Recall that when the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, called Trump “daddy”—giving the world a glimpse into the sordid relationship that has developed between the United States and its masochistic vassals in Europe—Rutte was referring to the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Laying aside judgment on the actions in Venezuela and Iran, the point is that the Europeans are perfectly fine with military interventions in other countries so long as these countries are outside the sacred alliance. One is reminded of European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell’s comments in 2022 that the world outside the European “garden” is effectively a “jungle”—and so, one infers, the laws of the jungle apply.The Greenland drama is a narcissistic European drama in every sense of the word. The European leadership class is a global joke, laughed at in capitals around the world. They can tolerate this, however, because they still see their deindustrializing, politically unstable, war-ravaged continent as a “garden” to the rest of the world’s “jungle”. This is a delusion of the sort not seen in Europe since Hitler whiled away his final days in the Berlin bunker, and it is seen for what it is from Washington to Moscow to Beijing. But it is a delusion sufficiently strong that it allows the European elite to keep their composure at their self-important events—events that grow smaller and less relevant by the day. The problem with Trump’s Greenland overtures is that they intrude on these little Potemkin villages that the ailing elite have built for themselves....Why does the Trump administration feel the need to thrash the Europeans in public like a misbehaving servant? Because the Europeans will not listen. The President and his entourage have told the Europeans repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, that the war in Ukraine must end and Europe must find some way to live in peace with Russia. But the Europeans have reverted to their usual catty form and used every means at their disposal to sabotage any negotiations—much less any future security architecture—at every turn. Their strategy appears to be to try to keep the war going until 2029 when a Democratic challenger will rise to power and fight the Russians on behalf of the Europeans.This position is not just immoral; it is also delusional. From a moral perspective, the liberal elite in Brussels and in other European capitals have cultivated a cynicism about Ukrainian lives that borders on ritual blood sacrifice. It is disgusting and will be viewed by civilized people in the future for what it is. But even from a purely pragmatic political perspective, the prospect of a Democratic white knight riding to the rescue is unlikely. The Democrats are not remotely interested in the Ukraine war or in Europe. The war has failed to defeat Russia; it was the defeat of Russia that was of interest to the post-Russiagate Democrats; ergo, the war is now uninteresting. In the Epstein files, the Democrats have found a new toy to play with—one that implicates one or two key figures on the European side, including at least one prominent former ambassador appointed precisely to deal with Trump.Are Trump’s threats to take over Greenland serious? Are they moral? Who knows. But what is serious, what is immoral, and what is extremely dangerous—indeed, threatening the world with conflagration if not managed properly—is the blasé European attitude toward a collapsing war on their borders. The European leaders are too weak, too decadent to deal with the problem themselves, and they refuse to allow anyone else to deal with it for them. For this reason, we should expect the humiliations to continue until the Europeans swallow their pride (if they have any left), admit that the war is lost, and wake up to the fact that they need to live beside the Russians.
