Let’s try to game out the consequences

Greenland is getting warmer, in more ways than one. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version.

After what Trump just did in Venezuela, and after the unspeakably vile and repulsive Stephen Miller said that the U.S. has the right to take Greenland, it suddenly appears that the Trump White House might actually do something as stupid as to try and seize Greenland.

Politico has an interesting piece this morning: How Trump gets Greenland in 4 easy steps. It starts with a political move: propagandizing the 57,000 people who live in Greenland to declare independence from Denmark. That could be doable, because the people of Greenland like the idea of independence. But the second step would be much more difficult: getting the people who live in Greenland to become part of the United States. That’s not what they want. They want independence. Step 4 in the Politico scenario is a military invasion of Greenland.

Politico says that step 1, Trump’s propaganda campaign aimed at the population of Greenland, started as soon as Trump got back into the White House.

The Politico scenario looks all too plausible, almost as though Politico based the piece on sources inside the White House.

I have not seen a single story so far on what would happen next if the U.S. actually does seize Greenland. That there would be retaliation is obvious. Members of the NATO countries would immediately impose sanctions on the U.S.

I asked ChatGPT 5.2 to help me game out how the world would retaliate and who would join the opposition.

We should expect: Coordinated tariffs on U.S. exports, suspension of existing trade agreements, deliberate exclusion of U.S. corporations from trade negotiations, licensing delays or export controls on high-end products that the U.S. sells abroad, regulatory retaliation against U.S. banks and corporations doing business abroad, restrictions on investments in the U.S., non-renewal of existing contracts, suspension of intelligence sharing.

Who would join Europe in retaliation: Canada, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia. Other countries might retaliate in milder or more cautious ways: India, Brazil, Mexico, other Latin American democracies.

Russia and China are wild cards.

This economic retaliation would cause an immediate financial shock. The market would sell off. Investment would be frozen. Interest rates would rise. Unemployment would rise.

The longer the sanctions continued, the worse the damage would become as the world economy builds supply lines that work around the U.S. The damage would start immediately, but readjustment inside the U.S. would be slow. Eventually a point of irreversibility would be reached.

To quote ChatGPT: The world can pull away from the U.S. almost overnight; the U.S. can only rebuild trust and integration slowly, if at all.

Suddenly we are describing a world in which the economic chaos and hostilities set the stage for the kind of counter-retaliations and miscalculations that would set the stage for World War III.

We can cling to such hopes as the idea that Trump is only trying to distract from the Epstein files. I have no idea. We might hope that Congress would see the danger and do something. But until there is a new Congress on January 3, 2027, that seems unlikely.

Wherever we are and whatever our circumstances, we’re all exposed to the folly of a Trump move against Greenland. We Americans would not be the first foolish population in history to be brought to ruin by madmen. We’ve always thought that it can’t happen here. I think we instantly knew after the November 2024 election that things would get worse before they get better. But now it seems that things could get much, much worse, and that unless these madmen can be stopped it will be a long, long time before things will ever get better.

There’s another very important thing that we will need to game out if things break bad around Greenland. That’s the American domestic situation. If the American economy goes into a tailspin, who will Trump blame? Scapegoats will be required, and those scapegoats must always be people who are within reach so that they can be slapped around. Would the Trump White House try to soothe the turmoil? Of course not. They’d do everything possible to inflame it. We don’t need to ask ChatGPT where that would lead.