[Editorial] Trump should cease destabilizing world with threats of conquest

Residents of Greenland, the semi-autonomous Danish territory, maintain a rally within the capital, Nuuk, on Jan. 17, 2026, to oppose US President Donald Trump’s threats to annex their nation. (Reuters/Yonhap)

US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs as excessive as 10%-25% on European nations that resist his will till the US is ready to buy Greenland on supposed nationwide safety grounds.

If Trump will get his method, he’ll destroy the sacred precept that nice powers don’t take territory by power — the precept that has sustained the postwar worldwide order. That will additionally ship NATO, that grand image of Western unity, down the trail to dissolution.

The US is already ready to make use of Greenland, which is Danish territory, for nationwide safety functions. The US should not flip the world order right into a jungle through which the sturdy prey upon the weak.

The UK, Germany, France and Denmark had been amongst eight European nations that launched an announcement on Sunday declaring they “stand in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the individuals of Greenland.”

“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and threat a harmful downward spiral,” the assertion warned.

That resolute assertion got here in response to Trump’s menace on the day prior to this to impose 10% tariffs on all their exports to the US as of Feb. 1 and 25% as of June 1.

Trump added that these tariffs would stay in place till the US had accomplished its buy of the island of Greenland in its entirety.

Trump has not bothered to hide his territorial ambitions for Greenland since his first time period in workplace. Now he’s using coercive means to attain that objective.

One motive the US and the UK may achieve the legitimacy to steer the Western world within the 80 years of the postwar order was by means of their pledge to not increase their territory within the Atlantic Constitution, which they adopted in August 1941, in the course of World Warfare II.

The UN was established within the spirit of that constitution in 1945 as a physique for the peaceable decision of battle, adopted by NATO in 1949. If the US seizes Greenland by power, it can basically be wrecking the postwar world order that it labored so arduous to construct and protect for all these years.

The US already has a army set up at Pituffik, in western Greenland. Below a protection settlement reached in 1951, the US can deploy as many troops because it needs to the island.

Within the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s tariff blitz and his dramatic raid on Venezuela, the world has entered a interval of chaos verging on anarchy. 

The US has no excuse to annex Greenland. Trump must respect worldwide legislation and pay heed to everybody his actions would have an effect on.

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