Trump’s Greenland threat exposes a new era of American empire-building

Trump’s renewed threats reveal a shift from capitalism to mercantilist power politics — and Europe is dangerously unprepared

Taoiseach Micheál Martin and US president Donald Trump during the St Patrick's Day reception in the White House last year: Not being part of Nato, Ireland is even more vulnerable than Greenland.

According to Article II, Section 2, Clause I of the American Constitution, President Donald Trump is "Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States". According to the rest of the world, he is Bullshitter-in-Chief. 

For many years, Trump has entertained some of the most ridiculous, abstruse, mind-boggling claims about a range of issues, from climate change to cures for covid-19. He has been ridiculed, derided, mocked and scorned for making statements that defy both common sense and scientific research. And yet, occasionally, even Donald Trump tells the truth.

These are some self-evident Trumpian truths: First, Donald Trump truly wants to make America great again. Not the West, not Europe, not Nato, but America, and only America. He has been saying this for years. He wants the United States to be the only superpower, with unlimited hegemonic supremacy over its hemisphere, unhindered by international law or feeble organisations like the United Nations.

Secondly, when Trump says “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace … but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America”, he is telling the truth. 

Whether he ever felt an obligation to think peace is questionable, but he certainly considers moral norms and international law, to be insignificant nuisances that will not get in his way.

Trump also truly believes “the world is not secure unless we [the United States] have complete and total control of Greenland”. What is baffling about this statement is not Trump’s thinly veiled aspirations of grandiosity, but the fact many European politicians still refuse to take his threats seriously. 

This is an astonishing blind spot considering American’s long history of supporting dictators and dictatorships all over the world, always and only in the interest of the United States.

The only thing that has changed in the last 12 months is the definition of American interests, and the method of securing it. Until recently, the assumption was that America’s interest was defined by free-market capitalism, and anyone who got in the way of private property, free trade, profits, and capital accumulation was swept side. 

Vittorio Bufacchi: 'The EU’s chronic lack of investment in its own security, its measly military spending over many decades, and its blind faith in the good will of the United States, could prove to be a tragic political miscalculation. Ireland’s stubborn unwillingness to reconsider its outdated neutrality is another. Picture: Gerard McCarthy Photography

But now, since Trump’s second coming, the name of the game is no longer capitalism. As Professor Federico Varese of Oxford University has recently argued, Trump’s economic model is a throwback to a pre-capitalist vision of the world, what economic historians refer to as the era of mercantilism.

What we are witnessing today in Venezuela and Greenland is very similar to what European nations were doing for centuries before the 19th century. This is classic empire-building by way of colonialist expansions, backed by military might. Trump is taking us back to the future.

The US is willing to use its might and its army to forcibly secure natural resources: oil in Venezuela, lithium in Ukraine, and rare earth elements in Greenland. According to this expansionist logic, there is no reason why Ireland couldn’t be next. In fact, not being part of Nato, Ireland is even more vulnerable than Greenland.

Speaking about Nato, here’s another Trumpian truth: "I have done more for Nato than any other person since its founding”. Trump may be guilty of exaggerating his impact on the world, but it is true the United States has done more for Nato than any other nation, especially when it comes to financing this military pact.

The EU’s chronic lack of investment in its own security, its measly military spending over many decades, and its blind faith in the good will of the United States, could prove to be a tragic political miscalculation. Ireland’s stubborn unwillingness to reconsider its outdated neutrality is another.

Whether for or against, European politicians are stuck in the capitalist gear. They don’t realise Trump is playing according to older, mercantilist rules.

How ironic that Europe, the land of Niccolò Machiavelli and Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes and Carl von Clausewitz, is now being taught the most basic lesson about politics from an American president: namely, that politics is, and has always been, a struggle for power for the sake of national self-interest, and nothing more. The Americans seem to have a better grasp of European economic history than Europe itself.

Playing for time, waiting for the 2028 presidential election in the United States, is not an option. It is not inconceivable Trump will win the next election — he's already talking about running, which he is constitutionally barred from doing. In any case, we can’t assume that he will agree to a peaceful transfer of power. 

An updated version of this old poem makes eerie reading:

‘Remember, remember, the 6th of January, Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason Why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot’.

• Vittorio Bufacchi is senior lecturer in political philosophy at University College Cork