Re “Greenland isn’t the prize. NATO is” (Opinion, Jan. 13): Mary Thompson-Jones’s op-ed is alarmingly on target. I have been waiting for months for the firm of Trump, Miller, Rubio, Vance, and others “in charge” to find a way to fracture the critically important NATO alliance.
It seemed to me that President Trump, in his ongoing bromance with Vladimir Putin, was sabotaging the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its potential power to help broker and keep a truce in the Russian war on Ukraine.
Vice President JD Vance has made cringingly disparaging comments about the Europeans and how “weak” they are. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has expressed disdain for European powers. The president clearly is not a “works well with allies” type of guy. As deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller decrees, its all about power and brute force now.
Greenland presents the perfect opportunity for destructive, chaotic Trumpian foreign policy impulses: It’s about national security, although not really — we can build bases and put troops into the territory by treaty. It’s about Russians and Chinese all over the Arctic Sea threatening our hemisphere, except, as Thompson-Jones notes, that’s not true.
Is it about rare earth elements and oil to be exploited? Is it about a bullying superpower saying, “That needs to be mine”? Probably. But the Trump administration sets a dangerous precedent if it tears at the constraints of operating within a security alliance. Thank you to Thompson-Jones for sounding the alarm.
Sally Peabody
Peabody
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