A state of general confusion and concern has gripped the world as it watches how US president it tramples the rules of international relations, destroys the Western alliance and sends a signal to the totalitarian despots of the East that they can do whatever they want in their own backyards, but not touch his Western Hemisphere. Donald Trump's foreign policy turn is dramatic. When he entered the 2016 campaign, he sharply criticized the interventionist policies of his predecessors, both Democrats and Republicans.
Then, in his second term, the self-proclaimed peacemaker ordered military operations on three continents: Iran, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria and Venezuela. Now he is threatening Europe, determined to take over Greenland from Denmark, since he has defined the Western Hemisphere as the area of his primary interest.
The imperial ambitions and colossal vanity of the "peace president" are planetary. In the best style of his grotesque theatricality, Trump does not hesitate to say that he would be ready to accept the Nobel Peace Prize from last year's winner, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition Maria Corina Machado - but fortunately the Nobel committee forbids sharing or transferring.
Trump wants obedience at every address he sets his sights on. Otherwise bombs or Delta special forces. He will give in only where he has to respect a rival power: China and Russia. It's nothing particularly new. Military interventions, regime changes and liquidation of opponents have been organized dozens of times by Washington and the CIA, all under the guise of spreading democracy, fighting for human rights and blocking the cancerous ideas of communism.
What is new is that Trump is not interested in the values on which the Western world was created after the Second World War. He runs a cabal of militant pirates, tech and petro oligarchs, AI billionaires, crypto-currency bosses and shadow bankers. Their goal is to take over resources, from Ukraine to Greenland.
The president whom critics like to call a "serial liar" - in his first term, 30.573 such statements were documented - is now unexpectedly honest. After the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro, he announced to the press that the USA was taking over the "management" of Venezuela remotely from Washington, and then he moved on to oil.
There is no story about the democratization of the government in Caracas, nor about changing the essence of Maduro's dictatorial regime, not even about the narco-terrorism that he initially used as a pretext for military intervention. He is interested in oil. Not because America needs it, it doesn't, but to get Venezuela out of the arms of China, which has already become Latin America's second largest trading partner, after the USA. To deny Cuba Venezuelan oil.
EXTRACTING PROFITS FROM THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Trump is using oil as a weapon, just like Russia is doing with gas. He wants a "clean" and subjugated Western Hemisphere, which he will rule and from which he will profit. At the same time, the message carries a wider universal value: spreading fear. Threatening Colombia and Cuba, he is sending signals that he is ready for airstrikes against the drug cartels he says rule Mexico. So, in a show of unexpectedly brutal honesty, he returned to the idea of taking over Greenland, with money or arms.
Trump has a fixation on taking over the semi-autonomous territory that belongs to Denmark. When he first launched his vision in 2019, many considered it to be another of the confused rhetorical stunts of a president who is proven to be out of touch with the cartography of the world. After Venezuela, no one is laughing anymore, although almost everyone agrees that the unilateral takeover of the world's largest island, either with dollars or weapons, would be America's biggest foreign policy blunder since the Vietnam War in the early 1960s and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It would be a huge strategic mistake that threatens the future of NATO and destroys the post-war security architecture of the West. The problem is that you never know with Trump. His approval rating has fallen below that of "sleepy Joe" Biden and he will do anything to straighten the curve. The Caracas episode, accompanied by threats to Greenland, quickly made European partners remember how Trump humiliated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in early 2025.
Now the leaders in Copenhagen are in the same position, who repeat that Greenland is not for sale. Neither the British prime minister, the German chancellor, nor the French president, who refer to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity and appeal for solidarity within NATO, fare any better.
We are witnessing a disturbing situation: while Europeans are defending the sovereignty of Ukraine, Trump has trampled on the sovereignty of Venezuela, and on the occasion of Greenland, he is threatening the sovereignty of Denmark. The mayhem game has just begun. World leaders are trying to figure out how to deal with the wave of Trump's new rendition of American imperialism. After the military operation in Venezuela, the question arises as to what this aggressive, neo-colonial move, directly contrary to international law, means for the rest of the world.
EUROPEAN STUTTERING
Europeans are in the most delicate position. Trump continues to ignore Western allies as he prepares for new interventions in the Western Hemisphere, which he has declared his backyard, leaving rivals from Moscow and Beijing to exert influence in their own neighborhoods. It is the new dangerous reality of the world in which small countries do not ask anything and Trump - with the secret consent of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping - intends for them to just listen.
During the meeting in Paris regarding Ukraine, six European countries expressed solidarity with Denmark, called for collective security of NATO in the Arctic, including the US, but without criticizing Trump. The words of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who called on the Europeans to "raise the price of war" in order to bring Moscow to the negotiating table regarding Ukraine, sound good. Should Trump be trusted when he accepts stronger security guarantees for Ukraine a decade and a half after the end of the war?
President Zelensky is obliged to do so by his official duty, but European leaders are not convinced: they publicly praise the American, privately they suspect that he will continue flirting with Putin for the sake of "fantastic possibilities" of bilateral cooperation when the sanctions on Russia are lifted. The European "coalition of the willing" tries to present itself as a monolith, but there are many cracks in the unity created immediately after the aggression against Ukraine. Despite twenty packages of sanctions against Moscow, last year the EU increased imports of Russian liquefied gas and paid out 7,2 billion euros - directly financing Putin's war. Immediately after the invasion, Brussels cut off the inflow via land-based pipelines, pledging to ban imports by 2027, but ice-breaking tankers are still making their way through the Arctic to reach European ports.
Greenland is there on the way to defend the Western Hemisphere. But why would anyone expect Trump to respect international law when at home he is lashing out at Congress and vindictively tearing down his own country's legal system? Why should you believe him that it is about defense against Russia when he is looking at rare minerals? If his predecessors placed interventions around the world in the defense of democracy and human rights, he is not interested in those values. Trump wants a world based on the principles of power and profit.
He is ready to make deals with rival powers from China and Russia, the others do not interest him. Despite the rhetorical condemnations of "banditry" in Venezuela, Istok would like to preserve communication with Trump, who has more than once shown that it is easier to negotiate with powerful autocrats from Moscow and Beijing than with European partners.
"It is necessary to prevent that the most unscrupulous take whatever they want and that regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers", was the harsh but lonely German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "With our most important partner, the USA, there has been a breakdown of the values that helped build this world order."
"If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country, then everything would come to an end", warns the Danish Prime Minister Mete Frederksen, but others are more cautious in the fear that in case of more energetic opposition to Trump's plans, he could suspend support to Ukraine, deny guarantees of its post-war security and leave it to Europe to confront the current or future threats of Russia on its own.
photo: ap photoEU WEAKNESS: Ursula von der Leyen
THE MIND OF DONALD TRUMP
The American president is not asking Europe anything, but while its leaders are privately panicking, they feel obliged to say something in a way that will not irritate the nerves of the American ruler. The head of EU diplomacy, Kaia Callas, says that Trump's comments about taking control of Greenland are "deeply disturbing".
French President Emmanuel Macron states that Trump is violating international rules, that "multilateral institutions are functioning less and less efficiently" and that he is "turning his back" on some European allies. Good morning, Columbus!
Even in his first term, Trump showed that he is not interested in international institutions and rules. He pulled the US out of UNESCO, the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement, and these days out of 66 other international organizations, conventions and treaties, half of which belong to the UN system. He unilaterally terminated the international agreement with Iran.
Openly ignoring the EU and NATO partners, like Angela Merkel at one time, is now more than transparent. Unlike some of his predecessors, who were reserved towards allies on the other side of the Atlantic, Trump is doing it in his own style: openly and brutally denigrating Europe as a weak and declining continent.
The European Union is faced with the onslaught of the extreme right, sovereignists and nationalists, but instead of mourning its fate, in times of geopolitical threats, the EU should fight back with the strength of the principles of liberal democracy and start reducing the technological lag behind the USA and China.
Greenland is an opportunity for European governments to oppose the practice that normalizes unilateral military actions by the US or Russia. The credibility of the peace project today mostly depends on Europe, but European leaders seem to have been paralyzed by a cobra from the White House, and their behavior is returning to the thirties of the 20th century. All this is another confirmation of European weakness.
The crisis within NATO escalated, but no one has the power to stop Trump from his idea that he "needs Greenland" for "national security", despite the fact that Denmark is a member of NATO and despite the fact that the USA recognized Danish sovereignty over Greenland since 1916, in exchange for the purchase of the Danish West Indies (today's Virgin Islands).
Article 5 of the NATO Charter says that an attack on one member means an attack on all, but if the US intervenes armed against Denmark, it is a conflict within the Alliance and the rule does not apply. As was the case between Greece and Turkey in 1974. "No one will oppose the US militarily over Greenland," concludes Trump's advisor Steven Mueller.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accepted a meeting with his Danish counterpart, but refuses to answer the question of whether military intervention would mark the end of the Western military alliance and collective security system built after World War II. The decision is up to Trump, who has threatened several times so far that the US will leave NATO and leave the European allies to take care of the dangers from the east.
Trump shows that he is no stranger to Russian roulette. He thinks he is so powerful that he doesn't have to hide anything. He specifies the only thing that can restrain his actions: "My morality. My own mind. Those are the only things that can stop me."
Maybe it's not like that. If he does not have to worry about the resistance of the Europeans, Trump could reflect on the fact that the Senate, with the help of Republicans who joined the Democrats, voted a resolution that prohibits any new military action in Venezuela without the consent of Congress, which he did not ask for the first time.
According to predictions, the American public is already preparing a yellow card for Trump. Republicans are expected to lose their majority in the House of Representatives in November's midterm elections - which would significantly limit the power of a man who does not respect domestic and international laws, but relies solely on his own narcissistic and authoritarian business mind and - morality.
