting US corporations, all while embracing her, was only a shadow. For a slightly clearer picture, look to Japan’s experience. There was, after all, a heavy debt to repay for WW II despite rapprochement with Japan, Germany and Italy.
Beyond all these machinations, are we overplaying the Great Game? It seems that way but perhaps not. I always wondered why on earth my former US boss, a corporate heavy-hitter and engaged in state work, particularly on Russia, went to Greenland after New York for such a time, before France. There’s Something About Greenland. And when you look at Google Earth, it becomes clearer. As does the ‘no friends, only interests’ thing.
This piece is about Europe’s place in the world. Good. Under the articles of confederation America was a failed state. The constitution bound the states together more closely.
One can see the advantage to Europe of a more perfect union. A lot of “IFS” here, but;
Why doesn’t EU reconstitute, including eliminating non directly elected leadership? Put the checks and balances in to prevent centralization of power.
Why not develop a constitution of laws meant to empower the citizens, not crush them with regulation?
Under what constitution will the petty nations subordinate their past, not so glorious, bloodlines for the greater good?
Under what constitution will France and Germany cede some arrogant power to make it work?
450 million people, existing capital as a base, Europe can be a dynamic player on this planet, if it only gets out of its own way. And also vigorously defends itself.
The alternative is geography. Europe becomes the appendage of Asia that it really is. Only dominated by the oriental autocrats.
The trouble is that, apart from a thin sliver of well-buffered polyglot elites, there ARE no Europeans.
The fear of Asia or China is a delusional disorder only found in the west.
I share here a clip from Pres. Nixon talking about China and I think this is at least 40 plus or 50 years ago! I mean it is realpolitik at its finest:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uZgaUmh7imw
All of this is true. This is precisely what the European Economic Community (EEC) used to be, and delivered, until it was thrown away. Without a vote.
I would say that Trump’s position is more nearly that set out by Putin, which is that ‘great’ powers have geographical spheres of influence and smaller powers about them must be subservient to the needs and requirements of the ‘great’ power.
In this, Trump is setting aside the Wesphalain world order, which was first enunciated 375 years ago that the internal affairs of sovereign states were to be respected and not subject to interference by other states. The Monroe Doctrine is a variation on that theme.
More pertinently, if we are still guessing how Trump will deal with the Russo-Ukraine war, then I think we now have the compass bearing on Trump’s trajectory of thinking. Ukraine, he would surely agree (with Putin) is within Russia’s sphere of influence and so long as Russia does not interfere with any ambitions Trump has for Greenland, Trump will not interfere with Russia’s ambitions regarding Ukraine.
Putin appears to regard much of Eastern Europe as part of Greater Russia and Western Europe as it’s Sphere of Influence.
The idea that America wants to take over Greenland or Panama comes across as desperate and, frankly, hysterical in that delusional press conference! especially before even assuming the presidency. Announcing intentions to acquire Greenland or Panama without diplomacy or nuance sends a message of recklessness. It not only makes America appear desperate but also gives other nations time to prepare for this kind of aggression.
What America seems to overlook is that wars no longer need to be fought on the battlefield because we are all interconnected. There’s a profound lack of respect, wisdom, and collaboration in these statements. Why not negotiate with Greenland, for instance, and establish mutually beneficial agreements rather than resorting to hostile rhetoric? Aggression of this sort is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. It weakens alliances, particularly with Europe, and jeopardizes NATO. While America claims to focus on national security, this kind of approach risks alienating Europe entirely. Europe breaking away from America would be a severe blow to their mutual interests. However, I think Europe still has a chance to make strategic and fundamental changes of accepting ideas and concepts or even philosophical thinking are infinite but making a goal for collaboration and securing their borders is realistic and one that may also allow to approach China and other countries.
Moreover, this situation reflects deeper issues. America’s historical approach of spreading democratic ideals worldwide, often uninvited, has already caused significant embarrassment on the global stage. The danger here is that such unilateral and aggressive actions could further isolate the U.S. from its allies. Today, a lot of countries may just say NO to US….and not lose much of anything other than interference and always having instability initiated by the US!
As for Europe, some people predict it might decline into a state resembling Africa or the Middle East due to geopolitical shifts. However, I believe the comparison is flawed. Colonization, despite its many harms, did lead to some global connectivity—for example, English becoming a widely understood language that enables us to communicate across continents today. When Europe and America inevitably lose some of their current dominance, they won’t regress because they have the memory of powerful past; instead, they are likely to learn from their experiences. They could embrace the values of collaboration and respect for diversity of ideas and honestly make a deal with China while we figure out what we need to offer to the world that has not been offered yet! it is not all gloom and doom….we are innovative societies! We will only lose power but not our marbles!
The real lesson here is that ideas and concepts aren’t universally relevant. Every country has its own priorities, and collaboration—not domination—is the key to thriving in a globalized world.
The mere fact that America remains unconscious of these dynamics only demonstrates to the world how outdated and wild their approach has become.
Once again Fazi is on top of things with a cutting edge analysis of what is going on. “Spheres of influence” is the new buzz word, and there is a sort of return to the way the world used to be 120 years ago. With this Trump is showing us that the globalist project that began in the 1990s with the great “unipolar moment” is at an end, and the new world will be multi-polar with the heavyweights of the US, China, and Russia starting to delineate their core speres of influence. But there are other nations that are not quite as heavy, India, and even Indonesia and Brazil are the middle weights. They are all going to sometimes align, sometimes not, but one thing is sure, the entire EU is about as significant moving forward as one of the middleweights.
What Trump is doing in delineating out the USs regional sphere is significant, and it’s pretty much inevitable. He is not joking, these places, Canada, and perhaps even Mexico will either become a part of the US, or they might as well be. Panama will become a part of this, because the US needs total domination over this route.
Now, people are going to freak out over all of this but there is a good side to this. This spells the end of the forever wars, and I am not so sure what Israel is going to do, because, well, that sphere of influence seems to be a long way away from America. They might have to put away the Zionist dreams and just become a regular nation just like everyone else has to. One who respects their neighbors. As far as Europe goes. The sooner Europe realizes that its continued vassalization is going to mean it’s all just an open air museum, and farmland the better. If that’s what they want, that is what they will get, but they can’t have it both ways.
The sooner nations realize the globalist neocon game is over and this new game is the future, the better off they will be.
Agree with much of that, but the idea that israel might wish to “just become a regular nation just like everyone else…” well, that’s precisely what it wants, and always has wanted; just to be a peaceful homeland. Someone should tell “its neighbours”.
Russia a heavy weight ? Surely not
“[Israel] might have to put away the Zionist dreams and just become a regular nation just like everyone else has to.”
That IS the Zionist dream.
The anti-Zionist dream is Israel’s destruction and another Jewish genocide.
Russia is a lot weaker economically than it geographic size would indicate. The approx GDP of USA ($30.4T), China ($19.6T), and Russia ($1.6T) in 2021. The differences are huge. Germany alone is 4 x times bigger than Russia. Heck even the UK economy is larger than Russia! (that’s how bad the Russkies are even with all that oil!).
We need Kissinger
…and not just a Kissringer.
To torpedo a peace process and bomb a neighbouring country?
Logically Trump’s actions in this, and other areas, would force Europe, including the UK, into closer collaboration, economically, politically, militarily and diplomatically.
After all we are more dependent on Europe for trade and closer in values than to the USA.
There have been at least 5 offers to purchase Greenland in US history, so in itself it’s not new, nor necessarily inappropriate. The tenor and language is what is new and some of that has repercussions that embolden more malign actors.
Trump was always going to focus much more on foreign policy in his 2nd term than many of his supporters may have expected. It’s the same for all 2nd termers, esp as they become more of a lame duck back home. Historical legacy also appeals. So in many ways this is just a foretaste.
Author notes the awkward position this places Europe. In fact a few clear signals Europe better hold firm together not necessarily a bad thing. And unfortunately for those who’d like to get a tug and pull the UK 3000 miles across the Atlantic we in the UK remain inextricably tied to the fate of Europe.
“we in the UK remain inextricably tied to the fate of Europe”
Hey, this lifeboat’s seats are a bit hard on the old posterior. I know, let’s get back on the Titanic.
Every day it gets a little bit clearer that Brexit was the right decision. Bad times are coming in Europe. The smart money is already crossing the Atlantic – as current UK gilt yields rather strikingly illustrate.
But feel free to decamp to your imaginary nirvana any time JW. We’ll even crowdfund your fare.
You may have noticed HB, or maybe not perhaps and that’s the problem, that a trade deal with US never materialised and that we still do 40%+ of our trade with Europe. Just on more difficult terms now.
The nirvana point is thus a useful metaphor about the picture painted by Brexiteers that after 8 yrs never came to pass.
Gilt yields an international issue and driven by multiple factors.
we still do 40%+ of our trade with Europe
That 40% is as bogus as every other figure you quote. What matters is not how much we import, but how much we export.
What was it the great man said? Oh yes: “if they understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists”.
Gilt yields an international issue and driven by multiple factors …
… but mainly the grotesque incompetence of our hapless government..
The last time Europe met its fate we were the only country standing against its downfall. Yet we’re ‘tied to’ it and must follow where it stumbles? Think again, then try again.
Indeed that first point may have some historical basis, but our geography didn’t change you’ll notice and hence we had to fight. Walking away wasn’t an option.