One way or the other, President Trump said, he will have Greenland. Well, at least now we know it’s the other; not an invasion that would have sent young men home to their mothers across Europe in coffins, but instead another trade war, designed to kill off jobs and break Europe’s will. Just our hopes of an economic recovery, then, getting taken out and shot on a whim by our supposedly closest ally, months after Britain signed a trade deal supposed to protect us from such arbitrary punishment beatings. In a sane universe, that would not feel like a climbdown by the White House, yet by comparison with the rhetoric that had Denmark scrambling troops to Greenland last week it is.
That said, don’t underestimate the gravity of the moment.
Keir Starmer has tried everything to avoid being forced to choose between Europe and the US, and for a country that has burned too many international bridges lately that was the right instinct. He has swallowed any amount of personal mortification and public disquiet in the process, only to discover that whatever Britain gives, Trump always demands more. For this president, you are either all in or all out. Though Britain joined an American military operation to seize a Russian-flagged tanker suspected of sanctions busting only days ago, that didn’t protect us from presidential wrath when we also sent a single officer to Greenland last week, in symbolic solidarity with our (and at least in theory the US’s) Nato ally Denmark. You can’t ride two horses, it turns out, when one is a mad bucking bronco.
All of which means that the old western alliance is effectively dead, and the US under this president is no longer an ally. Anyone expecting Starmer to say so on Monday morning, still less to threaten the closure of American military bases across the country in retaliation, needs however to face reality.
Europe’s first instinct will be to try for some negotiated fudge that saves face, jobs and (particularly in Ukraine, where US security guarantees remain critical) lives, with Denmark’s foreign minister due in Downing Street shortly to discuss options. Though no deal with Trump is to be relied upon, doing them still buys time, no bad idea when dealing with a 79-year-old president increasingly unpopular at home, whose power could be constrained by Democrat advances in this autumn’s midterms. In the longer term, however, Europe urgently needs an escape plan.
Any woman ever trapped in a relationship with an abusive man will recognise something in the posture of the US’s smaller, less powerful allies over the past year. The first time he lashes out, you tell yourself that it can’t be what you think it is; that it won’t happen again. Before long, you are tiptoeing over eggshells around him, trying not to say or do anything that makes him explode. But since an angry man will find excuses to be angry, eventually it becomes clear that the only answer is to leave. Yet to get away safely from a vindictive man takes some planning.
All those smaller democracies reliant on the US, whether they like it or not – for their defence, for the prosperity of which it has long been the engine, for whatever grudging concessions towards Ukraine’s future security can be extracted even from this White House, or just as a bulwark against whichever more malign superpower would otherwise be pushing them around – need time to build alternative structures before burning down the old ones. Good things could arise from those ashes, including the acceptance on both sides of the Channel that Brexit has died along with the old world order, and that Britain must quickly form some new kind of political, military and trade alliance with its neighbours (though probably one that falls short of EU membership, which could take a decade to renegotiate). A far tougher sell, however, for a country where public services are already on their knees, will be the requirement to spend billions more on defence and billions less on everything else – unpalatable choices no British prime minister will make until forced to.
For what makes this process infinitely more complicated than ending a marriage is the need to separate president and country. Trump cannot last for ever, and so long as there is any chance of him being succeeded by someone more capable of being reasoned with in 2028, a conclusive final breach with the US makes no sense. The epoch-defining judgment call western governments thus have to make isn’t about the US under Trump, but about whether the US itself is lost to us, for a generation or more. Until that is resolved, the only strategy is to play for time; but plan, all along, for escape.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
