Erratic though the president may sound, the Trumpian worldview is comprehensible.
European leaders are in a dither, understandably but inexcusably, about Donald Trump’s threats to take Greenland by force, and to use tariffs to slap around anyone who objects: understandably, because no previous president would ever have acted this way; inexcusably, because a clear if unpalatable solution lies right before them.
If European countries were to permanently deploy, say, 5,000 soldiers armed with surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles to Greenland, keeping them there with orders to fight invading American soldiers to the last round of ammunition, Trump would not order the paratroops and the Marines to assault that frozen wasteland—too many body bags. If they were willing to put comparable economic sanctions in place—denying American companies access to Europe’s economy, still collectively the world’s third largest—he would back down from those threats as well. Such policies go against the grain of a continent that is, to use the word popularized by the British military historian Michael Howard, debellated, but that’s the world they are in.
The Greenland episode, disgraceful and shameful as it is, should be seen in the context of Trump’s other foreign-policy escapades—the capturing of Nicolás Maduro; the bombing of the Iranian nuclear program; the attempt to rebuild and reorient war-shattered Gaza; the on-again, off-again relationships with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky; the tariff bazookas that get downgraded to squirt guns with China. Erratic as the president sounds, the Trumpian worldview is comprehensible and even, in some respects, predictable.
Trump is an ignorant man; unlike many other would-be or actual dictators, he does not read books and has difficulty writing more than a few badly spelled sentences on social media. But he does intuit certain truths, and one must give him credit for those, because he is not stupid and they animate his policy. Greenland really has been neglected by Denmark and, since after the American Civil War, has been coveted by the United States. The Iranian nuclear program was a regional and in some respects global menace, and, after a week and a half of Israel softening up, was vulnerable to a single heavy punch. Europe has long underspent on defense, and where American cajoling for decades had not worked, a few face slaps succeeded.
Trump’s domestic political gift is the feral instinct for weakness that characterizes most authoritarians. That instinct is shakier in international affairs, but it shapes the way in which he views the world. With an image of American industrial and military power that is rooted in the world of several generations ago, he has enormous confidence in American strength and therefore assumes that bullying is preferable to negotiation, unless you are up against someone who is as tough as you, even if less muscle-bound.
