The American threat: Three words I never imagined writing
President Trump pounces on weakness, but retreats from strength. That’s one reason for Europe’s present troubles: For too long it was weak both toward President Vladimir Putin of Russia in the East and toward the new menace arising in the West.
That’s certainly Trump’s perception. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said last month of European leaders, and he had a point. They fawned over him and meekly surrendered as he steamrolled them with tariffs.
Trump was preying upon that weakness as he threatened to seize Greenland and effectively destroy NATO, while warning of a new trade war if Europe resisted. In Davos on Wednesday, perhaps reacting to European pushback, he backed off somewhat: “I don’t have to use force” to acquire Greenland, he said. “I won’t use force.” Later in the day he withdrew, at least for now, the threat to impose new tariffs on Europe over the Greenland dispute.
Earlier, he had posted a map showing Greenland, Canada and Venezuela all as part of the United States.
It has come to this: Canadian military planners reportedly are gaming how they might repel an American invasion with guerrilla tactics similar to those used by Afghan fighters.
Fortunately, the shock of Trump’s Greenland demands may finally be leading world leaders to awaken to the American threat. (How weird even to type that!)
“Until now, we tried to appease the new president in the White House,” Prime Minister Bart De Wever of Belgium said Tuesday. “We were very lenient, also with the tariffs, we were lenient, hoping to get his support for the Ukraine war.”
“But now so many red lines are being crossed,” he added. “Being a happy vassal is one thing, being a miserable slave is something else.”
The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, made a similar point on social media: “Appeasement is always a sign of weakness,” he wrote. “Europe cannot afford to be weak — neither against its enemies, nor ally. Appeasement means no results, only humiliation.”
President Emmanuel Macron of France called Trump’s latest tariff threats “unacceptable.” He added, in a statement that notably equated the menace from Trump to that of Putin: “No intimidation or threat will influence us — neither in Ukraine, nor in Greenland.”
The dangers of appeasement should, of course, have been fully absorbed by Europeans in the 1930s. As Winston Churchill warned Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after the Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”
President Richard Nixon and other conservative Americans likewise counseled the importance of standing up to Communists by quoting a supposed instruction by Lenin: “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.”
Leaders who pushed back at Trump did better than the Europeans. One is China’s president, Xi Jinping, who retaliated aggressively against Trump’s tariffs by curbing exports of rare earth minerals — forcing Trump to back off. Indeed, Trump has since then been unusually conciliatory toward Beijing, allowing sales of advanced chips and quietly accepting China’s bullying of Japan and Taiwan.
The other is Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney. His predecessor, Justin Trudeau, had been conciliatory, but the result was mockery from Trump and calls for Canada to become America’s 51st state. Carney from the outset was polite but resistant, and Trump has been somewhat more respectful toward Canada since, even as Ottawa has pursued new partnerships elsewhere. [Continue reading…]