A Sharp Break over a Piece of Ice

Why Trump’s Greenland threats are not in the national interest.

Greenland is having its moment here at Davos, a much deserved star turn for a chronically underappreciated and surely beautiful “piece of ice,” to use President Donald Trump’s sobriquet from today. Greenland was on everyone’s mind yesterday, too, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a passive-aggressive address lamenting “a rupture in the world order” without mentioning said president by name. The world leaders and CEOs rose from their fainting couches for a standing ovation.

At first glance, the outrage from World Economic Forum delegates that President Trump won’t play by their preferred rules is just more complaining about a changed world where the United States pursues its own interests unapologetically. But the threats he has begun issuing to European leaders differ from prior moves, like his Liberation Day tariffs, in kind, not degree. His decision to snatch Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela, declare that he now runs the country, and warn other leaders that they may be next, likewise represents a sharp deviation from the more restrained posture of limited strikes on particular terrorists or facilities that won him widespread praise, especially in his first term. Trump is someone who prides himself on governing by gut, taking each situation as it presents itself, and always putting America First, but in the repeat game of international relations, these no-holds-barred tactics can do real damage to the national interest.

The recent Greenland threats are perhaps the most obvious illustration of the problem that Trump is creating. The logic appears straightforward. He wanted concessions on terms of trade and imposed tariffs until partners came to the table, which they did. He wants Greenland… why not wash, rinse, and repeat?

For a nation with the strength and resources of the United States, this strategy can deliver results in the short-term, but prudential leadership requires also weighing the costs of coercion and the ways that reliance on it can weaken a nation’s position in the long run. To see why, it is important to consider the situation from the European perspective, not because American policymakers should be overly solicitous of foreign interests, but because any negotiation—and, especially, any attempt to use leverage—depends upon an understanding of the other side’s incentives and likely response. And those incentives, and that response, depend upon how they expect that we will behave in the future.

Thus alliances are built on a realist’s rational trust that both sides serve themselves in the long run by behaving in a trustworthy manner, because opportunities for benefit through cooperation exceed opportunities for manipulation through coercion. Each side trusts that the other will cooperate rather than defect, in the language of game theory, because both know that cooperation is only possible so long as neither defects, and a willingness to defect will permanently damage the prospect for future cooperation—not because “feelings are hurt” or some abstract conception of “international law” has been violated, but because there is no self-interested benefit in cooperating with someone who does not reciprocate.

Within the confines of an alliance, demands can be productive or destructive, depending on whether they take cooperative form and are consistent with extending the benefit of cooperation. The U.S. demands of 2025, that European allies bear their share of the defense burden and work to bring their trade into balance, were productive ones. Viewed from the European perspective, the Americans were asking for a reciprocal relationship on which the sides made comparable commitments. There was much frustration that the United States was changing the terms of the alliance as it had operated since the end of the Cold War. The Europeans rationally preferred the status quo and made much noise in its support. But when push came to shove, the demands themselves were fundamentally fair and reasonable, and the Europeans could anticipate that coming to the table and reaching agreement would further their long-term interests, certainly as compared to the alternative of allowing the relationship to collapse. Retaliation was minimal. Deals were struck. Real progress was apparent.

A demand to give up Greenland or face steeper tariffs does not meet this test. Framed in this way, Europe can only recognize it as gunboat imperialism, which should and likely will promote a very different response. If the United States adopts a policy of economic coercion as a means to territorial gains, the question for other countries becomes how best to respond to such an aggressor. If the American calculation appears to be might-makes-right rather than pursuit of a fair settlement in the mutual interest of all parties, counterparties will rationally conclude that resisting at all costs is preferable to concessions that would only invite further coercion.

Of course, in some situations, such coercion might be warranted. The objective may be so valuable as to warrant the loss of whatever gains could be available from future cooperation. There may be no trust to begin with. Part of the Liberation Day strategy’s wisdom, especially once the reciprocal tariffs were paused to create space for negotiation, was that it effectively put American partners to a choice of their own. If countries were willing to rebalance trading relationships and invest in their own defense, then there was much worth preserving and much room to preserve it. Conversely, with a country that took such demands as non-starters, not much existed to be lost.

By contrast, the Greenland demand appears to fail in both its necessity to the United States and the choice to which it puts erstwhile allies. Without question, the island implicates a range of strategic interests that American leaders might reasonably seek to secure. But as John Carney has observed, actually owning Greenland is not the only, or necessarily the best, way to achieve those goals. We can of course propose whatever we want. But insistence on permanent transfer of sovereignty, under coercive threat, against the wishes of the current sovereign government and the local population, is precisely the sort of action that would lead other countries, behaving rationally, to say, “hell no.”

At Davos, Trump took military action off the table and steered clear of tariffs, instead offering the vague, “say no, and we will remember.” Some will surely suggest the entire episode has been a strategic head-fake to move a promising conversation forward. But defending theatrics under some “art of the deal” heuristic ignores entirely the actual art of actual deals. Idle threats are not an effective strategy when the bluff gets called, weakening future credibility. Outlandish opening bids do not set the table for constructive negotiations when they reduce the other party’s interest in even talking.

Misplaying this hand also damages more vital elements of the Trump agenda. Resetting the global trading system was unavoidably disruptive, but restoring stability on new terms is necessary for promoting the investment that is a key premise of the exercise. Instead, we now face the potential unraveling of deals already struck and the prospect of unpredictable tariffs and tit-for-tat escalations appearing for any number of reasons (like, say, membership in the Gaza “Board of Peace”).

Continuing negotiations toward a new economic order will get harder too. What point is there for another country to come to the table on trade, in response to tariffs, if it can expect to be hit again with the exact same tariffs even after resolving reasonable disputes? Countries that expect the United States to exercise maximum economic coercion with no mutual benefit will have to adopt policies starting from this assumption, which are unlikely to be ones that deliver much benefit for the United States.

The action in Venezuela follows this same logic, or lack thereof. Yes, the United States has the raw power and military capabilities to decapitate a foreign regime and seize control of its oil fields. Yes, that sends a warning to other leaders. But what is the message’s long-term effect? Would you, as a foreign leader, become an American puppet, or would you reduce concern for what the Americans might want, seeing as anything short of capitulation would be met with hostility anyway? Would you wait for the Blackhawks to touch down in your compound, or would you tighten security? Would you cut off communication with Russia and China, or seek them out for a closer relationship than you had previously considered?

The Maduro operation was obviously an extraordinary tactical feat. But if Maduro indeed had to go, the White House needs to articulate the reasons with much greater clarity—not because international law requires it or the foreign policy blob in Washington wants it, but because all countries need to understand the narrow grounds on which we would take such action. The message that “we did it because we could and we’ll do it to you too if we feel like it” may seem to preserve optimal freedom of action, but in a world where other countries take this to be the American strategy, their own strategies will change as well, in ways that will leave us with neither the greatest freedom of action nor the best results.

Much in the international order needed changing, and Trump deserves credit for recognizing this, and for his willingness to defy conventional wisdom and take action. The American grand strategy of “benevolent hegemony” has been a disaster, its assumptions were wrong, and its potential value expired long ago. As I wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, “in the twenty-first century, American military leadership and economic forbearance neither achieved an ‘enlargement’ of the community of market democracies nor boosted American security and prosperity. It merely consumed the physical, financial, and social capital that the country had painstakingly accumulated.”

It does not follow, however, that a Hobbesian world of predatory imperialists is the only alternative, or anything near an optimal one. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s formulation in a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, that “we’re a superpower” and “we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” begs the question. How does a superpower behave? We indeed live in a world that is, as he said, “governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” But how is such strength, force, and power best deployed?

Listening to Miller, I found myself thinking of Chesterton’s famous fence. “In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox,” he wrote:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

Should America abandon its alliances? To make that case, and before shredding them, our statesmen must be able to articulate clearly what benefits they do have. Is the arbitrary power to seize leaders and oil fields a wise one to exercise? It is hard to have confidence in the wisdom of that strategy when its spokesmen give the impression that they believe it can be replicated with impunity. Did the nation’s previous leaders merely lack the will to take what they wanted? The track record of past extractive empires suggests other factors merit consideration.

The United States can move beyond its naive and counterproductive approach to alliances without letting them fall apart. American strength creates the opportunity to bend even rigid nations toward arrangements that will better serve us while still serving them well too. But if we push to the point that trust shatters, we will find ourselves left to maintain relationships and their benefits through force alone, at which point any short-term gains will be swamped by long-term costs. The revulsion that so many Americans feel for the imperial ambitions that our leaders pursued after the Cold War’s end, and the catastrophes they produced, have created an opportunity to refound our foreign policy on the firmer footing of fair and reciprocal relationships among allied republics. The problem was not that we just didn’t do empire hard enough.