By Tom Fowdy
The past week has seen an unprecedented crisis emerge in Transatlantic relations as US President Donald Trump has doubled down on his claims to annex the Danish territory of Greenland, and announced tariffs on Britain and European countries for opposing it. The move has been met with shock and disbelief from Western audiences, many of whom predictably interpret Trump's actions in irrational terms. How, after all, does it make sense that the United States could unleash a campaign of coercion against its own allies in the view to forcefully acquiring territory from them? Especially when, so to speak, the long-term strategic loss from the US in actively alienating Europe is huge.
With Donald Trump, nothing is quite predictable, and nothing can be ruled out: My assessment is this, the President is using this as a negotiating lever to bully Europe into making concessions, but even leaving out the "worst case" scenario, the strategic implications of what he is doing do not change. First, it should be a well-known fact that Donald Trump engages in highly transactional, inflammatory diplomacy. The President has a skill for deliberately breaking the Overton window with outrageous and unacceptable demands upfront, showing zero regard for consequences and precedents in the process.
We have seen this all before: Trump threatened to "completely destroy" North Korea in 2017, threatened 100% tariffs on China, threatened to stop all military aid to Ukraine unless given control of their "strategic minerals", the list goes on. Usually, Trump is able to threaten these "worst case scenarios" and then force favourable compromises in favour of America, and thus claim victory. That considered, Greenland remains unprecedented purely because the President is actively demanding European sovereign territory be annexed.
On a strategic level, the White House has premised its National Security Strategy on dominating the western hemisphere, a "Neo-Monroe Doctrine" so to speak, as a foundation of American economic power, and the President has actively stated he wishes to own and exploit the natural resources of Greenland, and claimed it is in the security interests of America to do so. This, of course, doesn't make any sense whatsoever, not least given the island is also in NATO via Denmark, and also by treaty can host US forces, thus making his claims about Russia and China threatening it being baseless.
In this case, it seems subtly apparent that Trump is using the issue as a negotiating stick to beat Europe with; he may not get his maximalist demands, but there is some agenda embedded in it. While that doesn't mean what he is doing is strategically smart or wise (it isn't), observers should understand in his classic negotiating style, he is using the threat of annexation as a means to get at European countries for a number of other issues. How so? Yesterday, Trump publicly posted and linked Greenland to the Chagos Islands handover, an agreement he had ironically signed, branding Britain's behaviour as "stupidity."
But there's also a number of other things he doesn't like about Europe right now: One is trade, as always, another is perceived rejection or frustration of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, a third is a multitude of right-wing positioned grievances about domestic politics in Britain and Europe, this is especially applicable to the UK where MAGA have consolidated a narrative that "freedom of speech" is being threatened, amongst other things. In his mind, Trump is thus weaponizing the threat of annexing Greenland to try and haunt Europe with the threat of American power and coercion, which, of course, they are ill-fitted to resist (I have written at length about this for years). After all, the President has been much more radical and unrestrained in his second term than his first, primarily because, knowing his time in office is limited, he aims to permanently change the paradigm of domestic and global politics to make his agenda permanent.
When he says America first, he means it, and thus the President is genuinely committed to ripping up the multilateral international order in favour of imposing unilateralist American dominance. However, even if Trump climbs down on Greenland, this is strategic overreach. He massively underestimates the backlash in public opinion which is policies are causing. For example, the flipping of Canada from vehement hostility towards China, to renewed partnership, is simply wild, so to speak, and the potential here is that European countries may be forced into a corner to finally re-evaluate their longstanding alliances with the United States, even though they have otherwise bent over backwards to preserve it at all costs.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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