What kind of president threatens friends like Greenland and Denmark and complements enemies like Putin’s Russia?
Relations with friends can be rocky. But threatening friends can also be costly. Denmark and Greenland have been friends of this country, and allied with the U.S., since NATO was founded in 1949.
If President Trump can threaten to conquer or take over long-standing friends and allies of this country, then what do our friendship and treaty obligations mean? It is inescapable to conclude that threatening our allies undermines trust in the USA, and lessens the extent to which other countries can be counted on to support us or care about American desires.
Some people dismiss all that as soft power, but what others are willing to do with us or for us depends partly on whether they believe America is an ally or a bully. Other consequences go beyond soft power. Fighting with friends uses resources that might be used to deter enemies. And as others learn to distrust our friendship, will they change policies in order to conciliate those who have been our enemies. Such realignments can even trigger war where countries see opportunities. Realignments like that can be very expensive – costly to everyone.
There is certainly reason to believe that Russia and China will be competing for the Arctic and that we will need to defend or protect our interests there. But Mr. Trump’s threats to long-standing friends and allies means that the U.S. will have to devote more, not less, resources to defending our Arctic interests, if we have to do it alone, and more still if we have to do it in opposition to local peoples and powers.
The smarter and less costly way is by working with our friends instead of against them. The Danes and Greenlanders have good reasons to fear the Russians. We have had security arrangements and a military presence in Greenland since the establishment of NATO. So there is every reason to expect that Greenland and the U.S. could and would continue to work constructively together – unless we scare them off.
So if we are in a strong position in the arctic, why are we trying to change it? Does Trump prefer dealing with Russia and Putin than with Greenland, Denmark and NATO? As a result of those considerations, I’m driven to ask whether Mr. Trump doesn’t understand what’s happening or has goals he hasn’t explained. Is this another step in unraveling NATO? If that’s the case, is Greenland about Trump changing sides, preferring those who had been our enemies to our friends?
Some might call that treason but there is nothing in that kind of realignment that a court would touch. The choice of who are our friends and enemies is generally left to the President under Art. III subject to budgetary restraints imposed by Congress. But the question of whether we are abandoning the free world represented by NATO is certainly one the American people should take seriously. Precisely because it is not an appropriate judicial question, it is an important democratic question.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran. He enjoys the help of his editor, Jeanette Gottlieb
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
