At Davos, the World Watched the Rantings of a Despot

One year into Trump 2.0, a predatory, imperialist, and increasingly deranged President Trump, has, with his demands that Denmark cede Greenland to the United States, precipitated the most serious rupture of the Western Alliance since the Suez crisis in 1956, when the United States squared off against the United Kingdom, France, and Israel over the future of the canal.

Late last week, Trump began ratcheting up the pressure on Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States. He announced a 10 percent tariff on eight European countries that had sent troops to Greenland for a military exercise. On Sunday afternoon, he composed a poorly punctuated, paranoiac note to the Norwegian prime minister in which he blamed the Norwegian government for not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said the rejection had liberated him to stop thinking about peace, and claimed that it had set him on the path to conquer Greenland to protect the United States. The note was distributed by the National Security Council to all of Europe’s ambassadors to the United States, giving it something of the imprimatur of a formal policy statement. There were days over the past week where it seemed possible that US military personnel would be ordered into a firefight against NATO allies to fulfill Trump’s fever dream of hemispheric ownership.

This isn’t simply an outrageous case of schoolyard petulance; it is, in full public view, the ranting of a nuclear-armed lunatic. And it is part of a pattern of increasingly bizarre public performances, including his Tuesday afternoon press briefing at the White House, in which he veered from topic to topic, often failed to put coherent sentences together, and mused about his absolute powers.

On Wednesday, Trump journeyed to Davos seemingly intent on lobbing insults at every European leader who came his way, as well as the many immigrants in his crosshairs. He bemoaned “low-IQ” Somali immigrants in the United States, attacked Europe for being open to large-scale migration, and repeatedly declared how ungrateful the continent was for the United States’ preeminent role in NATO over the decades. He wondered aloud about raising tariffs again on Switzerland, the European Union, and Canada—in fact, on any country that didn’t pony up cash and manufacture its products in the United States. And like a mob boss threatening disloyal underlings, he told his audience he would “remember” it if they didn’t grant him his wish to buy Greenland.

Sure, when push came to shove he said he wouldn’t use force to take Danish territory, and by Wednesday afternoon his threats of conquest had seemingly evaporated, as he announced a deal (details left unclear) with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte; but he did this backpedaling—his latest and perhaps most epic TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out)—only after declaring that possession of Greenland was vital to US national security interests, that Denmark was ungrateful in not giving the island to the United States after World War II, and that if he did authorize force, there was nothing that could be done to stop the US military. That’s hardly the reassuring language one would expect from an ally.

The world’s leaders are witnessing Trump’s unhinged behavior, his zigging and zagging from one self-created crisis to the next, and realizing that the US ship of state is being led by a madman.

Trump’s been a bully and a thug his whole life, but what we are seeing this week isn’t more of the same. It is, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told the Davos audience, a “rupture” of the international order on an epochal scale. Trump may have temporarily backed off from his ambitions to absorb Greenland into the United States, but no one who has witnessed his recent behavior can possibly believe that long-term stability has returned to US foreign policy decision-making. This is an administration and a presidency wedded to conflict and seemingly determined to alienate America’s closest friends.

In a recent essay in The Atlantic, Robert Kagan laid out exactly what is being cast aside by Trump’s increasingly megalomaniacal pronouncements and ambitions, and exactly what the long-term costs to the United States will be as it sheds allies, alienates intelligence-sharing partners, and issues ultimatums against anyone and everyone who doesn’t kiss the Trumpian ring. It is a devastating analysis and ought to terrify all Americans as they ponder a future in which great-power wars become the norm and large swaths of the world are divvied up by rapacious, warlord-like leaders seeking to take advantage of the power vacuum the United States is now deliberately creating at the core of the international system.

As the liberal order burns, Trump and his vandal minions dance to the light of the fires they have lit. Trump has, according to recent reports, even used the demolition of the East Wing of the White House as cover to have a huge and deep bunker built—presumably in which he and his henchman can hunker down, immune from the immediate effects of nuclear blasts and other WMDs, much as Hitler and his Third Reich acolytes did as they plotted to rain hellfire and destruction down on the world.