President-elect Donald Trump, by calling for the effective U.S. purchase or annexation of Greenland, an autonomously-run territory of European NATO ally Denmark, seems to be playing mind games with Copenhagen, yet by so doing does damage to Ukraine, Israel, and NATO in open, obvious benefit to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Problem 1: By doing so he has created a spectacle of imperial fiat and imputed a measure of U.S. policy equivalency to Russian ruler Vladimir Putin’s imperious land and resource claims against Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, and other former Soviet states. It also tends to justify ambitions of Mideast imperial caliphate movements wishing to end the state of Israel, and autocratic mercantilism inside a number of African states.
Problem 2: Together with his America First historical DNA, the President-elect plays threat-politics with an ally that was historically annexed, invaded, and occupied by Hitler’s forces. The America First movement historically enabled, appeased, and consorted with Hitler’s Germany while the Danes ultimately put up a brave anti-nazi resistance with British help.
Problem 3: The notion of acquisition of Greenland for strategic purposes is wasteful in the extreme as Denmark is a NATO ally with an established close-relationship with the United States.
Upshot: The NATO Alliance is strategically, economically and politically advantageous to the United States, and throwing acid on it does no favors to the American people. Imagine spending trillions on Greenland only to have it irradiated and melted down by Russian nuclear attack. Exponentially more effective would be to spend the trillions instead creating a deterrent and interdictive capability that Moscow nor Beijing will deem worth challenging. For resource needs, the private energy and mining sectors can more efficiently trade with Greenland and Denmark while saving the taxpayers trillions and keeping our staunch allies. That is the conservative mindset Republicans once stood for.
None of these destabilizing tactics and communications from 2015-2021 prevented the Taliban from preparing to dominate Afghanistan; Moscow’s preparation for the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine; nor the dictatorial axes’ indirect and direct provisioning of the eventual, major attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023; all of which would not have happened so quickly during the next U.S. presidential term if solid deterrent and interdiction work had been done before 2021. If anything, these antics helped dictators and terror sponsors at the expense of the United States and its allies.
There is a quote spreading on the internet for which I have not been able to find the source, but which the President-elect needs to meditate on from now until he is actually once again in the Office:
Once you understand the power of your words, you won’t just say anything. Once you understand the power of your thoughts, you won’t just think anything. And once you understand the power of your presence, you won’t just be anywhere. Know your worth.
More importantly: Know the worth of the people your words and actions are supposed to safeguard, protect, and defend for the general welfare.
By now, the President-elect knows how his words can put U.S. troops at risk. If the President’s words knowingly benefit adversarial powers putting U.S. troops in their crosshairs and U.S. troops take casualties because of it, the reasonable suspicion of treason moves closer to probable cause.
