Gaby Hinsliff writes:

One way or the other, President Trump said, he will have Greenland. Well, at least now we know it’s the other; not an invasion that would have sent young men home to their mothers across Europe in coffins, but instead another trade war, designed to kill off jobs and break Europe’s will. Just our hopes of an economic recovery, then, getting taken out and shot on a whim by our supposedly closest ally, months after Britain signed a trade deal supposed to protect us from such arbitrary punishment beatings. In a sane universe, that would not feel like a climbdown by the White House, yet by comparison with the rhetoric that had Denmark scrambling troops to Greenland last week it is.

That said, don’t underestimate the gravity of the moment.

Keir Starmer has tried everything to avoid being forced to choose between Europe and the US, and for a country that has burned too many international bridges lately that was the right instinct. He has swallowed any amount of personal mortification and public disquiet in the process, only to discover that whatever Britain gives, Trump always demands more. For this president, you are either all in or all out. Though Britain joined an American military operation to seize a Russian-flagged tanker suspected of sanctions busting only days ago, that didn’t protect us from presidential wrath when we also sent a single officer to Greenland last week, in symbolic solidarity with our (and at least in theory the US’s) Nato ally Denmark. You can’t ride two horses, it turns out, when one is a mad bucking bronco.

All of which means that the old western alliance is effectively dead, and the US under this president is no longer an ally. Anyone expecting Starmer to say so on Monday morning, still less to threaten the closure of American military bases across the country in retaliation, needs however to face reality.

Europe’s first instinct will be to try for some negotiated fudge that saves face, jobs and (particularly in Ukraine, where US security guarantees remain critical) lives, with Denmark’s foreign minister due in Downing Street shortly to discuss options. Though no deal with Trump is to be relied upon, doing them still buys time, no bad idea when dealing with a 79-year-old president increasingly unpopular at home, whose power could be constrained by Democrat advances in this autumn’s midterms. In the longer term, however, Europe urgently needs an escape plan. [Continue reading…]