MJ Akbar
NEW DELHI: THE Spanish writer Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel in European literature, believed that truth is the mother of history, and history is the rival of time, depository of great deeds, teacher of the present and counsellor of the future. The very practical British Prime Minister of the 1950s, Harold Macmillan, had another view: history was the progeny of the unpredictable and unforeseen, or in Macmillan’s upper-class phraseology, “Events, dear boy, events.” A pessimist might describe history as the progeny of ambition and ego.
You might be chary about Donald Trump leading you, but he never misleads you. He has never disguised his agenda, or the ultra means he intends to implement if there is resistance. There was initial bemusement when he asked Canada to become the 51st state of America or demanded the acquisition of Greenland and subjugation of Venezuela. Now there is grief.
A niche in history
“Show me someone without an ego,” Trump has asserted, “and I’ll show you a loser.” There is no known instance in which Trump has underestimated himself. Nobody, he has noted, has been more successful than him. Ever. Nobody knows banking better than him. Nobody’s bigger or better at the military than him. He has told the “losers and haters” that “my IQ is one of the highest – and you all know it!” He has mused fondly about the prospect of becoming ‘President for life’ like China’s President Xi Jinping, implicitly regretting the limitations placed on the possibility by the American Constitution.
He wants a special niche in the history of the world through the creation of Trumperica, a territory-continent more than twice the size of present America, overflowing with multiple reserves of oil and minerals; on the throne of a new international order in which institutions which have held up the globe since 1945, and made the decisions for the West, are replaced by a new string of offices answerable not to a Security Council but to a Commander-in-Chief living in the White House.
All through 2025 the conventional wisdom in European NATO assumed that they would be able to finesse their way back to status quo once the Trump volcano had been quietened, preferably by a Republican defeat in the November 2026 midterm elections. They introduced a scalding codeword to comfort themselves: TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out. They even believed that a little public pushback might deter Trump.
Leeches, not allies
The otherwise very loyal British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the Greenland grab as “completely wrong”. On January 16, France’s Emmanuel Macron discovered his inner Charles de Gaulle, sent a handful of troops to Greenland, signalling the first, if timorous, mobilisation of West Europe against America, and warned of “cascading” consequences if Trump marched into Greenland. Norway, the audacious upstart beneficiary of American protection since 1945, preached that “threats have no place among allies”.
Everyone seemed oblivious of the fact that Trump had dismissed such European leaders as leeches rather than allies. His counteroffensive began on January 18 when he announced an additional 10 per cent tariffs on eight NATO countries, to be effective from February 1 if they remained disobedient. Any remaining patronising smile hinting that Trump’s “ravings” were a strange but passing phenomenon froze across Europe’s chanceries.
On January 19 Trump told Norway, which had the impudence to deny him the Nobel Peace Prize: “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America”. This was the Trump Doctrine: Don’t cry for me, Venezuela; or Greenland, or Denmark, or the Disneylands of Europe. Pax Americana would be established by tariffs, trade, and the Marines, if that is what was required.
Trump laughed at Denmark; Greenland had “two dogsleds as protection”, one of which had been added recently: the Donroe Doctrine laced with Don wit. He called Starmer brilliantly stupid for handing back Diego Garcia to Mauritius; the stupid part was in capital letters. He clarified that he wanted “complete and total purchase of Greenland”. One American news channel estimated that the cost of acquisition could be $700 billion, which is a lot of money for any government except one which prints dollars.
High on rhetoric
So far, European leaders have been high on rhetoric and low on action. A few have sent token troops to protect Greenland against the American invasion which they fear is inevitable if they do not sell out. The finest Irish playwright of the last century George Bernard Shaw would have called them chocolate soldiers. The Copenhagen street has paraded a statue of a corpulent Trump without clothes and organised a petition signed by at least 280,000 citizens offering to buy California and rename it New Denmark. As humour goes, it is slightly soggy. Placards were seen at demonstrations with a new sign: MAGA rewritten as Make America Go Away.
Trump’s reply went by air: on the night of January 19-20, he added a few extra B52s to the American base in Greenland. It is not easy to tether the terrible power of a determined bull loose in a glass skyscraper
