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Trump's renewed Greenland threats are why we have no allies
And our former friends won't trust us again anytime soon.
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Depending on when you read this, Trump may be bombing Iran, claiming a peace deal is imminent, threatening to commit more war crimes against the civilian population, teasing a ground invasion, or some combination thereof.
Nothing, though, has really changed.
Nearly five months out from Trump’s unprovoked and disastrous attack, the bottom line is that he’s lost the war but still can’t bring himself to admit it. So we’re trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of vacillating between belligerence and fake peace deals while gas prices spike, bombs fall, and people die.
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Off to the side of that debacle, Trump last week reiterated that he wants to seize Greenland in his sweaty short-fingered appendages.
Greenland, he blustered, “should be controlled by the United States, not Denmark.” He added, “that’s what hurt my relationship with NATO, because Greenland doesn’t help Denmark”— which is both nonsensical and a lie, inasmuch as Trump’s been attacking NATO for at least a decade.
Trump’s gaseous blather about invading Greenland seems like a minor monstrosity compared to his actual murderous bombing of, and ongoing humiliation by, Iran. But they’re part of the same phenomenon — a foreign policy driven by ego, ignorance, and inflamed colonial malice, in which the US sees no allies and really no other sentient human beings, just territory to be won and glorious carnage to commit.
The renewed threats against Greenland are serious because they signal once again how untrustworthy, erratic, selfish, and cruel US foreign policy has become. Neither allies, rivals, nor enemies can trust us. Which means everyone, definitely including us, is poorer, less secure, and less safe.
Threatening allies has costs
Trump first began braying about buying Greenland in his first term. Why he became fixated on it is a bit unclear, but the obsession seems to have started after Puerto Rican officials and the media criticized Trump for his (failed, racist) response to Hurricane Maria.
In a snit, Trump began to talk about trading Puerto Rico to Denmark for its autonomous territory Greenland. His rationale, according to former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, was that “Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.”
Why does Trump want Greenland in particular? He’s floated a range of nonsensical rationales over the years, from security to mineral wealth. Recently his administration has even argued that Greenland’s fisheries could save the Red Lobster seafood chain.
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