Carney’s classy riposte to Trump

Canada’s PM shows EUrope the way forward over Greenland

By now, European leaders should have learnt a painful lesson. Donald Trump smells weakness better than anyone on the planet, bar Vladimir Putin.

But he is also the TACO president, a bully willing to retreat in the face of superior odds, whether the weight of the bond market or an unflinching President Xi Jinping.

In the case of Greenland, Trump’s demands are outrageous: the acquisition, if necessary by force, of the world’s largest island which just happens to be the sovereign territory of the Royal Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally.

Annexing Greenland would rupture the 75-year-old NATO alliance. Trump appears supremely indifferent. Yet this would be a gift to Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China whose strategic ambition has long been to separate the US from Europe.

So how should Europe respond?

Mark Carney’s speech in Davos offers a statesman’s riposte to Trump and an antidote to western defeatism. The text is worth reading in full. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-speech-davos-rules-based-order-9.7053350

Having canvassed opinion on both sides of the Atlantic, I am in no doubt that Europe (and that includes the UK, by the way) must call Trump’s bluff or risk being bullied into irrelevance.

Here is a menu of economic, political and military options. Europe should adopt some or all of these measures if Trump goes ahead with a 10 per cent tariff on EU countries, as well as the UK and Norway, who have objected to his Greenland annexation plan. If he backs down, all bets are off - until the next round of brinkmanship.