[WARNING: COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF PROFANITY ARE USED IN THIS ONE.]
This newsletter is primarily about Donald Trump’s galactically stupid decision to sanction European countries over Greenland. First, however, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World would like to take a somewhat circuitous route to get there — namely, through Iran.
As noted a few days ago, Trump’s ability to apply maximum pressure on Iran was more limited than Trump’s rhetoric suggested. Sure enough, Trump opted not to launch any strikes last week even though he had threatened to do so if Iran engaged in any kind of large-scale crackdown. The Washington Post provides some backstory on that decision:
Trump had not officially given the strike order, but his top security advisers expected him to imminently authorize one of the military options presented to him and were girding themselves for a late night.
The Pentagon advertised that a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Roosevelt, had entered the Persian Gulf. Allies had been alerted that a U.S. strike was likely, according to a person familiar with the matter, and ships and planes were on the move. Personnel at the sprawling al-Udeid U.S. air base in Qatar were advised to evacuate to avoid an expected Iranian counterstrike….
The president came face to face with the unpredictability of potentially destabilizing another Middle Eastern country and the limitations of even the vast American military machine, several [current and former U.S. officials] said….
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and other Arab allies united to urge Trump to maintain his diplomatic options with Iran, said the senior Arab diplomat and gulf official.
“The message to Washington is to avoid military action,” the gulf official said. “Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Egypt were on the same page in the sense that there will be consequences for the wider region in terms of security and the economy as well, which will ultimately impact the U.S.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto leader, spoke to Trump by phone during the week to plead his case, according to a Saudi diplomat and a U.S. official. Salman and the leaders of other U.S. allies in the Middle East were concerned about how Iran would retaliate in the event of U.S. strikes….
Israel wasn’t ready either, particularly without a large supporting U.S. naval presence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had launched a massive military and intelligence operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities and scientists in June, called Trump on Wednesday and asked him not to strike because Israel was not fully prepared to defend itself, the person close to the White House said. The leaders spoke twice, a U.S. official said.
It seems quite prudent for an American president to listen to the counsel of regional allies before pursuing any rash coercive action in said region.
Which raises the question: why is Trump listening to Middle East allies more than European allies?
Or, to put it more plainly: what in the fucking fuck does Donald Trump think he is doing in Greenland?!
We know what he is actually doing in Greenland, courtesy of the New York Times:
President Trump announced in a social media post on Saturday morning his latest strategy to get control of Greenland: He is slapping new tariffs on a bloc of European nations until they come to the negotiating table to sell Greenland.
Greenland is a territory of Denmark, which will be hit with a 10 percent tariff on all goods sent to the United States beginning on Feb. 1, Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post. Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Finland, fellow NATO members that have expressed solidarity with Denmark in its refusal to yield to Mr. Trump’s demands, will also be subject to the 10 percent tariff. If those nations do not relent, he added, the rate will increase to 25 percent on June 1, “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
The leaders of Europe reacted Saturday with unified outrage to Mr. Trump’s latest coercions on the massive island in the North Atlantic. So, too, did lawmakers in Washington, including some members of the president’s own party. And the abrupt announcement of new tariffs seemed to throw a trade deal Mr. Trump had struck with the European Union into serious doubt.
In his post, Mr. Trump argued that the United States needed to control Greenland as a bulwark against Chinese and Russian ambitions in the Arctic, although the United States already has the right to expand its military presence in Greenland under a 1951 agreement with Denmark.
Indeed, Politico’s Eli Stokols provides a solid rundown of several ways that Trump’s stated reasons for acquiring Greenland are self-evident bullshit. If that language sounds harsh, it’s pretty much a direct quote from Stokols’ story:
Trump doesn’t need to seize Greenland to counter Russia. The U.S. has military bases on the island and has traditionally worked closely with Denmark on security.
Instead, some see dubious claims about imminent Chinese and Russian aggression as one of several pretexts for some future action, up to and including a military strike.
The president and administration officials have also suggested the United States needs Greenland for its Golden Dome missile defense shield, “economic security” and access to minerals — all areas where Denmark has signaled an openness to stronger collaboration.
“The President’s arguments about Greenland are self-evidently bullshit from top to bottom,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official during the Barack Obama administration who’s now research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
And European officials note that if Trump was so concerned about Russian aggression he has ample ways to address that — most notably in Ukraine, where allies have pleaded for the president to take a harder line against Putin since he returned to office.
There are many, many additional reasons why launching a trade war over Greenland is a bad idea:
Native Greenlanders really don’t want the United States to annex Greenland.
The move scuttles a trade deal that Trump had negotiated with the European Union.
Trump’s ability to employ tariffs in this manner are likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court.
The tariffs are unlikely to succeed. As Paul Krugman noted, “European deterrence has worked. This is basically a howl of frustration on the part of a mad dictator who has just realized that he can’t send in the Marines.”
Trump’s behavior over Greenland is just the cherry on top of Trump’s overall foreign policy sundae of crap. Sure, there are occasional short-term benefits that come from acting like a bully on the global stage. The long-term costs of going back on trade deals, repeatedly coercing allies, and generally acting like a horse’s ass on the global stage, however, are also becoming clear. The Bulwark’s Catherine Rampell explains:
Someone alert the Norwegian Nobel Committee: Against the odds, Donald Trump has succeeded in peacefully uniting the world.
Unfortunately, the world has been united against us.
This Pax (Ex) Americana era was illustrated Friday, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney wrapped up a trip to China. This wasn’t just any old visit, either: It marked the first time a Canadian PM had been to the world’s second-largest economy since 2017—and based on the glamorous video Carney’s team released, it was a smashing success for Beijing.
Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a “new strategic partnership” between the two countries. Among the key planks of this agreement, China will reduce tariffs on Canadian canola seed, peas, and lobsters. It will also allow visa-free travel for Canadians, who are apparently eager for new tourism destinations. Canada, in turn, will allow 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into its market at lower tariff rates….
In short, Trump’s big bet that countries would ultimately determine that they simply can’t live without America’s markets, and thus would cave to his every whim, was dangerously wrong. Instead, Carney’s Beijing visit shows just how much Trump has done to make China great again. In recent weeks and months, China has advanced or rekindled relationships with many of our allies, hosting a parade of foreign leaders.
So why, why is Trump burning so many bridges for such a superfluous, unnecessary, counterproductive action? Maybe he thought it would be an easy land grab. Maybe it is to distract from his hugely unpopular immigration policy. Maybe it is because, as Trump told the New York Times, possession is “what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty.” Maybe it is literally about maps.
Damned if I know. All I know for sure is that his constant doubling down on getting Greenland is dumb. It’s not worth the price he is paying.
His Greenland fuckery is the result of being severely mentally ill and having a sub-80 IQ. There’s no need to over complicate things. He’s a fucking moron and a psychopath. Sure, he probably thinks it’s a “grand strategy” and that he actually “needs” Greenland, but that’s because he’s a fucking moron and a psychopath.
I have a bad feeling that what is going on is a kind of weird adolescent attempt at summoning a demon in the basement, of exactly the kind that figures in comic-book stories, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so on.
I think Miller, Vought, Thiel and their "dark enlightenment" courtiers have decided that since nobody saved Hitler's brain and nobody's been raising Hitler clones in South America, the only thing left is to repeat the recipe for National Socialism as if they'd found it written in runes at the bottom of a cursed chest. You have to have a racial scapegoat, you have to have brownshirts, you have to have territorial conquests in mind that you link to lebensraum, you have to have natalism and racial purity ideas.
I wish I was kidding or being satiric. I actually think this is what some of them are thinking--that "wag the dog" is not a satiric criticism but a legitimate political strategem, that you have to have a possible war to acquire new territory for the motherland as a way to distract from elections that you think you might lose and are thinking of cancelling. This is, in an odd sense, the most complimentary thing I can say about the Greenland idea. The alternatives are: the entirety of the executive branch's policy apparatus is now "please the old man who has dementia when he says that he wants to fire missiles at Mars" without any of the usual "if you don't, you get sent to the torture prison and your family get fed to wild dogs" that is the normal incentive for cringing ministers to be pleasing the old demented man to that extent or...I don't know, or they think they're going to be given Greenland if they just act super-crazy about it.
No matter what the explanation, it's a really really bad place for the world to be in, and worse for the United States.