Here we go again, with Trump. For a while he was only a candidate. Now heâs President, and everything he says must be taken seriously, or at least reported seriously.
Even before his inauguration, Donald Trump began to disrupt the world. One danger is that he comes to be seen simply as an agitator, just seeking attention. If his words are only newspaper headlines and donât reflect what he will actually do, Americans and leaders abroad will not want to waste their time trying to figure out what he really wants; theyâll wait until he acts and react then, reducing his effectiveness as President.
He has now disrupted the world with three possible prioritiesâmaking Canada a state of the United States, acquiring Greenland, and taking back the Panama Canal. All are unlikely to the point of fantasyâor have been made so by his way of bringing them to the worldâs notice. But the fact that he can make the world pay attention merely by dropping these notions is still shocking. He will be listened to, of courseâhe is, after all, the President of the United Statesâbut the first reactions of leaders in other countries will be a shrug while they return to their real problems.Â
A case in point is Trumpâs blurting out the idea of acquiring Greenland. This could make sense but not the way he tried to put it on the worldâs agenda. It would have been smarter to first send an envoy to Denmark, the current owner, to explain quietly why the US is interested.
There are good reasons. As the planet warms, as it has for centuries, the icebound sea lanes around Greenland are opening to seagoing traffic and will soon become important shipping routes for all the trading nations. To protect those lanes and keep them clear, it would be much to the worldâs advantage to have the USârather than tiny Denmarkâtake on the responsibility for keeping these future trade routes clear.
Saying he wants to acquire Greenland without giving a coherent reason, has put Denmarkâs elected government in a position where its first answer had to be âHell no.â Then, when Trump persists, he will have to make the Danes climb downâa lot more difficult than putting the arguments before them in private.
On Ukraine, Trump has already made a serious mistake by claiming he will end the war with Russia in one day. He probably thought, at the time he made this boast, that all he had to do is tell Ukraine that he will cut off all arms sales to that beleaguered country, and that will bring them humbly to the negotiating table.
But since he made that statement, several things have happened: Ukraine has invaded Russia and holds a not-inconsiderable territory around the Russian city of Kursk, where Stalinâs Russia stopped the German armies in WWII. So, Russia will badly want the Kursk region back, giving Ukraine an important bargaining position. Then, Ukraine has developed some very effective drone and other weapons against Russia and manufactures them itself, so the US cutting off arms sales will not necessarily end Ukrainian battlefield success. Recently, with these weapons, it has successfully attacked airfields and oil refineries deep inside Russia.
Most important, after Bashar al-Assad, a client-pawn of Putin, was ousted from Syria without a fight, itâs clear that Russia is no longer a first-class world power that can protect its backers abroad. Favoring Putin in the Ukraine negotiations will look like the US is rescuing a weakened adversary from ruin instead of ending a war.
To overcome the sense that Trump is just a dilletante, throwing out ideasâlike  acquiring Greenlandâwithout having a reason, he should do something that is both dramatic, sensible and fully under his control. The most obvious would be ending Iranâs nuclear threat to Israel and the world. Its development facilities are hidden under mountains, and only the US has the bunker buster bombs that would be necessary to destroy these deep installations.
After its recent retaliatory attack on Iran, Israel said it had destroyed virtually all of Iranâs air defense facilities, so there would be minimal threats to US planes carrying the weapons necessary to destroy Iranâs underground nuclear development installations.
Nevertheless, according to Critical Threats, Iran has begun a second air defense exercise in recent days. This probably means Iran is going ahead with the development of nuclear weapons. Now is the time to act if Trump wants to prevent Iran from threatening Israel and others in the future. It will also be a popular step for the oppressed people of Iran.
With this, Trump would demonstrate that he can do more than talk.
Peter J. Wallison
January 17, 2025
aei.org