Escalation Spirals

Where does the fracas over Greenland end?

Escalation is a two player game. It does not matter what your intent was as much as what your opponent thinks your intent was. Trump’s Greenland gambit is a good example; I doubt he wanted it to become as infected as it has. As I argued last week, I think the primary motivation for pushing on Greenland is to distract from domestic issues, but I suspect Trump and his advisors misunderstood how sensitive Denmark, the Nordic countries, and the EU would be to this threat. As per usual, Trump and his courtiers are not well versed in history and have a difficult time realizing and accepting that other people have fundamentally different world views than they do. As such Trump has wandered out on thin Greenlandic ice.

Until Trump started to threaten tariffs all was fine. People expect Trump to be a pain to deal with, and there is no small amount of satisfaction in thinking that one managed to talk him down. But when threats started flying then the nature of the conflict changed for Denmark and the EU, and just calling it off by not talking about it anymore is no longer an option.

Trump’s famous mad man theory of international relations, that other countries will be less inclined to mess with the US if he acts erratically comes into play in the conflict. The mad man theory requires Trump to continue pushing until he is the one who is currently the most escalatory, because if someone else can successfully threaten him into backing down then he has proven that he is no mad man. But how do you engineer a situation where Denmark can trust that the US will back down while also preserving Trump’s mad man image?

There is a real risk that Trump keeps being too aggressive, as he does not realise how much more important Greenland is for Denmark and the EU than it is to him. Denmark and Greenland will never give in, so the only real alternative to acquire the island is military force. Which would be a disaster as NATO falls apart in the worst way possible and Trump’s party colleagues abandon him in droves, probably resulting in impeachment. But unless and until Trump or his advisors realise the disparity in will between Denmark and the US there is a serious risk that the two sides end up pushing each other into this worst of all worlds by mistake.

At the same time, there is a real risk that any European attempt to escalate to de-escalate could backfire as Trump feels pressure to stand up to the Europeans which he and his administration routinely paints as weaklings and cowards. Being bullied by a group of countries facing “civilizational erasure” is clearly not making America great again.

All of this is to say that while both sides probably want to de-escalate (at least the reasonable and intelligent ones), escalation has a logic of its own, and crises can take on a life of their own. The current wave of anxiety and threats regarding Greenland has crested, but the conflict remains unresolved which means that it could reappear. While it is heartening to see such support for Denmark and Greenland from a multitude of European countries, and good to see voices in the media calling for a resounding response, Trump is still on thin ice here, and there are more than one way in which things could go badly.

If you liked this post you can read a previous post about Greenland here or the rest of my writings here. I also have a section for longer reads I call essays here, I particularly recommend my series called The Bird & The Technoking exploring Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and its political and cultural implications. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!

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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.

Written by Karl Johansson

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Cover photo by Francesco Paggiaro from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson