A week and a half ago I wrote my Congressman, Lloyd Smucker (R-Toady), about standing up to the president on acquiring Greenland by force.
Yesterday, the president sent a letter to European embassies and the Norwegian prime minister stating, to sanewash his incoherence into something eloquent, “You, Norway, denied me the peace prize. Therefore, I shall have war.”
I saw a Tweet on Twitter this morning by a writer living in London, and it struck me as very cogent. “It is hard to escape one impression. Greenland does not come across as strategy, security, or geopolitics. It reads like grievance. Like revenge. As if Greenland, in Trump’s mind, has become a proxy for the Nobel Peace Prize he never got.”
To me, Trump’s understanding of geopolitics seems to consist entirely of a game of Risk he played… and probably lost.
Donald Trump is willing to burn the world down to get what he wants. He has the means (the world’s largest military and a nuclear arsenal sufficient to kill us all) and the will.
He is a danger to himself and to the world. He must be removed from office by means legal or illegal before he plunges the world into a war from which there may be few survivors.
There will be repercussions if Trump chooses to make war on Europe for Greenland. An end to a military alliance that kept the peace for eighty years. An end to trade on favorable terms with European nations (and perhaps beyond). An end to pretty much unhindered travel around the world by American citizens. An end to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Treasury bonds dumped. Perhaps even an end to the World Cup in the United States in 2026 (though it may go on in Mexico and Canada).
There are levers the European nations have to play. Every day politicians, both Republican and Democrat, sit on their hands and do nothing to stop his madness is a day they are complicit in the destruction political, economic, and reputational he will bring. And if that comes about, frankly, the United States will deserve it. We had many off-ramps, and we have, so far as a country, taken none of them.
Meanwhile, in Scandinavia, MAGA has taken on a new meaning: “Make America Go Away.”
And they are fully justified in feeling that way. Where are the forceful shows of support for NATO and Europe from elected and retired politicians? Where are the forceful denunciations of Trump’s military threats? It’s like they’re all treating this as “Trump being Trump” and it will all blow over soon enough, but beyond American borders it doesn’t look like anyone with power is really standing up against Trump’s blatant disrespect and aggression.
For my part, I have yet to hear back from Representative Smucker. When I do, I expect a response that is effectively, “The powers of foreign policy belong to the president, and Congress can’t undercut him by limiting his powers.”
Elsewhere in Washington, the president received a gift from a knight, the last of three brothers who undertook a quest to find the Holy Grail in the eleventh century.
May the president choose wisely.
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. There is much more to King than “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
He was also opposed to capitalism and militarism, and we would do well in these times to celebrate that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Eric Swalwell is right. Martin Luther King, Jr. today would be in Minneapolis, standing up to ICE and the lawless regime that has enabled it.
