All eyes are on Greenland. And that is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants. Russia’s president must be rubbing his hands and giggling with glee as he watches the president of the United States of America deliver the kind of strategic effect for Russia that a KGB colonel could only dream of.
Donald Trump’s peevish narcissism is Russia’s greatest asset. And while the US president’s myopic view of Greenland dominates geopolitics, it distracts from what is going on thousands of miles away to the east.
Unable to get Ukraine to agree to surrender more than a fifth of its territory to Putin’s army, even after he attempted to hamstring Kyiv’s defence by cutting all military aid, Trump has found that his power over Ukraine has dwindled.
Nato allies, and beyond, have stepped in where America hopped out. So far, the EU, Canada, the UK and others have contributed about $250bn (£186bn) in aid to Ukraine. The US contribution has been below $150bn.
For the past year, Trump has honoured promises and deliveries scheduled under Joe Biden, his predecessor. But the only important contribution from the US to the defence of a Western democracy against an invading dictatorship has been an intelligence feed.
It is Nato members who are the most important. The European Union’s members have the most to lose, give the most, and should be more closely involved than the US in negotiations to end the war. But as its leaders know, and the Greenland farrago has shown, Trump needs careful managing because there are still three years left of his presidency.
So, along with his openly pro-Russian chief negotiator Steve Witkoff, he’s being left to run talks that directly affect the future of Europe, while Europe (along with the rest of Nato) prepares for a world in which the US has withdrawn from the region’s alliances altogether.
That process has accelerated over the past six months. And the future existence of Nato is now cast into doubt as members of the alliance have grown their independence from America’s military machine.
Real operational independence is at least five years off. One man, though, has a vested interest in trying to make sure that Nato falls apart before then. What better way for Putin to ensure that his land grab in Eastern Europe goes ahead largely uncontested than to see the Nato alliance implode before an alternative can be sewn together?
What better way to put the alliance under strain than have Nato’s leading member, the US, threaten to annex Greenland, a self-administering part of Denmark – a Nato member?
And what better way can there be to enfeeble the economies of the West than to ignite a trade war between the US, the EU and the UK, and then have the US continue to covet its neighbour, Canada?
Trump does have strategic interests in Greenland. Notably its rare earth minerals. He also says he wants to bring it under a “Golden Dome” of missile defences (that does not exist) against Russia and China.
He probably believes this. Just as he believes that, by ripping off the branches of America’s institutions of democracy, he is tearing out “deep state” socialists. He may even genuinely believe that Europe is soon to be lost to a majority of “non-Europeans” (nowhere in Europe faces this demographic issue).
He may believe all this rubbish that he has garnered from Magaland social media – amplified, and often created, by Russia and China. He may also be smarting at what is clearly, and inevitably, going to be a rapid decline in American influence in Europe – because that is what he has forced upon his former allies, and most vividly in Ukraine.
Trump feels snubbed by Europe’s leaders, who have tried to manage him but cannot help but look upon his administration as rampaging trailer trash.
In his latest tantrum, he has written to Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, to complain: “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
Trump hasn’t brought peace to eight conflicts. His Gaza ceasefire has held only because Israel’s military objectives had been achieved, and the fighting continues. But he is prepared to make a fool of himself on the global stage, and stamp his feet over not winning the Nobel, insisting: “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
But he cannot, or will not, see that he is continuing to serve the Kremlin with antics that are only eroding America’s power.
Keir Starmer and many other European leaders know that they still need to handle Trump, and that they need to keep relations with the US, along with their shared alliances, alive until he leaves office.
Europe may be forced by Trump into a trade war that will cripple allies on both sides of the Atlantic. European finance ministers can hit back, if Trump goes on with his Greenland gambit, by dumping US debt and weakening the dollar.
Governments could order US troops out of Europe, and stymie Washington’s ability to project power across much of the world, taking down the US Centcom and Africom military structures that deal with the Middle East and Africa as well as Europe.
But these would be victories for Putin. They’re working hard to stop Trump from delivering these wins gift-wrapped to the Kremlin.
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