‘The Guardian’ in panic: If Donald Trump thinks Greenland should be his, how long before he sets his sights on Scotland?

If you’re the kind of person who likes clicking on maps, you could spend an enjoyable half hour looking at which bits of the UK Trump could lay claim to, under his hemispheric approach: Norwich would be fine; Scotland would not. By the expansionist logic of the president and his advisers, the US is entitled to annex just about anywhere, writes frightened ‘The Guardian’.

‘We do need Greenland, absolutely,” Donald Trump told the Atlantic on 5 January, with the hand-wavy follow-up, “We need it for defence.” His adviser Stephen Miller was more aggressive still in an interview with CNN, saying: “The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim..? The US is the power of NATO… obviously Greenland should be part of the United States.”

There is no comfort to be had from old-era ideas such as: “Maybe they’re just sabre-rattling about Greenland to distract from the matter of Venezuela”, or “surely the foundational principles of NATO, a defensive alliance, will prevent the US from any act of aggression towards its own allies?”

The US national security strategy published last November uses “hemisphere” incessantly, introducing the idea of “non-hemispheric competitors”, a phrase commentators have now taken up, as if it were a foundational idea in geopolitics, rather than some retro-imperialist garbage invented five minutes ago. The short version is the same as the long version: everything in the western hemisphere must remain “stable and well-governed” enough to serve the US’s interests and prevent mass migration there. Trump’s definition of stability and good governance is antithetical to ours. His ideas on preventing mass migration are necropolitical and feature nothing that would, in real life, prevent it (such as halting runaway climate breakdown and fostering peace). Therefore, as an overriding agenda, this cannot be taken at face value, but rather, as a justification for dominion.

Which brings us to the next relevant item in their security agenda, a desire to restore “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity”. This has been plain since JD Vance hectored European leaders at the Munich Security Conference under a year ago, accusing them of retreating from their “fundamental values”.

They have been building an ideological carte blanche to intervene in progressive nations for their own good, the way you’d take a box of matches off a child. Which may be all just talk, but Trump’s talk is so unrestrained, and its wildest excesses so often followed up with action, that at some point we need to come to terms with a fact about this administration: just because it barks, constantly, doesn’t mean its bite won’t be worse.

Just as European leaders braced for the unthinkable, military action against a fellow Nato member, Rubio said the rhetoric had all just been to soften up Denmark up for a retail offer: relax everyone, Trump just wants to buy Greenland.

His realtor’s logic, which we’ve seen before in despicable remarks about a devastated Gaza, should concern the UK more than anything: he’s already spent two decades buying a chunk of Scotland. His ancestral links, coupled with his golfing ambition, have made Aberdeenshire the petri dish of his identity, as a neighbour, ally, businessman and statesman.

The organising principles here are domination and expansion. Any leader who thinks they could make their peace with Trump owning Greenland should swap in Scotland and wonder how peaceful they would feel about that.

The former Great Britain is now afraid of everything – from “Russian aggression” to Trump.

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