On the Greenland annexation

It looks like Trump is pretty serious about Greenland. I hope everyone already saw the letter he sent the Norwegian Prime Minister about his motives. It was actually pretty funny, all things considered. Boris The peace prize, why always Boris the peace prize?

It's hard for me to be uber sympathetic to a bunch of states that have armed, financed, and diplomatically supported a genocide in Palestine. Pretty much all of official Europe (with notable exceptions like Spain and Ireland), and certainly the big 3 of France, Germany, and the UK, have stood steadfastly behind Israel. Europeans talking about international law and respect for rights/sovereignty etc. ring pretty hollow at the best of times, but in the aftermath of their backing of Israel's destruction of Palestine and Palestinians, especially so. Indeed, the entire edifice of the "rules-based order" or the "liberal international order" for 80 years has been constructed on a hypocrisy and double standard that leaves brown people in the Global South to fend for themselves in the arena of power politics/might equals right, while Europeans enjoy its constitutionalism and constraints. I won't lie: part of me is quite pleased that this hypocrisy and has been laid bare and rendered untenable. Or, more succinctly...

But let's step back for a second. When it comes to the downturn in trans-Atlantic ties, there is a serious element and a crazy element. Decoupling American and European hard security is not some batshit, insane perspective. Both at the IR theory level (e.g. Realists/restrainers) and the policy level (e.g. Cato), there are real people with real arguments for why the U.S. should not be the primary or even significant contributor to European security vis-a-vis threats like Russia. One may disagree with the arguments at both the theoretical and policy levels, and to be sure many do, but it's not just fluff and BS. There's a real there there, intellectually speaking.

The part that is batshit and insane is the severing of economic, cultural, and social ties. This is where the MAGA/nationalist wing really makes its presence felt. If you're wondering where the lectures about the "Islamic takeover of Europe" (ironically propelled by right-wing nationalists in Europe itself) or taking over Greenland come from, it's nationalism. Don't overthink it (Trump certainly hasn't). Put differently, if the president was J.D. Vance and not Trump, you may not have seen this whole Greenland imbroglio but you certainly would still see the conflicts over NATO/Ukraine. 

If I was advising Europeans how to navigate this, the first thing I would say is drop the "if you do this, NATO dies" argument. That will encourage, not discourage, him. There really is no point in, say, Atlanticists from Germany writing in the New York Times exhorting Trump to please think about the future of NATO were he to go through with the annexation. If you say "this will kill NATO," they will say "don't threaten me with a good time." 

No, there is one and only one thing bullies respond to, and that's fighting back. Hit him where it hurts. For Trump, that is his family, because at core, he is a mafioso. Travel bans on his children and in-laws. Sanction the companies (especially in tech) that donate generously to him. Anything aimed at the wider American public will be water off a duck's back for him; he won't care. It has to be hyper targeted at him and his inner circle. 

Of course, it's pretty sad that we have to rely on Europeans to stop him. Officially, Congress can end this -- all of this -- right now. All it would take is twenty (20) Republican senators deciding enough is enough and that maybe, just maybe, something other than winning the next election is a goal worth having. Would you bet on that? At what are essentially 5:1 odds, I would not. 

But give me more attractive odds, say 15:1 or 20:1, and I may put a cheeky $100 on it. I often read the comments on WSJ articles as a sound indicator of where the boundaries of impunity lie, mainly because they signal where the country club/taxes/regulation crowd departs from the MAGA/immigration crowd. So for example on an article about Israel, all the comments will essentially be "Death to all Palestinians and brown people" but on an article about tariffs half the comments will be "what is he doing to my 401k?!?!" and the other half will be "yay, America first!". So you can view that distinction as a tell that he can do whatever tf he wants on the Middle East, but on tariffs Mitch McConnell and his ilk will stymie his craziest ideas. In fact, that's pretty much exactly what happened with his most hair-brained tariffs: when the markets dipped precipitously in March/April 2025, the WSJ/country club/McConnell crowd got off their asses, and he backed down to something more digestible. 

Point is: those people are pretty aghast at the whole Greenland thing and are throwing around the words "impeachment" and  "25th amendment" pretty liberally. I think there's a helluva lot more than just a hop, skip, and a jump from WSJ comments to the actual removal of this guy. But like I said, give me attractive enough odds, and I could be convinced to bet that this is the stop where enough passengers get off the train.