One hemispheric hegemon
Okay, I missed it. Somewhere Donald Trump, the former professional wrestling owner, crossed over from theatrical bluster and fake punches to the real thing. The thuggish ICE raids and federal troops in the streets of Los Angeles last year should have been a strong clue. Now Trump the Somnolent has attacked Venezuela, deposed and captured its awful leader, and claims the U.S. is running the country.
“Under what legal authority?” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked SecState Marco Rubio. Rubio filibustered and would not answer.
In another Sunday appearance, Rubio appeared to threaten Cuba.
Don’t forget Trump’s interest in Greenland seen in this tidbit from The Atlantic:
Trump told [Michael] Scherer that Greenland had not been on his mind when he’d been ousting Maduro—but he then proceeded to offer real-time foreign-policy musings on that very topic, in one of his characteristic verbal weaves. “You know, I wasn’t referring to Greenland at that time, but we do need Greenland, absolutely,” Trump said. “And we need it for defense. You know, it’s surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships. We need Greenland.” (Katie Miller, the wife of the top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, posted an image on social media on Saturday of Greenland covered by an American flag, with the caption: “SOON.” And Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, urged Washington yesterday to end its threats, which she said make “absolutely no sense.”)
The U.S. annexing Greenland makes “absolutely no sense” except to a man who’s obsessed with size and doesn’t understand the Mercator projection. Trump wants to make the U.S. a hemispheric hegemon. Trump has gone to Jack D. Ripper land and Republicans controlling Congress lack the balls stop him and his gang of vandals.
The U.S. already has “wide access to Greenland” for military purposes via NATO, Frederiksen noted. The New York Times adds:
A number of Denmark’s European neighbors, as well as the European Union, repeated their longstanding support for the country’s territorial integrity.
“We would recall that Greenland is an ally to the U.S. and is also covered by the NATO alliance, and that is a big, big difference” from the situation in Venezuela, Paula Pinho, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said at a news conference on Monday.
“No one decides for Greenland and Denmark but Greenland and Denmark themselves,” President Alexander Stubb of Finland wrote on social media.
But Trump “has always been drunk on fantasies of power. His entire rhetorical repertoire consists of frantic boasts and foolish words,” observes The Bulwark. His boasts that U.S. oil companies will rush into Venezuela and reap huge profits smacks of Cloud Cuckoo Land:
“We’re going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said during a press conference Saturday.
Trump lacked the WWE pyrotechnics, but the over-the-top bluster is the same.
The companies will pay for investments in Venezuela themselves, Trump claimed. They’ll be reimbursed. Wait, who, us? snarks The Bulwark.
“I don’t see anything that gives me the sense that this is a ripe opportunity,” Landon Derentz, an energy analyst at the Atlantic Council tells Politico.
Over my career, I was involved in major chemical plant engineer/design/construct work (though not oil refining). The lead times for assessment, design, procurement, contracting and construction will far exceed Trump’s term.
No U.S. oil executive will be committing billions to replacing decrepit refining infrastructure overseas based on Trumpish bullshitting. He was going to end the Ukraine war overnight, too, as you recall.
Trump will be long dead before any investment pays off. I’d stall until that happens and then see what comes next. There are so many IFs in the Politico piece, I can’t see an upside to rushing in to validate Trump’s boasting. The oil titans are not that stupid.
But Trump is. It is up to us to stop him, The Bulwark urges:
Trump is our president. He’s acting in our name. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to undo all the dangerous mistakes he’s already made. And we won’t be able to stop him from continuing to indulge in frantic boasts. But an awful lot depends on whether we can limit the damage that he seeks to bring about over the next three years, and whether we can at least hold out hope of a responsible road ahead.
The danger that “Trump’s vanity and grandiosity will lead him to try to seize Greenland is real.” The Danes think so too.