Trump reinvents the world: The UN and NATO might have died of old age. The US president decreed euthanasia

 THE SPANISH WRITER CERVANTES, author of Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel in European literature, believed that truth is the mother of history, and history is the rival of time, depository of great deeds, teacher of the present and counsellor of the future. The very practical British prime minister of the 1950s, Harold Macmillan, had another view: history was the progeny of the unpredictable and unforeseen, or in Macmillan’s upper-class phraseology, “Events, dear boy, events.” A pessimist might describe history as the progeny of ambition and ego.

You might be chary about Donald Trump leading you, but he never misleads you. He has never disguised his agenda, or the ultra means he intends to implement if there is resistance. There was initial bemusement when he asked Canada to become the 51st state of America or demanded the acquisition of Greenland and subjugation of Venezuela. Now there is grief.

“Show me someone without an ego,” Trump has asserted, “and I’ll show you a loser.” There is no known instance in which Trump has underestimated himself. Nobody, he has noted, has been more successful than him. Ever. Nobody knows banking better than him. Nobody’s bigger or better at the military than him. He has told the “losers and hat­ers” that “my IQ is one of the highest—and you all know it!” He has mused fondly about the prospect of becoming ‘President for life’ like China’s President Xi Jinping, implicitly regretting the limitations placed on the possibility by the American Constitution.

He wants a special niche in the history of the world through the creation of Trumperica, a territory-continent more than twice the size of present America, overflowing with multiple reserves of oil and minerals; on the throne of a new international order in which institu­tions which have held up the globe since 1945, and made the decisions for the West, are replaced by a new string of offices answerable not to a Security Council but to a Commander-in-Chief living in the White House.

All through 2025 the conventional wisdom in European NATO assumed that they would be able to finesse their way back to status quo once the Trump volcano had been quietened, preferably by a Republican defeat in the November 2026 midterm elections. They introduced a scalding codeword to comfort themselves: TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out. They even believed that a little public pushback might deter Trump. The otherwise very loyal British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the Greenland grab as “completely wrong”. On January 16, France’s Emmanuel Macron discovered his inner Charles de Gaulle, sent a handful of troops to Greenland, signalling the first if timorous mobilisation of West Europe against America, and warned of “cascading” consequences if Trump marched into Greenland. Norway, the audacious upstart beneficiary of American protection since 1945, preached that “threats have no place among allies”.

Everyone seemed oblivious of the fact that Trump had dismissed such European lead­ers as leeches rather than allies. His counteroffensive began on January 18 when he announced an additional 10 per cent tariffs on eight NATO countries, to be effective from February 1 if they remained disobedient. Any remaining patronising smile hinting that Trump’s “ravings” were a strange but passing phenomenon froze across Europe’s chanceries.

On January 19 Trump told Norway, which had the impudence to deny him the Nobel Peace Prize: “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America”. This was the Trump Doctrine: Don’t cry for me, Venezuela; or Greenland, or Denmark, or the Disneylands of Europe. Pax Americana would be es­tablished by tariffs, trade, and the Marines, if that is what was required. Trump laughed at Denmark; Greenland had “two dogsleds as protection”, one of which had been added recently: the Donroe Doctrine laced with Don wit. He called Starmer brilliantly stupid for handing back Diego Garcia to Mauritius; the stupid part was in capital letters. He clarified that he wanted “complete and total purchase of Greenland”. One American news channel estimated that the cost of acquisition could be $700 billion, which is a lot of money for any government except one which prints dollars.

So far, European leaders have been high on rhetoric and low on action. A few have sent token troops to protect Greenland against the American invasion which they fear is inevitable if they do not sell out. The finest Irish playwright of the last century George Bernard Shaw would have called them chocolate soldiers. The Copenhagen street has paraded a statue of a corpulent Trump without clothes and organised a petition signed by at least 280,000 citizens offering to buy California and rename it New Denmark. As humour goes, it is slightly soggy. Placards were seen at demonstrations with a new sign: MAGA rewritten as Make America Go Away. Trump’s reply went by air: on the night of January 19-20, he added a few extra B52s to the American base in Greenland. It is not easy to tether the terrible power of a determined bull loose in a glass skyscraper.

International indigestion rose sharply when Trump decided it was time to replace the United Nations (UN) with a Board of Peace, ruled by Trump as Paramount Power, with constitutional rights on the first and last word. Membership has been offered to Russia and China as well, just in case they were feeling left out, but there has been no discount suggested for any country which refused to pay a billion dollars for three years in Nirvana. Peace is expensive. Belarus, an ally of Russia, has agreed to come aboard, but we must all wait with bated breath for the billion dollars. Client countries have learnt that ‘yes’ is the best imme­diate answer. Obdurate countries like Norway have said a flat no. Canada agreed, then decided that it was not going to pay up. Starmer kept quiet, the best option for someone who has been humiliated by his best friend. Macron said no, arguing that membership was incompatible with the UN. Per­fectly right. That of course is precisely Trump’s point. Kill the UN, which has become a corpse in any case.

To the shock of diplomats used to the clever nuances of diplomatese, Trump believes in the phrases he throws into the political dialectic. What could be more specific than the assertion, on the eve of Davos where Europe had gathered to discuss the crisis, that he would not retreat on Greenland? While Greenland was squeezing tears from NATO eyes, he described his Board of Peace as the “most consequential board ever” with a mandate to end every war possibly in time for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. Some Europeans were reduced to a piteous plea for “joint” security but that rather misses the point. NATO is the joint force. And NATO has become irrelevant to Trump. Europe will take time to recover from such a brutal end to a long security coma. The only NATO country to remain largely indifferent to the Trump turmoil is Türkiye, which built up its defence assets outside the star-spangled NATO umbrella.

HAS THE GOOD KNIGHT Don Trump been tilting at windmills while Prof Sancho Rubio makes copious notes? Search beyond the maverick language and there is a clear and definite design. Trump’s strategy is to make the incredible seem probable and then find out if it is possible. He does not respect the integrity of nations that interfere with America’s self-defined interests. The UN had to go because its charter is inconvenient and its operational role ineffective. The UN charter made conquest illegal, ending the age of empires (the British Empire was immoral but not illegal). NATO is a relic that has become a parasite. Trump is ready to use America’s economic and military power to preserve and expand its wealth and dominance. This is his meaning of MAGA: Make America Great Again. If Russia’s expansion into Ukraine hurts Europe then it is Europe’s problem. America can only have a secondary interest. He is more concerned about the challenge from China.

There are logical consequences which are making the conventional world shiver. If America’s security takes prece­dence over sovereignty, Qatar is as vulnerable as Greenland. Qatar can be America’s Guam in West Asia, or the Middle East as Washington still insists on calling the region. Guam is about 8,000 miles from Washington; Qatar is only 7,000 miles away. Guam has an American naval base; so does Qatar. Guam has been American territory since 1899, a prize of victory in the war with Spain. Qatar might ask for a higher price than Greenland, but that is only a transfer of paper currency which will eventually be transferred back. America purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, equivalent to $132 million today. America bought the US Virgin Islands from its friends in Denmark in 1917, so Denmark has done this deal before. President Harry Truman offered $100 million to Denmark for Greenland in 1946, after building its base in Narsarsuaq for use in World War II. The Defense of Greenland America Agreement signed in 1951 gives America the right to build and operate defence facilities—for as long as NATO exists. Another reason, therefore, why NATO is an obstacle to Trump’s vision of American power.

NATO was created to defend an America-led West from a communist Soviet Union. It lost its foundational nous in 1990 when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact became a memory. Western Europe preserved NATO as his­tory’s premier milch cow, funded by a benevolent Uncle Sam.

Trump’s contempt for the UN, created by the five victors of World War II, has some validity, given that absence of reform has made the UN impotent. The UN is more bankrupt, intellectually and politically, than the League of Nations was in 1930. America walked away in 1930 from that debris of failure. Both the UN and NATO might have died of old age. Trump decreed euthanasia.

Donald Trump will not be president forever but he has changed the balance of international relations beyond recogni­tion. By the end of 2026 we shall know if the 20th century is finally over, and the 21st has begun.