A shortish post here because I just wanted to bring you a section we recorded on Tuesday’s News Agents, with the Science Secretary, Peter Kyle. He’d come in to talk AI; he’s an impressive minister, easily one of the best in the cabinet- with a real energy about his brief. Inevitably we asked him about online regulation, DeepSeek, the fact that Elon Musk still hasn’t taken down the stabbing footage watched by Axel Rudukabana only minutes before he killed three little girls in an act of wicked butchery. Interestingly, Kyle did suggest that the UK government does not rule out blocking X in the long term if they don’t comply with the new Online Safety Act.
But then we got onto Greenland. This followed an interview I did with junior Treasury Minister James Murray on my LBC Sunday show at the weekend. As part of that interview, to my surprise, he was unwilling to confirm that the UK was against the invasion of Greenland. Comically, he answered me by saying that the UK government was focussed on growth with the United States. I responded by saying that therefore can we infer that the UK government would be unbothered to see US GIs on the streets of Nuuk, so long as we’re all a tenner better off a year? He responded by saying that he wouldn’t get into hypotheticals and that the UK government, you guessed it, was focussed on growth.
But the point is that this not hypothetical: Trump has been clear that he wants to use US military, economic and political power to achieve its aims, including over Greenland. This week claimed that Denmark didn’t really have a claim to the territory (despite it being part of the Kingdom of Denmark since 1721). The Danish PM, Mette Frederiksen has toured EU capitals , trying to drum up support. The FT reported at teh weekend that Danish officialdom, including Frederisken were disturbed by Trump’s bellicosity in a call between the two leaders, conlcuding that he was serious about his threats. Nordic leaders tweeted out a picture of a dinner between the leaders of Norway, Finland and Sweden, alongside Frederiksen, in an act of Scandi/Nordic solidarity (and in a flat which looks just like my Norwegian wife’s family home, because they basically all look like that).
Some of this is clearly tactical. Denmark has asked EU leaders not to wade into the row (though it hasn’t stopped Scholz and Macron from so doing). European ministers hope that Trump will get bored, become distracted by something else in short order. But I had thought it would be a given that any UK government minister would say that we are against any invasion or use of undue economic pressure by the United States (a close ally) against Denmark (another close ally). But neither would. For Kyle, who I repeat I think is doing a good job as Tech minister, part of it was timing- I’m sure he was conscious of the Chancellor’s big speech on Wednesday and didn’t want to say anything which might overshadow it.
But my word- even that is quite the situation to be in. The very fact that we’re in a position where a UK cabinet minister feels that his saying that the US should not invade a fellow NATO country would be a) newsworthy b) problematic for the UK/US relationship, shows how very far we’ve travelled, so very quickly. UK government ministers keep clinging to the fiction that Trump isn’t serious about anything he says, that his second presidency will pan out much like the first. As John Bolton, his former National Security Adviser told me just before he was inaugurated, this is wishful thinking. Trump is now uninhibited by constraints on his power at home, and he wishes it to be so abroad. We have not seen any president act this way since the 19th century- uninterested in preserving alliances, international norms and institutions, but who acts far more as we might expect an autocrat would: who is motivated by the belief that the only thing that matters is raw power and transactional politics. Every president of the modern era has had a strong normative notion of how the world ought to be and what America’s place within that world is: Trump’s only guiding principle is that might is right. The circle around Trump increasingly view all international institutions as an unwelcome check on the exercise of American power, hence their bizarre withdrawal from the WHO and ending nearly all US international aid. Trump has started his presidency, attacking three countries, exerting his brute economic power, not on autocratic enemies like China or Russia, but on allies - Panama, Colombia and Denmark, just because he can: because they have less leverage over him than he does over them. Substantial tariffs look likely for Canada and Mexico, despite the fact that both countries have little idea what Trump wants in order to obviate them. Trump and his circle enjoy the exercise of brute force, for its own sake, believing it reinforces Trump’s strong man image at home, which it probably does. Cumulatively, all of this will have a profound cost on US power and influence, as traditional allies they can no longer rely on the United States to act as a predictable ally and partner, and countries like China will fill the gap. The postwar order is at a point of real inflection. Trump’s first term was isolationist, the early tenor of his second has been expansionist.
That is not to say that Trump will definitely invade Greenland. But it is to say that Trump may well do something- it is to say that his reflexes and inflections are of a new type and it doesn’t do us much good to pretend they’re not, or he doesn’t mean them. I would be surprised if we get to 2029 and Trump has not ignited a major crisis, somewhere, involving traditional US allies that any other postwar president would not have countenanced. UK ministers privately hope that Trump’s hegemony will quickly fade; that as he is bogged down and becomes less popular at home, as he likely loses the House in 2026, that he will become easier to manage. There is a credible case that the opposite is true: that two term presidents typically do more abroad over the course of their second administration, not less- because this is the area over which they have greatest freedom of action. It astonishes me how little Europe collectively has grappled with the new realities- in defence, security or long term engagement with the idea that the US may not be a reliable security partner. Trump has been around for a decade- and his turn away from Europe built on trends we saw even in the Obama administration. The Biden interregnum may well be the last gasp of the old order, rather than a stopper on a new one.
There is another likely fiction to which UK ministers cling: that they afford to duck and dive, that there will never be a point of rupture between the US and Europe; that we can continue to cling to both, and perhaps fulfil our traditional role as a bridge between the two continents. Maybe, with the best case scenario, that Trump becomes uninterested and distracted, that could happen. But it easily could not: my instinct is that a point of rupture will come and the UK will be forced to choose. Or worse, is left adrift between the two- isolated and unable to make up its mind about whose side it is really on.
You can watch the Greenland section of the interview with Kyle here.
And it wasn’t a shortish post, after all. Sorry about that.
It’s optimistic of you to think of Trump as a two term President. There’s no way he’s standing down willingly in 4 years time. President for the rest of his days, our best hope now is his arteries.
Lewis, I admire your journalism and writing but you're making a 'story' out of the fact that a minister didn't say something, TO YOU. Yes, the media is important in all sorts of ways but you shouldn't conflate what the government is willing to say to you and others, who let's face it have a product to sell, with what is going on in government. He tried several times to make this point and you tried with equal persistence to get your soundbite. Sometimes, it's just not about you.