The fate of the largest island in the world could upend transatlantic ties, in turn undermining the most important political and military alliance in the world. Denmark is one of the original members of NATO. After Trump’s comments, Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, warned about the consequences: “If the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War.” On Tuesday, a joint statement by seven European countries asserted that Greenland’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as part of Denmark, were protected by the U.N. Charter. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, called picking a fight over Greenland “a colossal mistake.” Douglas Lute, a retired three-star general and another former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, predicted that European allies “will be increasingly reluctant to depend on the United States, as they have for nearly eighty years, and not only because Trump and his Administration are focussed on the Western Hemisphere but because what the President says cannot be trusted.”
And, in the Middle East, the President notified Iran—on his Truth Social account, the day before the operation in Venezuela—that U.S. forces were “locked and loaded” and ready to intervene if the theocracy used lethal force when responding to peaceful anti-government demonstrations that had erupted across the country. Over the weekend, the State Department’s Farsi account posted another warning superimposed over a black-and-white photo of Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the C.I.A. chief, John Ratcliffe, as they watched the raid on Venezuela. In huge red letters, in Farsi, the message read, “Don’t play games with President Trump.” It added, “President Trump is a man of action. If you didn’t know, now you know.” The U.S. threats followed Trump’s meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, last week at Mar-a-Lago, when the two leaders jointly vowed to again strike Iran if its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs are rebuilt.
In December, the State Department rebranded the U.S. Institute of Peace by tacking on “Donald J. Trump” in big silver letters above the entryway. A White House spokesperson said the peace institute’s rebranding “beautifully and aptly” honored a President “who ended eight wars in less than a year” and was a “powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability.”
Except Trump has not really “ended” wars anywhere, he has only spun fragile ceasefires as examples of lasting peace. One of the wars the President claims to have ended was the long-standing conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The President presided over the signing of a peace treaty between the two countries last month. But the reprieve lasted only a few days. And, in the past month, hundreds of people have reportedly died in new fighting along the Rwanda-Congo border.
Former senior American and European officials scoff at Trump’s claims of being the President of peace. Lute, who served as the deputy national-security adviser under the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, chuckled when I asked him how many wars Trump has ended. “Zero,” he replied. “He may give himself credit to have paused eight conflicts, but I don’t count any of these as resolved.” Trump has even upped the numbers. “Now it’s eight and a quarter,” Lute noted. “He has this new math on Cambodia and Thailand, which he said he had to sort of solve again. So, he’s giving himself another point-two-five.”
Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza is far from fully resolved, despite a Trump-brokered agreement last fall. “It’s not very clear what happens first and what happens next,” the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, said at the Doha Forum in December. Without imminent progress, all parties risked a return to war “or descent into total anarchy,” Eide said. In May, Trump notably claimed to have ended hostilities between India and Pakistan, a conflict that dates back to 1947 over control of predominantly Muslim Kashmir by predominantly Hindu India. The President said that he used trade concessions as incentives to get both countries to end a four-day skirmish in the Kashmir region, last spring. After a ceasefire was announced, the government of Pakistan, which had already nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, thanked him, but India claimed to know nothing about any concessions. “They’re not shooting at one another,” Lute said. “But that doesn’t stop the underlined conflict between India and Pakistan.” The ceasefire did not address the long-standing issue of Kashmir, and troops of both countries remain deployed along the volatile border.
