Look, for a moment, at the stupid and jingoistic image above. That’s the kind of image that the President of the United States spends his time sharing on his social media network/digital slush fund Truth Social, which truth-spitting members of the mass media like NBC News have the bravery to note as posts that “appeared to be images generated by artificial intelligence, depicting the American flag over Greenland.” Oh, was that AI? I thought perhaps the invasion of Greenland had happened over the holiday weekend and I simply missed it, and that Trump had personally led the way in a suit and tie to plant a flag in the permafrost, flanked by his flunkies JD Vance and Marco Rubio. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened just yet, but we are now poised on the brink, with the President himself ignoring every possible avenue to avoid open hostilities. Now it’s up to the assembled leaders of Europe to intercede at this week’s World Economic Forum, each attempting to one-up the last in a plate-spinning game of Distract Trump, with 75 years of NATO at stake.
We already know what some of their opening salvos look like, in fact, thanks to Trump simply sharing their private communications online in the last 24 hours: Even the leaders who are not-so-subtly criticizing him among the customary flattery. In particular, a text from French President Emmanuel Macron, which his aides have verified as real, illustrates that way that Europe’s leaders attempt to coddle Trump and approach him with over-the-top friendliness and praise, given that this is often a demonstrated way of getting the President on your side. Macron leads off the communication with “My friend,” before telling him that “we are totally in line on Syria,” and “we can do great things on Iran,” (Is this an approval of U.S.-backed regime change?) seemingly hoping this will dull the blow of the last bit: “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.”
And that’s just the thing: No one truly seems to understand the root of Trump’s sudden, heightened obsession with the acquisition of Greenland, which before last month was just one of those topics he had idly mentioned in the past without showing any particular inclination to follow up. Now, however, it’s as if the sunk cost fallacy is Trump’s guiding light: He’s already expended too much political capital, attention and column inches on the Greenland goal to drop it without suffering some kind of bruise to his ego. He noted as much in a Truth Social post early this morning, saying that on the subject of Greenland, “there can be no going back.”
The suck-up messaging of the aforementioned Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, was even more implicit than Macron’s relatively measured response. Rutte had seemingly been installed in the post in the first place in an effort to appeal to Trump, and thus understands the job better than most: Always appeal to his vanity and his constant need for praise and affirmation, because if you do so, there’s a much better chance of Trump suddenly reversing his opinion to match your own. Rutte’s text to Trump leads off with full-throated praise, proclaiming “Dear Donald, what you accomplished in Syria today is incredible,” as if Trump was there on the ground, drawing up a ceasefire between militants. “I will use my media engagements in Davos to highlight your work there, in Gaza, and in Ukraine. I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland. Can’t wait to see you.”
Beyond the gag-inducing “can’t wait to see you,” as if he’s texting a booty call at 3 a.m., the carefully worded “I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland” is calculated to be as open-ended as possible. There may be a full slate of presentations and programming scheduled for this World Economic Forum, but there can be little doubt that the main event are these side conversations, where heads of state will take turns seeing if anyone possesses a pair of keys shiny enough for their jingling to distract the Mad King before he shatters the unity of NATO after three quarters of a century.
That said, there’s a very good chance that there’s simply no reasoning with (or even distracting, or flattering) the man in this state, which is about as manic as we’ve seen Trump in recent memory. He’s currently at the point where he’s zeroing in on totally unrelated global matters–like the U.K.’s transfer of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to the nation of Mauritius–and linking them to Greenland, even though Greenland is on the other side of the fucking globe. What’s more, Trump’s own administration fully backed the U.K. deal with Mauritius back in May, saying at the time that it “secures the long-term, stable, and effective operation of the joint U.S.-U.K. military facility at Diego Garcia,” an extremely tiny island in nearly the dead center of the vast Indian Ocean. But that didn’t stop Trump from randomly flip-flopping on the deal during this morning’s frothing Truth Social bender, now suddenly claiming that it’s “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”
Beyond the fact that I would be genuinely shocked if Trump could find the Chagos Islands on a map, it is perpetually galling to watch the President of the United States behave like an unmedicated, capricious mob boss via social media. Look at the way he invokes supposed ideological enemies like China and Russia, who have “noticed this act of total weakness,” while simultaneously threatening the exact same kind of bullying and military action that China or Russia would employ to achieve their same ends. How did he even land on this random deal, of all things, in trying to make a point on Greenland? Did he just leaf through the past year’s worth of news in “country acquires ____ territory” until he landed on one involving one of the U.S. allies he wants to intimidate?
As far as we can tell, Trump’s current plan on Greenland is as follows: Deploy maximum obstinance and economic pain for all involved–including the United States–with more tariff threats for European nations until their leaders are publicly supporting his bid to acquire Greenland from Denmark, while threatening military involvement all the while. Global stock markets certainly aren’t enjoying the uncertainty, plunging hundreds of points this morning in the latest phase of “he can’t really be serious, can he?”
More than ever before, I begin to worry that no one in Europe genuinely possesses the backbone to stick to their firm “no” on the subject. We may be approaching a moment where the sale of Greenland to the United States–overwhelmingly against the wishes of its residents–becomes the least damaging outcome in the eyes of European heads of state who simply don’t want NATO to be backed into a corner and forced to abandon its stated policy and security assurances in the face of United States aggression. It may not matter how many adults there are in a room, if the one baby present controls the world’s most powerful military.
