Donald Trump’s threatened trade war leaves his UK supporters flirting with treason
Being on a supporter of an enemy of your country in a war – trade or real – is never a wise move
By threatening a new salvo of tariffs designed to intimidate America’s Nato allies into allowing his annexation of Greenland, Donald Trump is implicitly delivering three terrifying messages about his mindset: the alliance is dead, democracy doesn’t matter and might is right.
Trump’s excuse that the US ‘needs’ Greenland for its national security – because otherwise Russia or China would invade – is nonsense, as it is defended not just by Denmark, as he keeps suggesting, but by the Nato alliance. The terms of the treaty require the US, the UK and all its signatories to come to Greenland’s defence in the event that it is attacked.
However, this obviously only applies if the mineral-rich island is still covered by the Nato treaty in more than name only and the US is committed to the alliance. Trump’s belligerent rhetoric only starts to make sense if this is not the case.
‘The end of the Western alliance’
John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in Trump’s first administration, has repeatedly warned that Trump wants the US to leave. And, in a lecture last week, Bronwen Maddox, director of the Chatham House international affairs think-tank, warned that Nato members were now being “forced to contemplate how they might have to defend themselves against its most powerful member”.
“This does mark the end of the Western alliance: that is, a group of countries confident they share not just interests but principles of individual liberty, intellectual and religious freedom, constitutional democracy and free trade – principles which have been the engine of their prosperity as well as the rationale for their global influence,” she added.
Trump’s decision to invite the blood-soaked, warmongering Vladimir Putin to join his US-led “Board of Peace” – supposedly focussed on Gaza but seen by some as a possible alternative to the United Nations – all but confirms Maddox’s bleak view.
Trump’s desire for ‘lebensraum’
Public opinion in Greenland seemingly means nothing to Trump, but that is unsurprising given his disdain for democracy. This is, after all, the same man who refused to accept an election result because he lost, attempted to persuade fellow Republicans to “find” him some extra votes, and looked on as a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol, violently assaulting police officers, until long after they took over much of the building.
Speaking to the Telegraph last week, Rachel Ellehuus, director-general of the leading military think tank, the Royal United Services Institute, underlined just how shocking Trump’s stance on Greenland really is by comparing his territorial ambitions to the Nazi’s yearning for ‘lebensraum’ or ‘living space’.
“I guess it’s been called an expansion of the Monroe Doctrine. If we use a really uncomfortable term, we could say it’s a desire for lebensraum... Trump looks at the map, he looks at it from a certain perspective, and he thinks the US needs Greenland,” she said.
“I mean this has been an obsession of his since his first term, the first time he mentions it is in April 2019, so it’s persistent but it’s really not based on real security or economic requirements on behalf of the United States.”
A red line for any democracy
Trump is denying Greenlanders’ right to self-determination and demanding that they accept ‘Trump determination’ instead. This is, quite literally, the attitude of a dictator – Trump is trying to dictate to Greenlanders.
Alarmingly, he does not seem to realise that any genuinely democratic leader simply cannot agree to the annexation of territory against the will of the people who live there and that this is the firmest of red lines.
Therefore, unless Trump can be persuaded to back down, a war is coming, even if it is just a trade one. Keir Starmer is rightly attempting to solve this crisis diplomatically and he must do everything he can on that front.
But it would be reckless in the extreme if his government were not working on what to do in the event that Trump decides to go ahead with his acts of economic warfare or, indeed, as unlikely as it might once have seemed, takes military action.
Would Prime Minister Farage pick right side?
Both scenarios present problems for supporters of the US President in the UK. His closest political ally, Nigel Farage, has called Trump’s plans for Greenland “wrong” and “very hurtful”, and said he would have “words with the American administration” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
However he also said he had “always been a supporter of the president” and, as yet, has not been demonstrably spending any of the political capital he has built up with Trump over the years to defend the UK’s national interest.
If the new US tariffs come into force, will Farage start speaking up for British businesses or adopt a softly-softly approach that achieves little and allows him to maintain a relationship he clearly values? Farage aspires to be Prime Minister, but could he really be trusted to stand with the European Union as it seeks to defend democratic values against Trump’s attacks?
A surreal and scary new world
If the UK allowed US air bases here to be used for an American invasion of Greenland, then Denmark and the European Union would likely regard this as an act of aggression on our part. The UK’s role in such an operation could be compared to Belarus’s facilitation of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
However, for now, Starmer is Prime Minister, so ‘supporters’ of Trump in the UK, like Farage, may wish to start reconsidering where they stand. Being on the side of an enemy in a trade war is one thing, being on the side of an enemy in a real war normally gets you interned for the duration.
War with the USA? It sounds completely ridiculous – both unreal and surreal – to say it. As someone who used to work for an American company, I struggle to believe it’s remotely possible. But Trump’s deranged actions and the growing warnings from serious people like Maddox cannot be ignored.
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