President Donald Trump’s announcement that he will neither invade Greenland nor impose tariffs on European countries to force a sale of the island came as welcome news for conservatives and America’s European allies. That doesn’t mean that everything is hunky dory.
A few facts remain clear. The president of the United States threatened a NATO ally with invasion, with neither just cause nor congressional authorization. He sent a bizarre text to the Norwegian Prime Minister, seemingly tying his potential actions against the Danish territory to the Nobel Prize committee’s decision not to award him a peace prize last year, something the Norwegian government has nothing to do with. His tariff threat was another arguably unconstitutional act, as no possible congressional delegation of its tariff-setting power has been made with the intent of giving the president leverage in international negotiations to purchase or seize another country’s territory.
In short, the end may turn out well for all parties involved, assuming the news that the framework for a deal Trump mentioned provides, as has been reported, only a very limited transfer of sovereignty over Greenlandic territory, which the U.S. needs for military bases. The fear and anger these unilateral and unprecedented acts have caused among Europeans of all political persuasions, however, means the NATO alliance remains on shaky ground.
There are also domestic repercussions to this Arctic brinkmanship. The means the president used to get to this resolution could set a very dangerous precedent, which conservatives will rue.
The domestic problems arise from the asserted — and apparently successful — use of purely executive power without congressional approval that is likely immune from judicial review. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander: If this is how our government will work from now on, Democrats will likely claim the same powers should they reclaim the White House.
Imagine what President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might do to advance her policy aims. She seems unlikely to want to order an invasion to seize territory, but is it beyond possibility that she might order a blockade of Israel to force it to grant a Palestinian state? Or unilaterally impose tariffs and other trade barriers on the Jewish state to achieve the same goal?
Then there’s the climate agenda. Climate alarmists have long sought what they call a border-adjusted carbon tax; essentially, a green tariff levied on the amount of carbon an imported good is held to have used or contained in its production. The same authority Trump claims to impose tariffs to force the sale of Greenland could, if unchallenged, be used to force global compliance with the climate lobby’s dream.
Conservatives have long upheld the partisan use of the filibuster as a check on Democratic power should they regain control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency. That supposed impermeable barrier is illusory if the president can declare war, create laws, and impose taxes by fiat.
The potential foreign consequences are, if anything, more disturbing. All of our allies have just seen that their sovereignty can be threatened at any moment by the very superpower whose masts they have lashed themselves to. No rational leader will want to risk that happening to them, which means all will work to secure their own military power and alliances to protect them against American fury.
That could, perversely, work in America’s interests. If the allies take their own security more seriously, a change in heart from Trump could mean a renewed alliance structure would be powerful than ever. As Israel shows, a powerful ally is a more useful ally even if that nation sometimes uses its power in ways we disapprove of.
Barring that, however, the rational response is to become less rather than more helpful to the United States. That won’t be obvious at first. The allies are mostly too weak to dispute American overlordship seriously.
But think about a decade from now, should Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia rearm as they ought? The fear and hurt that Trump’s precipitous actions have caused will not be forgotten. These national leaders have the motive to organize on their own without America; once they are strong, they will have the means to do so too.
The 1956 Suez Crisis is a good analogy to consider. Egypt’s illegal nationalization of the Suez Canal, combined with its leader, Gen. Abdel Nasser’s, fulminations against Israel, led to a tri-partite invasion.
Israel attacked from the East, seizing the Sinai Peninsula, thereby giving it more protectable borders against Egyptian attack. Britain and France attacked from the north, seizing the canal with the intent to return it to the Anglo-French company that owned it.
The assault was militarily successful but ultimately failed because President Dwight D. Eisenhower used Britain’s economic weakness to force a withdrawal. The long-term consequences were even more profound than the short-term Egyptian victory.
Britain decided that its day as a global imperial power was over, and that its long-term interest was never again to be separated from its former colony. Hence, the start of the “special relationship,” where Britain would seek to punch above its weight in global affairs by influencing the Americans.
That policy has been followed, more or less, by every prime minister since Suez, regardless of party. Even the current occupant of No. 10 Downing Street, Labourite Sir Keir Starmer, has chosen to flatter and conciliate Trump rather than protest.
Trump’s willingness to ignore Starmer so blatantly and undo the trade deals he had agreed to with both the United Kingdom and the European Union clearly shows that the special relationship is at an end, at least if Britain wants to retain a shred of its national dignity.
The other nations humiliated by American perfidy, France and Israel, took the opposite lesson. Both resolved to work with the U.S. but to never again be primarily dependent upon them.
France, under President Charles de Gaulle, took the initial lead on this. France developed its own nuclear weapons and pulled out of NATO’s command structure in 1966. It remained part of NATO but stood apart from it, conducting its own military activities throughout the Cold War in its former colonies.
Israel has also maintained its own strong military. It has never hesitated to use force, attacking Arab nations in 1967 when those countries’ buildup on its borders foreshadowed a war it could lose unless it moved first. It bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, contrary to President Ronald Reagan’s wishes to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. Its long-standing unwillingness to stop Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, despite American pressure, has created demographic facts that make a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem a practical impossibility.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stubborn refusal to be cowed by American presidents is thus merely a feature, not a bug, of Israeli foreign policy.
Imagine if all of America’s allies took the Franco-Israeli lesson from the Greenland contretemps. That cannot be good for us.
Conservatives need to use the respite Trump’s change of heart provides to send a few clear messages. They need to echo Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s message that America First does not mean America alone. They also should ideally combine with Democrats to pass a congressional resolution reaffirming American support for NATO and respect for the territorial integrity of all its allies, NATO and non-NATO alike.
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The administration should additionally go out of its way to soothe fears and feelings, especially among Europeans, in the coming months. That means tilting in their direction on Ukraine policy, sanctioning Russia, and perhaps even restarting some modest American financial support.
Trump is often right in his aims but obtuse or short-sighted in his methods. The Greenland affair is a textbook example of this. Conservatives who really want to retake America should do more to point out his clumsy methods if they want to win and not just get a temporary sugar high.
