Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
A small but I think interesting speculative, tentative (both of these things because it's honestly too soon to tell how these things will ultimately play out) note on Recent Events, first with Venezuela and (perhaps?) secondly with Iran: the "Donroe Doctrine" in practice is avoiding a specific fail state of the neoconservative (or US-led international rules-based order or whatever you'd like to call it) modus operandi.
Specifically, the Donroe Doctrine has been to avoid creating a power vacuum that could be filled by forces unknown. Instead, coercive diplomacy is applied to weaken a regime, but rather than attempting to topple the regime's leadership, the coercive diplomacy is then treated as leverage in an ongoing series of negotiations.
You can see this most clearly in Venezuela - even though that operation involved seizing the leader of the country, Trump's strategy obviously was not to pursue the removal of the rump regime. Instead he preferred to negotiate with it. Now with Iran, with potentially regime-shattering protests apparently in play, it seems that the Donroe Doctrine might be to the hang the threat of removal over the head of the regime to induce preferred behavior rather than intervene directly. (Watch me jinx things and airstrikes happen as soon as I push the "comment" button.)
If you look back past the raid in Venezuela, you can see signs of this as well. Trump was comfortable drone-striking Qasem Soleimani, but not as part of a scheme to overthrow the government of Iran. Trump has always talked about working with Putin (or Xi, or Kim Jong Un, or what have you) even when he was taking direct adverse action against them (most notably against Putin).
I suppose there are a number of things one could say about this, but one observation I think I would make is that this is not new way of doing things, and in fact it's been practiced quite recently ("stop doing this or we will launch another 50 Tomahawks at you" is a pretty typical message for US presidents to send), so it's not an innovation per se. At the same time, in the recent past, there did seem to be a general vibe of "we want to remove the bad guys and let the good guys take over" even if we were only engaging in coercive diplomacy, and that vibe seems less present now.
The other one is that this way of doing things is actually well suited to a world where the US status as a superpower is challenged. Paradoxically, as the days of monopolarity slip into the rear view mirror, instances of US gunboat diplomacy may proliferate. This is for (at least) two reasons: firstly, as soft power slips away, the US will need to exercise more hard power to maintain credibility. Secondly, nation-building is an expensive and long-term commitment. Black-bagging dictators really isn't! By plentiful use of coercive diplomacy, the US might be able to achieve far-reaching effects at much less cost, letting it focus more budgetary effort on areas of major geopolitical focus.
Finally, I think there's a clear danger here: if you have a successful string of black-bagging, drone-striking, or otherwise exercising coercive diplomacy against people who annoy you, it can grow intoxicating and seductive. This is obviously a threat of nation-building as well, but a string of quick, cheap, successful operations can lead very quickly to an expensive failure if you keep rolling the dice. And, well, Donald knows better than anyone: nobody likes to lose.
But I'm curious if this sketch rings true to others. What am I missing?
Where the acquisition of Greenland fits in. I get the idea that having access to Greenland would be strategically advantageous for the United States, it just seems a weird drum to bang on. And no, there is no military action in Greenland as there is in Iran and Venezuela, but it is a sovereign country and Trump has made noises about how "We need Greenland." How does that fit in the "Donroe" Doctrine?
Greenland is not a proper "sovereign country". Denmark is, but Denmark owning Greenland is just a historical accident, it got it in a divorce with Norway in 1814. Their sovereignty over Greenland is like British sovereignty over Hong Kong - today it's there, tomorrow maybe not. It's not like Iran or Venezuela, it's more like, say, Alaska or American Samoa. I think if Obama asked Denmark for Greenland, in order to establish The First Innuit State in History or whatever, they might go for it (they aren't racists after all!). But of course, no European can say "yes" to that orange clown, that's just unthinkable.
And yes, as the Northern routes are opening up Greenland becomes rather important. Europe's war doctrine is "it will be ok somehow, and if not, US will certainly do something about it and we will criticize them for doing it wrong", so it's not likely they were going to do much about it. They might now, to spite the orange clown, but they certainly weren't before, especially not Denmark, whose fighting days are well behind. So, bringing it up is a win either way - either there's US presence in this strategic region, or Europe bumps their own presence, even if to spite Trump.
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