The inscrutable workings of Donald Trump’s mind seem to be fixated on the “acquisition” of Greenland to a degree and in a manner that is by now unusual even for him, the most consequential and idiosyncratic political figure of our age. What had been seen for most of last year largely as a quirky idea floated as a trial balloon in typical Trump provocative style, the president’s open bid for the Danish territory – apparently with hardly any options off the table, including force – has now turned into arguably the greatest gamble of his career.
It is important to understand just how atypical this Greenland business is, even for Trump. For all his reputation as a boisterous, reckless, unpredictable disruptor with a disregard for rules and a penchant for “deal-making” via shock and awe, Trump is actually a generally prudent and risk-averse player. The distinction from almost everyone else is that he takes a different approach to risk itself, in the sense that he understands the strength of his own cards – the power available to him – in the fullest, most comprehensive and unbound way.
Where others would feel restricted in the use of power by all sorts of other constraints and conventions, some practical, some cultural, some psychological – Trump is always focused on the basic, bottom-line calculation of what is actually possible (technically, physically, in the real world) and what is not. The question of, “what can be done” in a particular situation often allows for much broader possibilities when shorn of all the layers of considerations that usually cram into a decision and cloud the judgement of statesmen. This is what makes room for more creative approaches, which in Trump’s case are usually decoded by the wider world as “crazy” and certainly unpredictable.
But none of this could ever “work”, and become an actual modus operandi as it has for Trump, if the player himself would lack the courage to actually follow this unorthodox kind of path and really act on these instincts. It may be given to others, too, to look at things “creatively”, to think outside the box and to consider breaking conventions, at least to some extent: But all of this implies risk, and very few people at the top of politics really have a way – intellectual and psychological – to deal with that in an effective manner: To assess risk well, to retain flexibility of action, and, importantly, to have confidence in one’s own assessment and to persevere against all advice to the contrary.
Seen from this perspective, pretty much everything Trump does in foreign affairs reads as careful, prudent calculations of risk paired with bold action based on that assessment, but always retaining that flexibility in response to changing circumstances, such as on tariffs and trade wars. His boldest move in his second term so far was the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities – at a real risk of triggering a wider war, which set his own political base against him. Yet it was a winning bet. Why? Because the risk had not actually been as big as it looked, given Iran’s other pressures, plus other factors; Trump could see that, and could assess accurately the options provided to him by his military advisers.
The same was the case with Maduro’s extraction from Venezuela: Careful, patient build-up and preparedness, and a greenlight given only when it was clear the operation would succeed. Talking to Putin and pressuring Ukraine and the Europeans? Low-risk, high reward (NATO spending, reset with Russia), rules be damned; so why not? His handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, again clouded by the usual public hysteria around his actions and persona, has prevented a clear view of the full scale of this achievement; when level-headed historians will look at it with a cold eye, it will likely appear as a masterclass in risk management – not all of it Trump’s personal merit, of course, but ultimately depending on his top-level decisions at key moments. The recent protests in Iran only confirm this pattern of careful, even prudent evaluation of the balance of risk: Despite raining down the strongest rhetorical threats on the ayatollahs, Trump was reportedly advised by his own generals that a US military intervention to support the protesters wouldn’t guarantee the collapse of the Tehran regime – and he sensibly took the advice. The risk, so far, has been too great.
Against this background, the Greenland issue stands out as a clear pattern-breaker. For the first time, out of everything that Trump’s done, this is cause for real concern precisely because it seems to be such an outlier in geopolitical risk terms. The deck is stacked against the US president: From the clear-cut legality of the matter (i.e. Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland), to the dubious “national security” argument (given that US already has military bases there, and NATO is willing to do more), and, particularly, to the political cost which is now weighed in the very continuance of the NATO alliance and of America’s fundamental relations with its closest allies.
Yes, in international relations there is such a thing as Realpolitik, where self-interest trumps any other consideration – a legitimate and sometimes necessary recourse – but even in that case, “self-interest” is the operative word. There is no objective analysis in which Greenland is worth more to the United States and its national interest than the sum of its West European alliances – even weak and contemptible as the Old World has sadly become – and the global reputation, or at least the appearance, of America as a force for good and freedom in the world, imperfect as it may be.
This is not to make a “liberal” or globalist argument, but simply to point to the fact that underneath all the raging debates between different Western “camps” and intellectual schools in foreign policy and politics, there is, ultimately, a basic common ground and a shared understanding of fundamental distinctions between what is right and what is wrong, what is legitimate (not even “legal”) and what is rogue. And it is an understanding purchased at great cost in blood and treasure over centuries of warfare and especially two world wars. The notion that sheer power can become its own exclusive justification for quite any kind of far-reaching enterprise on the international stage is not a mark of realism but a deeply self-defeating, counterproductive idea that has been proven as such time and time again.
We are now in genuinely new territory in terms of Trump behaviour, when understood along the lines discussed before – those of a calculated risk-taker who has almost always seen the bigger picture and acted within the limits of prudence, though always wrapped in drama and scandal. The Greenland gambit doesn’t make sense, and this is not just odd but disturbing. Even George Freeman, one of the few geopolitical analysts worth following, has been forced to confess that he “can’t figure out Trump’s latest move”. No one really can, and those who think they do are mistaken.
This state of affairs is both alarming and oddly reassuring. Alarming, because of the potential for further escalation – even a US-European military clash has now entered the realm of the possible – and the increasing certainty of lasting political damage to the transatlantic link. There cannot be much trust left in this relationship after things like the absurd tariff threats emanating from the White House. To all this is added the knock-on effect with respect to Russia and all of Europe’s other adversaries, whose hand will only be strengthened by a US-Europe rift, let alone a conflict.
Not all is yet lost, by any margin. There may yet be a stepping back from the brink over Greenland and a mending of fences. And the reassuring aspect of this crisis lies precisely in its oddity and departure even from Trump’s own unconventional approaches. It is so out of place, and so blatantly erroneous and self-harming – not to mention so offensive to a much wider constituency of observers and voters, including long-time Trump supporters – that it cannot be sustained for long, even by the Crisis Master himself, before more serious political blowback starts to emerge at home in the US.
Polling suggests that just 17 per cent of Americans approve of the Trump’s pursuit of Greenland while there are growing rumblings within the Republican party itself. If the Europeans don’t give in – and they’d rather reconsider their geopolitical stance and make some kind of peace with Putin than assent to the snatch of Greenland by the US – the president will have to choose between military escalation and political climbdown. The danger of this particular issue remains that he is acting very much outside known patterns, so perhaps something more fundamental has indeed changed, for some reason, in Trump’s approach. Nothing can be put past him now and anything is ultimately possible. What started as an amusing joke is becoming less entertaining by the day.
Embrace the chaos