Why does Trump get away with this unhinged foreign policy?

I have now tried to write this column several times. Each attempt has failed for the same reason: every time I open the document, Donald Trump has done something new, deranged and geopolitically flammable, forcing me to scroll back to the top and insert another bullet point labelled “You will not believe this but…” 

So, let’s start, again, at the top: Donald Trump wants Greenland.

Greenland. The world’s largest island, a NATO member via Denmark, and not, as far as anyone can tell, a branch of Monopoly where you can just slap down a suitcase of cash and yell “mine”. Trump wants it in the same way a toddler wants someone else’s toy: loudly, vaguely, and with the full expectation that an adult will eventually hand it over to stop the screaming.

Ill-advised nationalist posturing

This is madness. Not “controversial policy choice” madness. Not even “ill-advised nationalist posturing” madness. This is ‘if America invaded Greenland, NATO would be over’ madness. You cannot have a military alliance whose central premise is collective defence, while its biggest member casually eyes up another member’s territory like it’s browsing Rightmove.

Yet here we are, watching this unfold with the strange passivity normally reserved for a man shouting at pigeons.

What’s particularly impressive is how neatly this inverts about a decade of British political hysteria. We were told, endlessly, that the real threat to NATO was the left. Jeremy Corbyn not liking nuclear weapons was apparently one hummus short of global catastrophe. There were serious people, with serious faces, warning that a handful of blue-haired vegans in Haringey might accidentally dismantle the post-war security order between oat lattes.

Protecting NATO and national security

Crushing the left, we were assured, was essential for national security.

Fast-forward, and the person openly threatening NATO is a right-wing nationalist billionaire with the impulse control of a wasp trapped in a Coke can. And suddenly no one is willing to say, out loud, that he absolutely cannot be allowed to do this.

What if he asks for Scotland next? Do we give him Edinburgh Castle and a shortbread tin as a souvenir? Is there a punch card system? Buy one autonomous territory, get one free?

Trump’s peace board

Then there’s Trump’s new “peace board”, a concept already doing heavy lifting for the word peace. It features Vladimir Putin, Tony Blair, and a noticeable absence of anyone Palestinian. Which is less “balanced diplomatic initiative” and more “group chat that should never exist”. It’s like assembling a fire safety panel and filling it exclusively with people holding matches.

This is the same Trump who recently insulted NATO troops who died fighting in America’s war in Afghanistan. Actual dead soldiers. The kind we’re usually told must be treated with reverence bordering on the theological. Somehow, this too barely registers.

Why does Trump get away with it?

This is the bit I genuinely don’t understand: why does he get away with it?

Ripping up international agreements. Mocking allied troops. Threatening the territorial integrity of allies. This is exactly what we were all supposed to be shitting bricks over Jeremy Corbyn doing, except Corbyn never did any of it. He mostly wanted to talk about the NHS and not killing people.

Back then, there was talk of NATO as a fragile thing, constantly on the brink, vulnerable to being undermined by anyone insufficiently enthusiastic about Trident. This threat was treated as so extreme it had to be stamped out from every angle of public life.

The biggest threat to global stability

Now the biggest threat to global stability is a man everyone knows is unhinged, and the response from liberals is a kind of strained politeness, as if they’re worried he’ll leave a bad review.

There’s chatter about NATO being a paper tiger. But it’s not Putin exposing that. It’s not even Trump, really. It’s liberals, particularly American liberals, who refuse to stand up to him. Who won’t shout “this is insane” at the volume required.

Why won’t anyone shout about common sense? About the boring but vital system that has, for all its flaws, created relative peace and stability since the Second World War?

Why is no one yelling from the rafters?

Why is no one yelling from the rafters about how appalling all of this is?

Maybe it’s because might makes right. Because Trump can write his own cheque. Because power, once again, excuses behaviour that would have triggered a global moral panic if it came from the left.

Do centrists and liberals actually want to live in a world where might makes right? I don’t think they do. But if they don’t, they’re going to need to locate their spines and stop blaming someone in a craft beer bar in Walthamstow for undermining NATO.

The real threat

The people undermining NATO aren’t the Greens. They aren’t the left. They’re the ones politely nodding while Trump takes a wrecking ball to the post-war order.

Do we really want a world where strength is all that matters?

If not, why are we all letting him get away with it?