President Trump has repeatedly insisted that, “The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building. NATO should be leading the way for us to get it.”
These threats have rattled Western leaders and sparked protests across Denmark and Greenland. French President Emmauel Macron condemned Trump’s “new colonialism” as “useless aggressivity.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen remarked that Trump was plunging US-EU relations into “a downward spiral.” She warned that, if necessary, the EU’s response would be “unflinching, united and proportional.”
Despite this, Trump insists that “Greenland is imperative for National and World Security. There can be no going back.”
For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump’s threats do more than threaten Greenland’s sovereignty. They constitute a major “rupture” within the “rules-based international order.” In its place, Trump is ushering in a new “system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.”
In other words, Trump is creating a new reality where countries like Greenland and Canada might be treated the same as Venezuela. This is the reality that Carney and other Western leaders fear.
Consider these comments by Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen a few days after the US takeover of Venezuela. He tells reporters that, “The situation is not such that the United States can simply conquer Greenland. Our country is not really the right one to compare with Venezuela. We are a country that is democratic and has been democratic for many, many years.”
Nielsen’s point that the US cannot “simply conquer Greenland” is not an assessment of military strength. It is a statement about Western politics and what kinds of countries can legitimately be conquered.
From the Western perspective, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is an “illegitimate” leader and thus legitimately kidnappable. Venezuela is the kind of country in the kind of region of the world that a Western power can invade without impunity. Within the “rules-based international order,” it’s permissible. This is why no US invasion of a Latin American country has ever triggered the crisis of international law that Trump’s aggression towards Greenland has.
This double standard is the “lie of mutual benefit” that Carney describes. Nominally, international laws apply to all countries equally. As stated in the UN Declaration on Principles of International Law, “All States enjoy sovereign equality. They have equal rights and duties and are equal members of the international community, notwithstanding differences of an economic, social, political or other nature.”
In practice, international laws are a two-tiered system designed and maintained by the West to protect the West. The rest of the world has never had the luxury to count on them. This is why European leaders, like United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, refused to say whether Trump’s invasion of Venezuela violated international law. Yet, Starmer maintains that the UK “will defend international law” when it comes to Greenland.
Carney remarks that, “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.”
For centuries, Asian, African and Latin American nations have been “on the menu.” The Western powers have routinely violated their sovereignty, stolen their resources, and displaced their people. The dissolution of the old rules-based order leaves Canada vulnerable to the same fate.
And to be clear, whether a deal concerning Greenland is reached or not, the damage is already done. The “lie of mutual benefit” has come undone.
Carney is right that the rest of the world must adapt, but his proposal ultimately leaves the world more divided. In calling for the “middle powers” to unite against the “great powers,” countries like Venezuela are left to fend for themselves.
Replacing the current two-tier system with a three-tier system is not the solution to Trump’s “might makes right” politics. Trump’s threats to Greenland and NATO demonstrate the fragility of an international order based on “mutual benefit” alone. But perhaps more importantly, it underscores the perils of a global system not grounded on genuine respect for the sovereignty of all nations.
Rather than segregating the world based on economic and military might, we should strive to create a new world order that truly embraces respect for sovereignty and equality.
The partnership of the “middle powers” might be beneficial in the short term as countries scramble to respond to Trump’s imperialism. But in the long-term, such an alliance will breed competitiveness and hostility as each country strives to either maintain their current power position or surpass it.
The end of the old international order will be turbulent, especially for those nations that benefited from it. But its end also presents the world with an important opportunity to rethink global relationships and alliances. To build an international order that empowers all nations to work together to solve global problems, whether they be pandemics, climate change or Trump.