One thing is clear: The Western order we once knew is part of history.

Source: The Guardian (headline: Whether or not Trump invades Greenland, this much is clear: the western order we once knew is history)
Translation:Telegrafi.com

Donald Trump is threatening to conquer Greenland - the territory of a NATO ally - perhaps even by military force, as Vladimir Putin is trying to invade Ukraine. Even if he doesn't actually do so, this is already a new era: a post-Western world with illiberal international disorder.

The current task for liberal democracies in general, and for Europe in particular: to see the world as it is and figure out what the hell we should do about it.

An international public opinion poll, published today, is a useful starting point. It was conducted in November last year, in 21 countries - for the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) - in collaboration with our research project Europe in a changing world at Oxford University (please read it) the full report, which I co-wrote with Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard). This is the fourth survey in a series series that we have done every year, since Putin's complete invasion of Ukraine in 2022, so we can see how things have evolved - from very bad once, now at critical moments.

In the year 2022 Pamet a transatlantic West united in outrage at the outright invasion of Ukraine, but divided by other major and middle powers, such as China, India, and Turkey, which were willing to continue business as usual with Russia. The Russian economy was surviving in the face of unprecedented Western sanctions because those other states already had enough wealth and power to balance even a united West. So this was a post-Western world, but still with a West operating within it.

Trump 2.0 has changed that. We now have a post-Western world, but without a unified geopolitical West operating in it. If we are to attribute any strategic coherence to Trump’s unstable narcissism, his approach is closer to that of Putin than that of any American president since 1945. As explains openly his right-hand man, Stephen Miller, they believe that the world is “governed by force ... by force ... by power”.

Europeans have understood this. Surprisingly, fewer than one in five continental Europeans (on average across the 10 EU countries we surveyed) and only one in four Britons now see the US as an ally. In Ukraine, that figure has fallen to 18 percent. We Europeans still see the US as “an indispensable partner,” but not as an ally.

The rest of the world is waking up to this too. While in our first survey, 60 percent of Chinese respondents thought that American and European approaches were the same or similar (i.e., there is only one West), now only 43 percent think so, while a clear majority think they are different. For now, the West is history.

So what should we do about this? The worst thing we can do is to continue to lament the loss of the “rules-based international system,” making selective appeals for international law (Ukraine, but not Gaza), while continuing our servile appeasement of Trump. At the same time, we certainly don’t want to behave like him or like Putin.

What we need is a new internationalism: faster, more flexible, more rigorous. To reject the use of force but embrace the use of power. Not to fixate on existing structures and alliances, but to seek a wider range of partners, pragmatically, on a case-by-case basis. To worry less about rules, more about results; less about process, more about progress. This is a challenge especially for the institutional EU, the ultimate example – slow, rules-based and process-laden – of the liberal international order of the 90s.

However, we have already begun to do this for Ukraine, with a new combination of a coalition of the willing and the EU itself moving at a speed unprecedented by Brussels standards. As I argued last month, we must urgently prepare to support an independent Ukraine even without US assistance.

Yes, with me. Greenland"First, we must be guided in everything we do by the elected governments of Greenland and Denmark. This, after all, is what distinguishes us liberal democrats from authoritarian imperialists."

On Wednesday, Denmark and several of its European NATO allies announced the deployment of additional troops to Greenland. The foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark then met in Washington with Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and agreed to create a high-level working group. It is quite clear that the basic disagreement has not been resolved. All signs point to Trump becoming more extreme and unpredictable as time goes on and his domestic difficulties increase.

Here are some suggestions. To underscore European commitment, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer should visit Greenland, along with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. They should be accompanied by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, as Canada is an ally in NATO and is Greenland's real western neighbor and directly affected by uncertainty in the Arctic.

If they can take a train to Kiev, they can fly to Nuuk. Surprisingly, this visit could be as important as the security commitment itself, because President Trump's second language is television. He will get his message from the visuals. A number of European and Canadian liaison officers, visible and in distinctive uniforms, should be stationed in Greenland for an indefinite period.

On Tuesday, Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said that if they had to choose, "we choose Denmark ... we choose the EU." Therefore, the EU must find a way to increase its her financial support which is currently small for Greenland - and not as planned for the new budget period starting in 2028. This would be a good opportunity for the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the European Council, António Costa, to board a plane to Nuuk.

While there, they should launch a strategic discussion about a possible future close relationship between an independent Greenland and the EU. It is quite clear that the EU of tomorrow will have a range of personalized relationships with key neighbors, including the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Turkey and Canada. Why not with Greenland as well?

Meanwhile, Europe — the US’s largest economic partner — should privately consider the full range of economic responses (including, for example, selling US Treasury bonds) it could take in the still unlikely event of a Trump ordering a Putin-style military invasion of Greenland. A summary of these contingency plans could be discreetly relayed to the White House, via US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

There are undoubtedly other possible moves, but the general direction is clear: a Europe (and Canada with other liberal democracies) that project quiet strength, power, and determination.

One of the most depressing findings in our survey is that Europeans are world leaders in pessimism. Nearly half of them do not believe that the EU can stand up to global powers – such as the US and China. If we start implementing this new internationalism, faster and stronger, perhaps more Europeans will trust Europe again. /Telegraph/