Conservative columnist Ross Douthat said there are two ways to react to President Donald Trump’s “latest spurt of mad-king behavior, as he tries to bully and meme his way to the acquisition of Greenland under the threat of a trade war if not a real one.”
“The first reading is straightforward: This is malignant narcissism flavored with insane Nobel Peace Prize-related self-pity, the usual Trumpian unfitness magnified by the excitement of his Venezuelan intervention and the vicissitudes of old age, with the entire NATO alliance imperiled by the warmongering whims of its leading power’s would-be Caesar,” Douthat wrote in the New York Times.
The second “more hardheaded and sensible” interpretation, according to Douthat, requires asking: “Isn’t this always how he negotiates? Stake out an absurd-sounding position, freak out all the institutionalists and keepers of consensus, rattle the markets and then use the madman’s leverage to induce other countries to accept an advantageous-for-America deal?”
Either way, Trump’s last remaining checks are now external ones from the courts or international forces, said Douthat, and Trump's Supreme Court is no guarantee.
“So, who can play a reality-imposing role with Greenland?” asked Douthat. “My expectation is that it’s some combination of forces — that between them, financial markets, opinion polls, European leaders and U.S. senators will turn NATO’s pointless crisis into some kind of negotiation, some limited claim of Trumpian victory, that does not end in unjust warmaking.”
“But even if you assume that the Greenland episode won’t, God willing, be the foreign policy equivalent of Trump riding his narcissism all the way to a riot at the U.S. Capitol, it’s inherently destructive just to have him ride the Viking ship this far," he added.
Trump’s behavior is clearly encouraging a European and Canadian tilt toward Chinese power, Douthat said, while adding that he’s also injuring legitimate right-wing and populist parties across Europe in the same way that he “undermined Canadian conservatives” last year.
“Destructive of his own party’s prospects in 2026. And destructive of global confidence in American stability and Washington’s basic common sense,” said Douthat. “Again, it’s possible to achieve positive ends through Trumpian means. But the mechanism of that achievement requires constraints, and the ones we have now seem too weak for the purpose — with three years still to go.”