{"id":686378,"date":"2026-01-10T08:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686378\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T08:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:50:12","slug":"europe-may-have-just-20-days-to-avert-the-irreparable-there-are-still-things-it-can-do-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686378\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe may have just 20 days to avert the irreparable. There are still things it can do \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake of Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s special military operation in Venezuela<\/a>, one question outweighs all others. Who\u2019s next?<\/p>\n

The bombing of Caracas and the spectacle of fallen dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> in shackles must have been particularly chilling for leaders of other countries threatened by the US president: Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland (which is part of Denmark), Mexico and Panama.<\/p>\n

Fiona Hill, then Trump\u2019s Russia adviser, told the US Congress in 2019 that Russia had proposed \u201cswapping\u201d Ukraine for Venezuela. Trump appears to have succumbed to Vladimir Putin<\/a>\u2019s vision of a world where Russia dominates Europe, China dominates Asia and the US owns the western hemisphere. Russia barely protested the ousting of Maduro and the seizure on Wednesday of a Russian-flagged oil tanker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a certain symmetry to the Russians in Ukraine and the Americans in Venezuela. Putin claims Russia has the right to control its former empire. Trump justifies co-opting Maduro\u2019s regime and seizing the Venezuelan petroleum industry based on the 202-year-old Monroe Doctrine. <\/p>\n

Like Putin, Trump cultivates puppet regimes in his backyard, most notably Argentinian president Javier Milei<\/a>, who he bailed out last year with $40 billion in US taxpayers\u2019 money. Putin meddles in European elections. Be sure the US will intervene on behalf of far-right parties in upcoming elections in Colombia and Brazil.<\/p>\n

Greenland may be the next victim of Trump\u2019s imperial urges. \u201cWe need Greenland\u2026\u201d he told reporters on Air Force One. \u201cWe\u2019ll worry about Greenland in about two months … let\u2019s talk about Greenland in 20 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie Miller, wife of Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted an image of the map of Greenland wrapped in the Stars and Stripes with a one-word title: SOON.<\/p>\n

Stephen Miller told CNN: \u201cWe live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

A White House statement on Tuesday said \u201cPresident Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority … of course, utilising the US military is always an option\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Why does Donald Trump want to take over Greenland?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Trump makes the unproven claim that \u201cGreenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place\u201d. He belittled Denmark\u2019s plan to spend \u20ac12 billion on the defence of Greenland as the addition of \u201cone more dog sled\u201d. <\/p>\n

Secretary of state Marco Rubio will next week attempt to persuade officials from Denmark to sell Greenland to the US.<\/p>\n

Denmark signed defence agreements with the US in 1941, 1951 and 2004 and would allow the US to increase its military presence on the Arctic island. There is no obstacle to the US prospecting for precious minerals, which are becoming accessible thanks to the global warming that Trump labels a hoax. <\/p>\n

The \u201cfreedom city\u201d movement is one of the more bizarre factors pushing for US colonisation of Greenland. Its tech billionaire proponents are nostalgic for 19th century US expansion and call the establishment of territories free of corporate regulation \u201cthe dawn of a new Manifest Destiny\u201d. Trump\u2019s ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery, was a business partner of Peter Thiel, a leading advocate of such experiments. Greenland has been proposed as a test site for colonising Mars, one of Elon Musk\u2019s pet projects.<\/p>\n

Anne Applebaum, the author of Autocracy Inc, says Trump is obsessed with the Mercator projection, cylindrical maps of the world that create the optical illusion that Greenland is enormous. Danish officials told Applebaum: \u201cTrump just wants the US to look larger on a map.\u201d <\/p>\n

Spanish prime minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez was the only European leader to strongly condemn Trump\u2019s takeover of Venezuela. If they criticise him, Europeans fear that Trump will punish them by again raising tariffs on European goods, or by cutting off the intelligence Ukraine needs to defend itself against Russia. The US makes vague promises to serve as a \u201cbackstop\u201d for European peacekeepers in the event of a hypothetical peace deal. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Why Spain\u2019s prime minister is most vociferous EU leader criticising US on VenezuelaOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

A summit of the \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d in Paris saw Trump\u2019s envoys promise security guarantees for Ukraine even as Trump threatened aggression against Denmark, a loyal Nato ally. <\/p>\n

Leaders of Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK issued their strongest statement yet: \u201cGreenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

A US seizure of Greenland would signal the end of Nato, something Trump has worked for since returning from his first trip to the Soviet Union in 1987. The head-spinning events of the past week indicate that either Trump is stark raving mad or his elevation to the US presidency was the greatest undercover coup in the history of Soviet and Russian intelligence. <\/p>\n

Europe may have as little as 20 days to avert the irreparable. Mark Rutte, the Dutch secretary general of Nato who a few months ago called Trump \u201cdaddy\u201d, has been strangely silent. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Keir Starmer\u2019s \u2018see no evil\u2019 Donald Trump strategy risks making him weakerOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Trump \u201cis a man who sees himself as the emperor of the western hemisphere … and that includes Canada too\u201d, Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, the British former deputy supreme allied commander Europe told the BBC. \u201cThe only way we can bring a sense of perspective to this is if we stop kowtowing to Trump and demonstrate that we are ready to stand together as Europeans and Canada to say, \u2018enough is enough\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump rolled back his tariff war against China because Xi Jinping suspended exports of rare earths to the US. The EU, which accounts for one sixth of the global economy, could devise sanctions against US companies, expel US military personnel, restrict the travel of US citizens in Europe. German public policy scholar Guntram Wolff says the EU must urgently develop a shared military strategy. French Socialist MEP Raphael Glucksmann proposes the EU set up a military base in Greenland.<\/p>\n

The day is fast approaching when Europeans will be forced to decide if they have the collective will to be a superpower \u2013 something their land mass, population and economy make possible. If they fail to do so, they risk becoming, by default, the vassals of Trump and Putin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the wake of Donald Trump\u2019s special military operation in Venezuela, one question outweighs all others. Who\u2019s next?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[32,2000,299,5187,37887,332,8518,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-686378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-nicolas-maduro","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-venezuela","15":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}