Trump's new 'gangster' threats against Greenland, allies, cross line

The response to Trump’s latest Truth Social post over Greenland should resemble that of U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull to the Japanese diplomatic note after Pearl Harbor:

"In all my 50 years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions — on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any government on this planet was capable of uttering them," said Hull.

And while unfortunately we have become quite accustomed to governments on this planet uttering falsehoods, as far as I can see Trump has now gone further in mendacity than any previous U.S. President. According to his latest post:

“China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it…Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable. Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question.”

There is in fact no evidence at all that China and Russia “want Greenland” – or of course, even if they did want it, that they have any chance at all of getting it.

If Trump truly believed in this Russian and Chinese threat, he would be encouraging other NATO countries to station troops in Greenland. Instead, he accuses their (token) deployment of creating “risks” that are entirely his own creation. Piling lie upon transparent lie, Trump then attempts to justify the attempt to seize Greenland by citing hopes of creating a missile defense system for North America:

“Now, because of The Golden Dome, and Modern Day Weapons Systems, both Offensive and Defensive, the need to ACQUIRE is especially important.”

How can this possibly be true, when by agreement with Denmark and Canada, the U.S. has long had early warning systems in northern Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, and could undoubtedly station missile defense systems there by agreement with these countries without any need to annex the areas concerned? The same is true of Trump’s desire to develop U.S.-controlled rare earth mines, something that can also be easily achieved by agreement.

For many decades, the U.S. foreign policy debate has been cursed with the concept of U.S. “credibility” — invariably deployed as a militarist argument for the U.S. to engage in wars in countries in which it has no real interests, that it knows nothing about, and for whose problems it has no viable solutions. It is time that U.S. politicians and analysts began to think of other meanings of “credibility.”

One of these is saying things that other people can believe — or even pretend to believe. Otherwise, the U.S. will risk the fate of the U.S.S.R. under Leonid Brezhnev, of ending in a situation where official statements have become so manifestly divorced from observable reality that the “credibility” of the state does indeed collapse, in the eyes of the world and its own citizens.

Another meaning of credibility is that other countries can believe that the U.S. will not betray its treaties with them, and menace its closest allies when these allies have done nothing to threaten or harm the U.S. If the Trump administration persists in its threat to Greenland, how will any ally ever be able to trust Washington again?

In pursuit of his completely illegitimate, practically pointless and geopolitically catastrophic goal, Trump has now threatened to impose additional 10% tariffs on Denmark and the other NATO countries that have sent token forces to Greenland, rising to 25% in June unless and until the U.S. has purchased Greenland. This creates an additional and categorical imperative for the U.S. Supreme Court justices to rule against the administration in the case regarding tariffs that is now before them.

The other duty lies with the U.S. Senate, to vote immediately to rule out the use of force to acquire Greenland. Two courageous Republican Senators have joined their Democratic colleagues in traveling to Greenland to make their opposition clear. It is time that many more joined them.

As to Trump’s offer to buy Greenland, as NATO allies have stressed, only the people of Greenland have the right to accept or reject this, and no such offer and vote can be legitimate or credible if accompanied by economic pressure and the threat of force if it is rejected. So far, the overwhelming majority of Greenlanders have declared their opposition to joining the U.S. It is possible that they would change their minds if the bribe were big enough; but an absolute condition for putting such an offer to a vote should be that the U.S. first lift all economic sanctions and the threat of them, and completely rule out the use of force. Otherwise, Greenland, Denmark and the world would see this as “an offer they can’t refuse” — a gangster tactic, as a former NATO Secretary General has rightly called it.