Greenland? I’ll take it! It wasn’t a misunderstanding or a hoax. The president of the United States is actually interested in purchasing this Danish territory, which he views as a practical steppingstone to Europe. The Trumpian fantasy of applying Monopoly rules to geopolitical reality elicits shock – what nerve! – and posturing. Danish politicians are screaming mad and striking a nationalist chord.
This latest display of Trump’s superiority complex is nonetheless instructive. It must be taken as an unvarnished demonstration of his way of thinking. The most powerful man on earth is in keeping with, and comfortable invoking, what is, to his eyes, historic domination. His country, a machine of opulence and influence, has expanded in the past. The U.S. bought Louisiana from the French two centuries ago, then Alaska from Russia, and the Virgin Islands from Denmark (already) 100 years ago. The real estate mogul is resorting to some outdated habits from a world still mapped in sepia. To him, everything, even a people, still has its price.
As Trump reveals his curious personal interest in Greenland, we can grasp the extent to which the big boss believes money to be the universal language, all the more advantageous to those that have it that they can dispense with the equivocation and the failures of diplomacy.
The checkbook is no less ethical than the weapon. Vladimir Putin, who annexed Crimea, was received at Brégançon Fort. India just put Kashmir in its pocket, and so many states resort to underhanded violence such as in the East, for example, without being ostracized by the world community.
Trump, with his fixation on the superstar dollar and his sights on a European jump seat, is therefore not that scandalous. He is transparent. Just ahead of the next Group of Seven summit of major industrial nations in France, Trump has the good grace to remind people that he is engaged in a live game of Monopotrump from the White House.
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