President Donald Trump’s long, meandering speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, this week, wasn’t the bombshell everybody thought it was going to be. Despite Trump’s fixation on claiming Greenland for the United States and his threat to slap 10% tariffs on Washington’s closest European allies until they caved to these ambitions, Trump’s remarks were quite boring.
In fact, outside of his commitment not to use force to acquire Greenland, which many people in the room probably didn’t believe anyway, Trump’s speech simply reflected his already well-established views. These should be well known by now.
First, the belief that U.S. allies are spoiled children who don’t pay the U.S. back for all the generosity it has bestowed on them since the end of World War II. Second, the U.S. is respected again on the world stage, unlike those ineffectual, stale, and morally superior dunces who occupied the office in the past. Third, the days when U.S. allies operated with a sense of entitlement are over. And fourth, as the strongest nation, the U.S. reserves the right to use its leverage wherever and whenever possible.
Of course, foreign policy analysts across the political and ideological spectrum will take issue with many of these points. Some of the brushbacks will be more legitimate than others. Deploying a strategy of coercion to effectively annex Greenland, for instance, not only goes against one of the most fundamental beliefs that Washington has promoted since the mid-20th century—that no nation has the right to claim another democratic nation’s territory by force—but is also geopolitically mindless. After all, it unnecessarily alienates friendly countries.
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