President Trump has announced tariffs to both punish countries that have resisted his attempts to acquire Greenland and to pressure them end to pressure them into agreeing the US takeover. Additionally he has indicated a willingness to break the NATO alliance over Greenland.
A couple of thoughts here. First, if I were American I would be asking major questions about the level of prerogative power that the President seems to have. Should he be able to set trade tariffs on his own to meet his own personal whims? Here in the UK there would be judicial review at this stage challenging those decisions.
Secondly, I think the UK has made a mess of its response. The NATO exercise in Greenland with one token UK participant was just enough to annoy Trump, a virtue signal that couldn’t have done more to both provoke a response and to highlight European and British impotence. In fact there in lies the big issue for Britain particularly. Go back a couple of decades and the UK with other allies would have greater military independence. It struck me that a Thatcher or Blair or even a Cameron would have had the capability to intervene in the Iranian situation as Trump has dithered both bringing the promises help to the protestors and sending a message to Washington.
Further a better way forward in Greenland would surely have been to begin discussions with Trump about a serious long term NATO presence in Greenland, potentially with US involvement. That would have called his bluff by giving him the security reassurances he claims to want.
Thirdly, with Trump’s bluff called, I suspect that a rupture in NATO would be more likely to be temporary . And here’s the controversial bit. I wonder if it might not actually have potential positive consequences. You see, whilst the NATo deterrent might have in its early days prevented the war from widening, it also prevented neighbours with large conventional militaries from being drawn into the conflict .
Yet without the old deterrents and constraints in place, there is nothing to prevent countries like Poland and maybe even Germany and Italy getting involved and that really would shift the balance of conventional forces against Russia and in favour of Ukraine. A heavily humiliated Russia would be forced to withdraw to lick her wounds and that would give the Americans time to reconsider hasty decisions. Europe would have also demonstrated her willingness to pull her own weight
What do you think?
Faithroots 