A clear and present danger to the peace of the world

He has already announced hostile trade measures - mostly in the form of tariffs, against America's two immediate neighbours, Canada and Mexico. He has effectively announced new tariffs against China and the European Community. He has declared the US wants to buy Greenland, and suggested darkly that he might annex it by force, because it is vital to US national security and western security. When Denmark responded tartly, not for the first time, that Greenland, which forms part of Denmark, was not for sale, Trump responded by threatening Denmark with sanctions and economic retaliation. He has also indicated that the US wants Canada to join the US, but, while speaking of economic force, has not threatened military action.

Trump has long been given to making broad threats which are not much more than negotiating bluffs or invitations to treat. In some cases, he has dropped his demands when rebuffed, as he did during his first term with threats to North Korea, where he is devoid of policy achievements, apart from discussions that got nowhere. Even before his belligerent remarks about Greenland, Panama, Mexico and Canada, he had threatened immediate deadly action from day one of his term by the US against Hamas if they have not already surrendered all Israeli hostages in Gaza. That is in little more than a week. Though Trump has not detailed his plan, it would mean further bombing, and intensify, rather than dampen, the international condemnation of the massacres there. If what Israel has been doing is any guide, the main victims will be non-combatants, and the deaths an international war crime. Israel is presently ignoring international law and international courts on the subject, but a day will come when it cannot, with or without the connivance of the US. The US will find itself more immediately vulnerable if it employs defences such as the suggestion that women and children share the guilt of members of Hamas, or that it is permissible to fire on innocent civilians if it is believed that combatants are hiding among them.

Trump is hostile to most of the European Community over its alleged discrimination against American trade and manufacturing policies. This differs from but sits alongside his long-term grievance that western Europe is not contributing enough to the cost of maintaining NATO, and is getting a free ride with defence security on American efforts to maintain the peace against Russia. He wants the average European nation to double its defence spending to about 4 per cent of GDP. On this account, he alienated most of the leaders of his first term, and he did not mean to lower his hostility. He is playing to a domestic audience which blames its loss of economic leadership on the alleged export of American jobs. This is something also blamed on Mexico and Canada, and helping to lead to the scapegoating of immigrants and refugees on the southern border.

Though it is often difficult to discern which of his meandering statements can be taken as indications of his actual intentions, he has talked of refusing to help European countries under Russian attack if they are not paying their way, and at times, seems to suggest that Russia and its allies were welcome to them. He has waxed hot and cold about the war in Ukraine, and about how far a Trump-led US is prepared to go in trying to resist Russian aggression. US Republicans, under President Joe Biden, went slow in sending money and military equipment - even ammunition. NATO has been more of a faithful ally of Ukraine, but Russian strategy has been successful in undermining the resolve of some NATO fringe players, such as Hungary, and in exploiting European uncertainty about the level of America's commitment to the integrity of NATO's borders in the event of Russian attack. That, on the one hand, has increased the commitment to a NATO-type alliance by immediate neighbours of Russia, such as the Scandinavian and Baltic states, but it has not much increased the capacity of a military NATO with a reluctant US member. Trump has seemed relaxed about the military defeat of Ukraine and the loss, at the least, of its eastern lands as well as the Crimea. He has suggested he could resolve the war with one telephone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which would mean proposing an armistice or peace based on surrendering Ukrainian sovereignty in the east and southeast and guarantees about Ukraine not entering NATO. The settlement may be harsher, given that Ukraine is close to actual defeat. They may have given Russia a very good run for their money, and bought the west some time without putting American, or NATO lives at risk.

There is a tiny but insubstantial chance that some of Ukraine's main European backers, such as Britain, Germany, France and Poland, might have some desire to encourage Ukraine to fight to the last. But a conflict without active support from Washington is harder to imagine, if only for the fear Trump would actively sabotage any such campaign. America's idea of NATO involves its effective leadership of NATO, if with joint financing. That is a result in part of an American perception, not without substance, that the participation of some NATO countries in the Afghanistan adventure was less than whole-hearted, that it was Americans who were paying most of the price, including in casualties.

Trump's disengagement from NATO, and from the Ukraine cause, must be seen within the context of his isolationism, his opposition to committing American troops abroad and his efforts to build up American industry by imposing tariffs on rival economies. But the retreat from the world does not sit well with any American desire to have stable regional power balances, or structures focused on discouraging, not rewarding aggression. America may no longer want to play the world's policeman, always intervening (in its own interest) to keep the peace as it sees it. He will leave behind power vacuums.

This is a cause hardly helped if it is focused on weakening the economies of established allies, increasing political and economic tension with each other or making nations of Europe more insecure about their relationship with Russia. Russia is not at war with Europe. The war with Ukraine is the closest there is, although that does not appear to have been a portent of an intention to invade European countries, to bully individual countries or to control national or regional politics and trade. It is more a function of an indignant Russian response to Ukraine's becoming, as Russia saw it, an American dagger pointed directly at Moscow. This was despite earlier promises that Russia, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, could continue to have its sphere of influence. Whether or not the Russian grievance is justified, the war has increased Europe's apprehension about the Russian threat. In theory, these fears should be balanced with the weakness Russia has shown in a war where it began with overwhelming advantages. Russian military leadership was shown to be incompetent.

Its equipment, particularly its armour, was deficient and soon neutralised, in part by low-technology drones. As in the war with Napoleon, and against Hitler, Russia used distance, weather and effectively limitless numbers to win a war of attrition. But it took enormous losses of soldiers and materiel before it prevailed. Mercifully, it did not deploy nuclear weapons. These remain a deterrent, disincentive and imponderable in any further clashes with western nations.

America, if not Trump personally, has also sacrificed a more political advantage. In making propaganda for resisting Russia, America and Europe (and countries such as Australia, if not much of the third world) attached great significance to the fact that Russia's invasion was a significant and inexcusable breach of international peace. It was in breach of international law. There was no casus belli capable of justifying interference with Ukraine's sovereignty. If there was a dispute between the two nations, there were means of mediating or resolving it without immediate resort to arms. Russia might have seen the issue differently, and might have seen NATO, the EC and the US as inciting conflict. But Russia made no effort to seek any form of authorisation for its conduct from the United Nations, as the US did, reluctantly with Iraq.

These were all charges made against Russia, particularly by the US, the EC and other western allies as it sought international support for a sanctions regime they had expected to be swingeing, as well as military and financial support for Ukraine's resistance. Even among nations such as India, which did not associate themselves with sanctions or sending military aid, there was unofficial anger about interference with the invasion of a non-belligerent neighbour and belief in the right to do so.

If Trump persists with his belief that he can gain control of Greenland by a combination of force and economic coercion, he will have forfeited most of the moral advantage America built up over the invasion of Ukraine. The American propaganda had been received sceptically in many third-world nations, given few such countries had ever noticed American reluctance to intervene, without good grounds, in other poor and weak nations, and thought, as India did, it was a principle only invoked by the US when it suited. But the problem went beyond that. Russia's interest in the politics and military posture of an adjacent Ukraine was easy enough to understand, even if the principle of Ukraine's sovereignty stood against it. It was similar, for example, with the US interest in Cuba when it was equipping itself with Russian nuclear missiles in 1962, or Haiti, Grenada or Nicaragua.

But Trump does not appear to have any time for pretence. For America, he seems to believe, might is right. Indeed, US proponents of a rules-based system pick and choose which international rules to follow, and do not subscribe to international criminal law norms or the law of the sea. The US has no claim in international law on Greenland. Denmark's claim is not much better (and no worse) than any old colonial power, but is recognised and conforms to modern international norms. It has given Greenlanders self-government over all internal matters including its justice system. It has promised the population, of only about 60,000 people (mostly Inuit) complete independence within a few years and regards them, not itself, as the ultimate owners and arbiters of its future. Although a clear majority want independence, many want a slow development (over a few more years, so that the withdrawal of welfare benefits and Danish budget assistance can be staged. Greenland politicians, like Danish ones, assert that the inhabitants have no desire whatsoever to become a part of the US, whether on terms like Puerto Rico's or with full citizenship.

There is no reason to doubt them.

The US has an air force base in Greenland. It was established during WWII to help defend the mid-Atlantic from U-boat threats to convoys. Since then it has been the point through which the USA would carry out emergency re-supply of Europe in the case of a Russian invasion, as well, of course, as a base from which Russia could be bombed. It is, in effect, an American aircraft carrier on a vital bottleneck of the Atlantic Ocean in a direct line from Washington to Moscow. But it cannot be said to be in America's backyard. Indeed, it is closer to Russia than it is to the US.

Between Greenland and Iceland lies the Denmark Strait, through which Russian (and British and American) nuclear submarines pass to take station off Europe or North or South America. (Otherwise, they must pass between Iceland and Scotland, but that faces a greater risk of detection.) The US (and the Russian fleets have electronic equipment capable of detecting the passage of submarines on the seabed of the Denmark Strait, and America apparently wants to upgrade them. But it could do this easily without commandeering Greenland's sovereignty. Indeed, it could do it in the same manner by which it leases its airfields. Certainly, while Greenland, like Australia, Malta and Japan, may contribute to - be vital to - America's security, that interest could never be enough to excuse a hostile takeover. Nor, given the benign relationship between the countries, could it authorise some sort of "protective" takeover.

MORE JACK WATERFORD:

I have spent a good deal of my life opposing US military overreach and its tendency to permission itself to intervene in the affairs of any nation which inconveniences it. As often as not, even worthy aims fail in the execution if only because of the hostility that US intervention provokes. I do not resile from such criticism. But what Trump is proposing is a serious change to the status quo. It will disrupt economies. It will heighten tension between neighbours and increase the risk of conflict. It may embolden terrorism, and nations thinking they have been given opportunities for mischief. Its effects, over, for example, already bad US relationships with China, India, North Korea and Iran are unknown, but hardly likely to settle things down.

I expect Trump knows all this. It is his big fingers up to the world, saying "I don't care." There will, as usual, be a substantial Australian lobby, in both the military and intelligence establishment who will instinctively see the issues through Trump's eyes rather than Australia's. These are the natives representing the greatest local threat to national security. But no matter how hard they strive in the interests of another nation, they would be hard placed to represent a bigger threat than Donald Trump.