Is Greenland Donald Trump’s 25th-amendment moment? Last time around, this was when the Washington “grownups” debated his capacity to be president, notably in the final fortnight of his presidency, after the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Under the constitution, a president can be replaced should the vice-president and a cabinet majority decide their leader is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”. The trouble today is that there are no grownups.

The US president’s designs on Greenland are clearly mad. He claims Russia and China are scheming to seize the island and that Denmark should be forced urgently to transfer its sovereignty. Denmark had long allowed the US extended military access to Greenland, but Trump seems to want to own it. None of his staff has been able to say why.

Until now it would have seemed a comic satire for Norway, Sweden, France and Germany to be sending troops to Greenland, pending a possible US attack. Yet that is the absurd prospect happening this week. Britain even sent a military officer. This has come within weeks of Trump’s leadership putsch in Venezuela, and within days of his threatened military assault on Iran. In the latter he appeared to claim victory, saying Iran had stopped using its armed troops to suppress street protests. It happens that Trump has effectively been........

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