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Are we thinking Greenland is really going to happen? This was one of the "just Trump being Trump" notions I dismissed, but he seems to be making noises like he's semi-demi-serious, and the EU seems to be taking it seriously.
I don't know whether to laugh or be terrified about it; is this the US attempt to finally technically qualify for Eurovision? Though it seems that they are currently ineligible, alas!
I don't think that means anything. There's political capital to win for western politicians in being the one who's most against or opposite Trump, and that's easier if you interpret everything he says in the least charitable, most unhinged way. We saw the same here in Canada, a certain defeat for the liberals was flipped by the media acting like Trump is seriously planning to invade.
That's true but there's equally political capital for Trump supporters to say no one should take him seriously when he says crazy things about invading allies. The fact their leaders are trying to curry favour with them is not an adequately reassuring thought to a European worried about the world order.
A lot of Trumpists, heavily practiced in sanewashing Trump and accustomed to the institutional restraints on his behavior from his first term, have basically become incapable of processing negative attitudes towards Trump as anything other than TDS. It's all a joke/big talk/hardball. Until he actually does it, at which point of course he did it. He said he was going to. The fact that Trump says twenty insane things a week and only follows through on two gives enough cover to act like taking him seriously is ridiculous.
In particular, I suspect the Venezuela operation rattled observers far more than Trump supporters grasp. You don't have to like Maduro to feel anxious about Trump suddenly deciding that rapid, unilateral operations are cool at the same time that he revives talk of taking Greenland.
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He's not actually saying anything about invading allies, what happens is that he mentions he'd like something that's a long shot, journalists jump to ask "is a military intervention ruled out?" and then he (or a surrogate) answers "nothing is ruled out" because the administration doesn't want to play or discard cards in their hand because of some jackass journalists. And the circus of "he's planning to invade an ally!" starts.
Let's say John frequently talks about murdering his wife in a way that suggests he's not going to do it, but he just keeps randomly bringing it back up. Steve asks him if he's actually going to do it and John says his policy is to never confirm or deny anything. Oh and just the other day John beat somebody up that he similarly talked about beating up, but nobody liked that guy (Venezuela).
Is the problem here:
A: Steve for taking John seriously and repeatedly asking him about it. Who would openly talk about murdering their wife? That's crazy. He should know that John is weird, and that he never denies anything.
B: John because talking about murdering your wife is deeply unsettling behavior even if you're not being serious, and there's evidence John does in fact do crazy and possibly illegal things. If asked if you're going to kill your wife, maybe saying that you never confirm or deny anything shouldn't be considered an acceptable answer.
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Which is exactly what has people so alarmed! They believe that the reason we're not currently rebuilding from World War Five right now is because, for the last eighty years, there has been a rule that military intervention for territorial gain should not be considered as an option.
That's why so many people support Ukraine, why the world came to the defence of Kuwait in 1990, and why anyone besides a few anti-Semites gives a rat's tuchus about the West Bank settlements.
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Trump himself said: “I would like to make a deal the easy way but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way."
Then Vance told European leaders they should "take the President of the United States very seriously."
It's disingenuous to pretend it's all been kicked up by the media.
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There really isn't - I think you underestimate the amount of TDS there is outside of the US. Seriously, we went from "liberal party may fit inside a minivan" to "a few seats shy of a majority" based not even on the CPC being seen as pro-Trump, but being seen as insufficiently anti-Trump.
If it helps, even Trump believes that he caused the LPC to win.
Poilievre losing to Carney is a profoundly non-central example of TDS. Canada's strategic situation actually changed because of a change in US policy.
If you treat the invasion threats as the social media rantings of a madman, the US (a) elected a madman President and (b) announced and executed on a tariff policy which Trump justified to his domestic supporters as a punitive measure to force Canada to address a non-problem (fentanyl flowing south across the US-Canadian border).
The tariffs were not really about fentanyl, and both Canadian elites and Canadian voters know this. If you think "Trump wants to annex Canada" is TDS then they are obviously not about that. So the best non-TDS read is that the US has, for domestic policy reasons, decided to pursue a new economic policy that was profoundly harmful to Canada (and is explicitly repudiating his own trade deal to do so). Canadian policy should change in response to this.
It is also worth noting that if Trump's threats to annex Canada were broadly understood in the US as the rantings of a madman, they would have been ignored (or even covered up) by his supporters and signal-boosted by his opponents. What actually happened is that MAGA Twitter went off on an orgy of reciting the (mostly made-up) crimes of Canada against the US that justified the invasion, boasting about how easy the invasion would be militarily and how cool it was that Canada and Canadians didn't get a say, and discussing plans for the government of post-annexation Canada. To remain in good standing with the Trump White House and the broader MAGA movement, MAGA-aligned elites had to pretend to take the ranting against Canada seriously. I don't think Trump is planning to invade Canada, but he is very careful not to send the kinds of reassurance you would expect if a joke between two friendly countries was getting out of hand.
The thing is, if people had been reacting on this basis I think they'd actually have had a point; they didn't.
They reacted solely as "Poilievre is conservative, Trump is conservative, obviously Poilievre is going to immediately capitulate and sell Canada to Trump!!!" (Nevermind that Poilievre almost immediately denounced the tariffs, and numerous conservatives stated that "Canada is not for sale").
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He's serious about wanting it, not serious about taking it by force from Denmark.
I'd like rich people to give me all of their money, but obviously the people who would need to make that decision are not going to go for it. A one-off joke might be one thing, but it's a bit weird if I repeatedly talk about it like it's going to happen.
Trump is definitely more than a bit weird. And he's serious about wanting Greenland and probably DOES think he can make a deal to get it. But he's not going to take it by force.
As much as I dislike Trump, if Trump can make a deal that all parties are happy with to buy Greenland (including not bankrupting America) I'll give him credit.
But thus far I am not seeing any serious attempt to convince Denmark and Greenland to want to make that deal. From the Deal Maker in Chief I mostly hear complain, complain, insist that it's going to happen so they should just get with the program, complain, and make something that could vaguely be interpreted as a threat. I know he's serious about wanting it, but it would take a lot of effort for it to happen and I am seeing very little from Trump to explain his confidence. I know there's long odds that Trump will use force, but with Trump I can never rule anything out and I see more breadcrumbs of evidence that he might use force than I see evidence he's going to charm them into agreeing.
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It's not that reassuring though. The EU ought to put troops from multiple countries there to create some sense of jeopardy for the US that it might not be a totally bloodless operation, even if they can't realistically stay to fight.
They could put troops in Nuuk and a few other Inuit towns, but the US would just ignore it. The navy can just show up to any spot on the hundreds of miles of uninhabited coastline and start building whatever facilities they want. I suspect that this is the agreement that will eventually be reached. The inhabitants of Greenland will continue to be under the dominion of Denmark, but the United States will have free reign over all currently uninhabited territory.
If Trump just wants extra military bases, he only had to ask.
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This leaves us with the question of what the point of the entire drama is if the goal is simply to establish more US bases in Greenland, since the US can already do that under existing agreements with Denmark. Is Trump so thug-brained that he needs to see such actions as taking something rather than exercising a pre-existing option?
No, Trump wants to be able to say the US owns Greenland, and his reasons for wanting that are almost certainly incredibly stupid and thug-brained.
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That's both never going to happen and would do the opposite of deterring Trump if he really wanted to do it.
I think it is actually very likely to happen under the guise (?) of saying the troops are there to repel China and Russia, and thus assuage Trump's stated concerns about the island being seized.
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