President Donald Trump’s obsession with acquiring Greenland for the United States has “broken brains” of foreign policy experts around the world, Politico Magazine reported on Thursday — and it has gotten to the point where experts are shunning travel in case Trump declares war.
“Not long ago, many foreign policy professionals were still asking if the post-World War II ‘rules-based international order’ was dead,” reported Nahal Toosi. However, once Trump began to escalate his threats to invade Greenland to seize it from Denmark, “I’m hearing more flat-out declare it’s a corpse. Canada’s leader, Mark Carney, said as much at the World Economic Forum this week.”
“That means foreign policy consultants are rethinking advice they give to clients, while think tankers are reconsidering their travel and study plans,” said the report.
The moves of the one-year-old presidency have been so bizarre that Toosi wrote leading minds have been blown.
“This obsession with Greenland has shifted paradigms and broken brains,” she wrote. “And I’m talking about big brains: diplomats, foreign policy analysts, economic specialists. People on the left and a fair number on the right.
And it’s not just in Europe.
“It was like, huh?” an African official told Politico. “The shocking part was the level of the threat, how serious he was. And it’s not over.”
In one case, Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution “said she had to submit her department’s policy research priorities for the coming fiscal year to her superiors this week, but that she warned them the list could change by next week,” while “Diplomats from Europe said the Greenland crisis has created a new reality because it’s clearer than ever that even allies are not safe from Trump’s machinations.”
A foreign policy official in Europe told Toosi, “It creates a sort of fear in the European Union. It’s not just about expanding our imagination, but just to realize this is a different day and the traditional ways — the rules, the laws — don’t necessarily apply. Everything is now negotiable.”
Trump, who also put out some proposals to purchase Greenland in his first term, now claims the United States needs the island territory because Denmark is incapable of protecting it from China and Russia. He also says American troops need access to Greenland, something they already have through the NATO alliance.
Surveys indicate Greenlanders overwhelmingly oppose becoming part of the United States, and experts have said if Trump did somehow acquire Greenland, it would become a massive drain on the federal budget.
The president seemingly moved to tone down the tensions he caused at the World Economic Forum, by foreclosing the idea the United States will use military force to get its way on the Greenland issue. He now claims there is a “deal” in the works to give the United States what it needs regarding Greenland, but is currently vague on details.
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