Trump’s insecurities imperil the U.S.
So far details of a settlement of the Greenland affair are scant to non-existent. Hours after his blistering speech attacking western European democracies and the global balance of law, President Trump announced a “framework of a future deal” for the “piece of ice,” his own labeling of Greenland during his address at Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday.
At the same time, the president pulled back an earlier threat to impose U.S. tariffs on countries critical of his attempts to acquire the semi-autonomous Danish territory for the United States.
Whew, that was a close one! Trump being Trump, however, means we should not discount the possibility of his reversing field. His words frequently have a short shelf life, and sowing chaos and confusion are standard procedure for the 47th (and 45th) president.
Trump’s desire to own Greenland springs, apparently, not so much from his sense of the national interest as some need embedded deep in his own psychic insecurities. As he told the New York Times recently, ownership of Greenland was “psychologically important” to him.
Asked to explain further, the president said, “That’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”
This ownership compulsion helps explain the impulse that causes the president to place his name on so many things and places – Trump Tower, Trump Casino, Trump University, Trump Steaks, the Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Trump Institute of Peace.
What’s next? The Trump East Coast? The Trump Rocky Mountains? Trump-Disneyland?
Back to Greenland and Denmark. The 32nd president, Franklin Roosevelt, told reporters in April 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, that Danish sovereignty over Greenland extended back centuries “through the process of colonization.” The fact that the United States now included Greenland in an American national security zone off limits to the Nazis was immaterial as to sovereignty.
On April 9, 1940, Denmark, overrun by the German war machine, became a government “under duress,” Roosevelt explained. The U.S. had taken temporary charge of Greenland. Once the war was win, Greenland would revert to Denmark sovereignty. “That is about all,” the president said.
The next president, Harry Truman, quietly offered the Danes $100 million in gold for Greenland. When Danish authorities declined the offer, Truman let the matter drop, save for a 1951 agreement that gives the U.S. military basing rights on Greenland.
That agreement still pertains. A former Danish defense official, Jens Adser Sorensen, said the Trump administration should use “the defense agreement if you’re so worried about the security situation. The formula is there. It’s in place.”
On Wednesday, at Davos, Trump said the U.S. was “stupid” to have returned Greenland to Denmark after World War II. Considering what World War II was about, it would have been stupid as well as unthinkable not to. Besides, Greenland was not ours to keep or to withhold.
Not that the current president should know that or know what World War II was about, God forbid. He has trouble enough with recent history.
In Davos, Trump declared, “The problem with NATO is that we’ll be there for them, 100%, but I’m not sure that they’ll be there for us.”
The day after the 9/11 attacks, NATO responded, eventually invoking Article 5 of the treaty which stipulates that an attack on one member nation was an attack on all. It was the first (and only) time the Atlantic defensive shield has ever been activated.
The Danes sent 9,500 troops to help clear Afghanistan of al-Qaeda. Forty-three were killed. Later, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted that more than 850 troops from “non-U.S. NATO members have made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan. For many allied nations, these were the first military casualties since the end of World War II.”
All of which makes Trump’s disparagement of NATO and its member nations shameful. The honored dead were dishonored by Trump. But then again, as we know by way of one of his former White House chiefs of staff, Trump thinks those who lay down their lives for democracy’s sake are “suckers.”
What a guy, what a president.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.