Politics

When Donald Trump, our mad king, declared that “we are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” because “ownership” is “psychologically important for me,” the reaction was immediate and predictable.

The foreign-policy establishment—what the former Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes dubbed “the Blob”—erupted in fury. Trump was trampling the so-called rules-based international order. “Territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law,” lectured Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. Trump was endangering what Iraq War champion Bill Kristol called our “relatively benign order,” one that, neoconservative nabob Robert Kagan sermonized, was held together in part by “America’s reputation for morality and respect for international norms.”

There’s no question that Trump’s erratic, even demented, global policies— “Liberation Day tariffs,” dubbing NATO allies the “enemy within,” whining about a Nobel Peace Prize snub while bombing seven countries as well as fishing boats in the Caribbean, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, pulling out of international organizations, and more—have stripped the mask off of American predation.