All eyes are on Greenland. And that is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants. Russia’s president must be rubbing his hands and giggling with glee as he watches the president of the United States of America deliver the kind of strategic effect for Russia that a KGB colonel could only dream of.
Donald Trump’s peevish narcissism is Russia’s greatest asset. And while the US president’s myopic view of Greenland dominates geopolitics, it distracts from what is going on thousands of miles away to the east.
Unable to get Ukraine to agree to surrender more than a fifth of its territory to Putin’s army, even after he attempted to hamstring Kyiv’s defence by cutting all military aid, Trump has found that his power over Ukraine has dwindled.
Nato allies, and beyond, have stepped in where America hopped out. So far the EU plus Canada, the UK and others have contributed about $250 billion in aid to Ukraine. America’s contribution is down below about $150 billion.
For the last year Trump has honoured promises and deliveries scheduled under Joe Biden, his predecessor. But the only important contribution from the US to the defence of a western democracy against an invading dictatorship has been an intelligence feed.
It is Nato members who are most important. The European Union’s members have most to lose, give most, and should be more closely involved in negotiations to end the war than the US.
But its leaders know, and the Greenland farrago has shown, Trump needs careful managing because he still has another three years of his presidency.
So, along with his openly pro-Russian chief negotiator Steve Witkoff, he’s being left to run talks that directly affect the future of Europe while Europe (and the rest of Nato) prepares for a world when the US has withdrawn from the region’s alliances altogether.
That process has accelerated over the last six months. And the future existence of Nato is now cast into doubt as members of the alliance have grown their independence from America’s military machine.
Real operational independence is at least five years off. One man, though, has a vested interest in trying to make sure that Nato falls apart before then.
What better way for Putin to ensure that his land grab(s) in eastern Europe go ahead largely uncontested than to see the Nato alliance implode before an alternative can be sown together?
What better way to put the alliance under strain than have Nato’s leading member, the US, threaten to annex Greenland, a self-administering part of Denmark – a Nato member.
What better way can there be to enfeeble the economies of the west than to ignite a trade war between the US, the EU+UK and then have the US continue to covet its neighbour, Canada?
Trump does have strategic interests in Greenland. Notably its rare earth minerals. He also says he wants to bring it under a “Golden Dome” of missile defences (that does not exist) against Russia and China.
