Trump’s Greenland ambitions could wreck 20th-century alliances that helped build the modern world order |
Make Denmark angry. Make Norway angry. Make NATO’s leaders angry.
President Donald Trump’s relentless and escalating drive to acquire Greenland from Denmark, whose government – along with that of Greenland – emphatically rejects the idea, has unnerved, offended and outraged leaders of countries considered allies for decades.
It’s the latest, and perhaps most significant, eruption of an attitude of disdain towards allies that has become a hallmark of the second Trump administration, which has espoused an America First approach to the world.
Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have all said a lot of things about longtime allies that have caused frustration and outright friction among the leaders of those countries. The latest discord over Greenland could affect the functioning and even existence of NATO, the post-World War II alliance of Western nations that “won the Cold War and led the globe,” as a recent Wall Street Journal story put it.
As a former diplomat, I’m aware that how the U.S. treats its allies has been a crucial question in every presidency, since George Washington became the country’s first chief executive. On his way out of that job, Washington said something that Trump, Vance and their fellow America First advocates would probably embrace.
In what’s known as his “Farewell Address,” Washington warned Americans against “entangling alliances.” Washington wanted America to treat all nations fairly, and warned against both permanent friendships and permanent enemies.
The irony is that Washington would never have become president without the assistance of the not-yet-United-States’ first ally, France.
In 1778, after two years of brilliant diplomacy by Benjamin Franklin, the not-yet-United States and the Kingdom of France signed a treaty of alliance as the American Colonies struggled to win their war for independence from Britain.
France sent soldiers, money and ships to the American revolutionaries. Within three years, after a major intervention by the French fleet, the battle of Yorktown in 1781 effectively ended the war and America was independent.
American political leaders largely heeded........