Part of me’s surprised Donald Trump didn’t threaten to rain “fire and fury” on Copenhagen and a host of other NATO capitals over the weekend after a “coalition of the willing” (to borrow a wartime Bushism) embarked on a well-meaning, but ultimately ill-conceived, military reconnaissance expedition to Greenland.

It’s not entirely clear what the thinking was behind “Operation Arctic Endurance.” Ostensibly, participating nations wanted to “reassure the US that European NATO members were serious about Arctic security,” as The Guardian put it, citing one of the countries involved.

But the associated communications, not to mention the timing — the token deployments, which in some cases amounted to a single officer, began around 48 hours after the Danish foreign minister and an envoy from Greenland came away from a meeting with Marco Rubio and JD Vance more concerned than ever about Trump’s covetousness towards the island — were guaranteed to rankle a US president who this month renamed the Monroe Doctrine for himself and had the State Department create a poster emblazoned with the slogan “This is OUR hemisphere” to celebrate the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro from the Venezuelan capital.

In other words: Regardless of intention, anyone deploying military personnel to Greenland right now is doing so at considerable risk. In Trump’s thinking, the only boots allowed on that particular ground are Greenlandic and American.

The notion that the likes of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK, were merely trying to show Trump that NATO’s resolved to defend Greenland against a (wholly imaginary) Russian or Chinese invasion, as opposed to expressing solidarity with Denmark in the course of sending Washington a political message, beggars belief. Even if it were plausible, Trump’s notoriously thin skin meant that irrespective of what Operation Arctic Endurance participants intended to convey, this White House would interpret the deployment as a hostile act.

Paris, at least, had the courage to say what the operation’s really about. “Greenland is being coveted and potentially threatened by the United States [and] has no intention of being either bought by, governed by or incorporated into the US,” France’s foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said, in a Q&A-style explainer about France’s decision to join the exercises. “Greenland, its sovereign people, has opted for NATO, the EU and the Kingdom of Denmark [which] wanted to show that the Europeans are wholly capable of dealing with these potential threats looming over the Arctic region.”

When Barrot was asked whether the size of the French and German deployment — 15 and 13, respectively — is “ridiculous in the face of American imperialism,” he dodged, and never earnestly addressed the real question, namely (and as one interviewer phrased it), “[Is France] capable of facing up to the United States in Greenland, with the American president repeating that he’ll take Greenland the easy way or the hard way?”

The answer, obviously, is “no.” Or, more precisely, “NO!” But inshallah it won’t come to that. As discussed at some length in “Greenland’s Future May Be ‘Sovereignty Twilight’,” Trump’s not likely to invade Greenland, per se, and indeed putting it in those term doesn’t make a lot of sense.

There are already more US servicemembers stationed in Greenland — at the Pituffik Space Base — than there are NATO personnel on the island as part of Operation Arctic Endurance. Trump’s not one for subtlety, but none of Denmark’s nation-state friends are going to “fight,” in a physical sense, the US military for control of Greenland. There’s no “battle” to be had or won.

Nor is there a disagreement on joint security operations nor resource development. Greenland and Denmark have repeatedly agreed to give Trump more or less anything he wants on both those fronts. The only thing they won’t agree to is formal recognition of Greenland as a US territory. And Trump’s made it clear this is an all or nothing deal. Or an all or something deal, with the “something” TBD. As he put it on social media, “anything less [than acquisition] is unacceptable.”

All of that being the case, there are really only two “viable” (and I use that term only for lack of a better one) paths. One finds Denmark taking the easy way out and agreeing to sell Greenland down the river — literally, by accepting Trump’s offer to buy the island.

The other finds the US engaging in a prolonged pressure campaign that seeks to exhaust European opposition to annexation and absorbs Greenland through a non-military blitzkrieg of paternalistic, but plainly hostile, appropriation initiatives (e.g., infrastructure development) paired with localized political influence campaigns.

Trump got started over the weekend wearing down Europe by threatening tariffs on NATO allies participating in the Greenland deployment. The levies will be 10% starting next month and 25% from June. Europe can avoid the tariff if “a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”

The TruthSocial post announcing the duties was — and no polite euphemism will suffice I’m afraid — crazy, even by Trump’s high standards for delirium. He claimed, among other things, that because the US didn’t charge Europe tariffs “or any other forms of remuneration” for “centuries” prior to his presidencies, Copenhagen’s in his debt.

“[I]t is time for Denmark to give back — World Peace is at stake!” Trump declared, reiterating his contention that China and Russia intend to seize Greenland which currently has but “two dogsleds as protection.” He was quick to note that one of those dogsleds was “added recently.”

Then he launched into a monarchical, third-person display of self-adulation. “Only the United States of America, under PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, can play in this game, and very successfully, at that!” he said, apparently referring to the giant game of Risk that is great power politics. Once the US has Greenland, “Nobody will touch this sacred piece of Land,” he went on.

Then, Trump framed Operation Arctic Endurance as a nefarious, and possibly hostile, conspiracy. “On top of everything else, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown,” he said, calling the deployment “a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet” and warning that those nations — NATO members and erstwhile steadfast American allies, all — “have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable.”

It got crazier, if you can believe it. Trump then proceeded to argue that in fact, the Golden Dome (his as-of-now fictional air defense system modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome) can only work if the US acquires Greenland.

“Now, because of The Golden Dome, the need to ACQUIRE is especially important,” Trump, aerospace engineer, explained. “This very brilliant, but highly complex system can only work at its maximum potential and efficiency because of angles, metes, and bounds, if this Land is included in it.”

It’s fair, I reckon, to rank this pretty high on the list of Trumpian in(s)anity. It wasn’t immediately clear what authority Trump had — or thought he had — to levy tariffs in pursuit of territorial conquest, but this raises the stakes even further for the forthcoming Supreme Court decision regarding the legality of Trump’s trade levies.

In addition, this is the stuff nightmares are made of for whatever’s left of anti-tariff, moderate Republicans in Congress. Generally speaking, those representatives are pro-NATO. And here’s a GOP president not only threatening to slap trade levies on NATO members who refuse to go along with one of the most audacious land grabs since Manifest Destiny, but obliquely suggesting European boots on Greenland’s territory constitute a hostile military action against the United States.

Meanwhile, a confused Moscow doesn’t know what to think. On one hand, a NATO deployment to Greenland’s an irritant, and the prospect of the US asserting dominion over the territory is highly unpalatable if you’re The Kremlin, where egos are already badly bruised by the fall of the Assad regime, Iran’s precarious plight and the overnight US seizure of a quasi-Russian client state in Latin America.

On the other hand, one of Vladimir Putin’s chief goals in life is to see the dissolution of NATO. Through that lens, there’s probably something satisfying about Trump using a NATO deployment in Greenland as an excuse to accelerate American efforts to pull a Crimea on the world’s largest island.

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, spent the better part of 18 hours lampooning Europe and NATO on social media. “Collapse of the transatlantic union,” he wrote, captioning Trump’s Greenland tariff announcement.

Late last week, Putin’s long-time spokesman Dmitry Peskov weighed in on the absurdist drama. “The situation is unusual,” he said. “[Trump] has said international law is not a priority for him. We, along with the rest of the world, are watching to see what happens.”