A Greenland Checkmate – If NATO Nations Stand Fast

Clearly, a blizzard of impressions arise regarding the United States’ recent incursion into Venezuela, its capture and extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and what might come next.  This note isn’t about that.  (Some day, there may be a lengthy post on Venezuela that that tries your resolve and eyesight.)  That said, there is one point to be made here about the Venezuelan raid that is relevant to what follows:  President Donald Trump’s comment not long after the raid, reported by multiple credible sources, that “many” Cubans were killed in the process of capturing Mr. Maduro.  (The Cuban government later indicated that 32 Cuban military personnel were killed.) 

So much for the Cubans.  From both domestic political and geopolitical perspectives, nobody in America cares about dead Cuban soldiers.

This is about Greenland, the world’s largest island, sitting in the Western Hemisphere mostly within the Arctic Circle, a colony of Denmark – a member of NATO — since before the United States declared its independence from Great Britain.  As all who care are aware, given the Trump Regime’s repeated threats in recent weeks to capture Greenland by force if the Danes, Greenlanders, and other NATO nations are unwilling to voluntarily accede to the United States’ usurpation, some eight members of NATO have responded by stationing troops in Greenland on the professed pretext of assuring Mr. Trump that the island is safe from Mr. Trump’s expressed fears of a Russian or Chinese invasion (a completely fabricated concern; Vladimir Putin has his hands full in Ukraine and Xi Jinping is eyeing Taiwan; neither has imminent plans to invade a NATO territory now significantly less strategic to him), while clearly signaling their intent to militarily resist any assault on Greenland by American troops.  Today, Mr. Trump will be in Davos, Switzerland, at the world’s most renowned annual meeting of political and financial bigwigs.  If credible reporting is accurate, Mr. Trump plans to pressure NATO leaders to enable him to assume control of Greenland.

Make no mistake.  I remain a foreign policy disciple of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and there is a lot to be said about securing Greenland’s strategic position for all of NATO as well for the United States in areas such as missile paths, emerging commercial waterways, and rare earth minerals, most of which you already know, much and perhaps all of which could be achieved through deft diplomacy.  There is also a lot to say about Mr. Trump’s increasing erraticism and seeming detachment from reality as he completes the first year of his second term (there does seem to be something that’s changed in the President’s behavior in the last several months – even by the standards we judge him — beyond his aging reversion), but perhaps we’ll get back to that in a future post.  The focus here is on the impending – and extraordinarily silly, if the matter wasn’t so serious — military crisis brought about by the Regime’s thuggish, blatantly illegal approach to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark.  I was initially frustrated by the NATO nations’ response to the Regime’s bellicose overtures – to the effect that aggressive action by the Regime “would mean the end of NATO” – because such tepid responses seemed to indicate an obliviousness to the reality that Mr. Trump wants to destroy NATO, and to invite a Greenland assault would provide him a way to do so.  I have since been incredibly encouraged by the NATO nations’ stationing of troops in Greenland.  The question now is whether the NATO leaders have the internal fortitude to stand up to Mr. Trump’s formidable personal pressure.  If they do, I would submit that no matter how outraged Mr. Trump may be – unless he is now truly delusional, which one can no longer rule out – he will see that he has been checkmated.

The bulk of this note addresses somewhat antiseptically the domestic political ramifications Mr. Trump may face if he orders a military assault on Greenland – how such an order might affect him, which is all he cares about.  What can’t be ignored at the outset are the moral, legal, and potentially tragic personal consequences of what would be a deranged order to invade the island:  Denmark and Greenland control Greenland.  They have for centuries.  We don’t.  We’ve offered to take control of the island.  (If they were willing, I’d support it.)  They’ve said no.  There is no legal or moral gray area.  In a civilized world, that is the end of the story.  As to the potential personal consequences:  As the NATO nations with troops in Greenland make clear their readiness to confront any offensive American assault, I am outraged and terrified for the American troops and for the NATO troops — who have each sworn to serve their nations and NATO as a whole – whose lives may be forfeit, as was National Guardsman U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom’s to a Trump Regime publicity stunt, to Mr. Trump’s attempt to fulfill a totalitarian vision of hemispheric conquest which can no longer be distinguished from the Nazis’ 1930s claims of their need for Lebensraum (“Living  Space”).  (Don’t forget the President’s ongoing references to Canada, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s current spirited defense of Greenland.  Mr. Carney clearly recognizes that if Greenland falls – I deliberately use a wartime battle reference – Canada is next.)

Credible polls indicate that an overwhelming majority of Americans – including an unusually notable segment of Mr. Trump’s hardcore base — think his designs on Greenland are completely unwarranted.  Although many of these Americans may not have cared about dead Cubans, and may not understand the importance of preserving NATO for America’s security, I would submit that they will care about dead Danes, dead Canadians, dead Brits, dead French, dead Germans, dead Swedes, dead Finns, and dead Norwegians (I may be leaving a nation out; if so, I apologize) if we launch a military assault against an ally when we are so clearly in the wrong.    

And much more than that:  they will most certainly will care about dead Americans.  NATO troops know how to shoot.  I suspect that in the Greenland meetings taking place this week, one or more of the NATO leaders will make it clear to Mr. Trump — make it, as they say, crystal:  If the United States makes an aggressive incursion into Greenland, there will be dead Americans.

A second factor with which Mr. Trump should be considering when pondering his malign invasion:  that Congressional Democrats’ recent video reminding American military personnel about their obligation to disregard illegal orders, taken together with the Regime’s vitriolic counterattacks against those members, have made every U.S. service member acutely aware of his/her oath to disregard illegal orders.  Any order to invade Greenland – an ally — will place all American troops, from commander to grunt, in a grotesquely unjust ethical quandary.  If Mr. Trump orders the invasion, how many will demur?  Aside from the troops’ dilemma, Mr. Trump should realize from his own self-interest – again, all he cares about — that if he loses command of the military, his presidency is effectively emasculated.

The first dead American in Greenland – and perhaps even the first dead NATO soldier – will not only mean the end of NATO; I will venture that it will mean the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency (although it may be the beginning of his dictatorship).  Some Americans will reflexively jump to an “America, Right or Wrong” stance; I submit that the a vast majority will not.  The domestic paroxysm resulting from a Greenland invasion added to the continuing protests related to Renee Good’s killing and ICE’s brutal immigration enforcement activities will inflame protests and violent skirmishes across this country.

Unless Mr. Trump is willing to go the final mile – declare Martial Law, and declare himself a de facto dictator (again, assuming that the American military will even follow him) — a united NATO front in Davos will effectively checkmate his designs in Greenland.  I understand the NATO leaders’ continuous coddling of this President Manchild; they have seen it as their best approach to ensure that he continues to provide his lukewarm assistance to their efforts to support Ukraine.  That said – and I suspect that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would agree – no amount of appeasement will deter Mr. Trump from abandoning NATO and Ukraine if he gets it in his head to do so, and NATO leaders’ obsequiousness regarding Greenland is at least as likely to encourage Mr. Trump’s arbitrary abandonment of Ukraine as deter it.  I would further venture that Mr. Trump’s tariff threats against these NATO nations are strategically toothless.  He can tariff these NATO nations all he wants; but for a very brief respite in the 1990s through the early 2000s, they have lived under the threat of Nazi and then Soviet/Russian aggression since 1933.  Given principles of sovereignty and democracy as fundamental as exist here, tariffs are not going to cow them.  (Any Supreme Court decision hereafter holding that Mr. Trump cannot use tariffs to effect his whimsical non-economic initiatives will obviously sharpen an impending Constitutional crisis.)  Politically, these democratic NATO leaders can blame America for their citizens’ ensuing economic hardships, and their citizens will support them.

In the last months, I have obviously made a number of provocative comparisons between the designs and actions of the Trump Regime and past autocratic regimes, mostly in reference to the Regime’s ICE forces’ immigration enforcement measures.  It is clear that the Regime’s autocratic inclinations do not stop within our borders.  Although I could cite a dozen of Mr. Trump’s own comments to make the point, instead I’ll quote comments about Greenland made by Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a couple of weeks ago.  As all who care are already aware, Mr. Miller, who wields tremendous influence in the White House, said the following in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper:

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. … We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.  These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Compare that to the following:

“In this case we must not let political boundaries obscure for us the boundaries of eternal justice.  … [L]et us be given the soil we need for our livelihood.  True, [the nations possessing the land we covet] will not willing do this.  But then the law of self-preservation goes into effect; and what is refused to amicable methods, it is up to the fist to take.”

Who do you think said that?  (I know; I made it too easy.)

• Adolf Hitler; Mein Kampf, Vol I, Ch. IV

In an earlier note, I commented that there was a lot to unpack in the Greenland situation; I was referring to the various substantive geopolitical issues related to the island.  In the context in which we are now speaking, there is very little to unpack:  there is right, and there is wrong.  My use of the checkmate analogy in this note is also arguably inapposite:  chess is an intellectual, antiseptic exercise; a player readily sacrifices pawns to win the game.  What we are facing here is not antiseptic.  It is about sovereignty and the rule of law.  It is about the potential sacrifice of innocent lives.  If Mr. Trump comes to understand this week that forces are resolutely arrayed against him, may he have enough remaining sense of reason – I have no illusions that he has any sense of humanity – to stand down.

We’ll see what happens.