Attention to the Unseen

Jim Souhan, a sportswriter for The Minnesota Star Tribune, writes: Authoritarian governments love sportswashing — using international events to put a smiling face on their grim realities. That’s what the United States will try to do this summer with the World Cup. Eleven U.S. cities are scheduled to play host to World Cup matches this summer. The United States does not deserve this privilege as long as uniformed thugs are attacking people in the streets with the support of the…

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Trine Pertou Mach, Member of the Danish Parliament, writes: For more than a year, US President Donald Trump has openly threatened to “take” the world’s largest island, Greenland, which is currently a semi-autonomous entity within the Kingdom of Denmark. The threats seem to intensify by the hour, and the situation may well have worsened by the time you read this. I am a member of the Danish parliament, the Folketing, and the foreign affairs spokesperson for Enhedslisten, the left-wing Red-Green…

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Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to Washington and currently chairman of the Munich Security Conference, writes: As Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has warned, an attack on Greenland would be the end of NATO. That would rob the United States of an unbeatable web of allies, offer rifts for our common enemies to exploit and eradicate the alliance’s collective moral high ground that has helped project American soft power across Europe and the world for decades. In short, it…

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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…

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Paul Beckett and Isabel Ruehl write: Imagine you’re the president of a midsize country, and you’re offered a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The only condition: You have to pay the secretary-general of the United Nations $1 billion. This is something like what Donald Trump is now offering world leaders. The U.S. president has sent letters of invitation to various heads of government to join a new Board of Peace, which he will chair. The organization was…

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Nikhil Pal Singh writes: ‘Kinetic action’ in military terms is the application of force or motion to produce physical damage. Landing a Black Hawk helicopter filled with armed police agents on an apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore, dropping stun grenades and zip-tying residents is kinetic action. Grabbing roofers off the top of a house in upstate New York at gunpoint is kinetic action. Blowing up a small boat loaded with people in the Caribbean Sea: kinetic action. Kinetic action…

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Omaha World-Herald reports: Rep. Don Bacon on Wednesday ratcheted up his criticism of President Donald Trump’s approach to Greenland, telling The World-Herald that Trump’s comments represent “utter buffoonery” and that invading Greenland would be a “disastrous idea” that could lead to Trump’s impeachment. Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who’s not seeking reelection this fall, said an invasion of Greenland could prompt House Republicans to impeach Trump, who was impeached by the House twice in his first term but acquitted both times…

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