Lord Mandelson in the Spectator tomorrow approves of Trump's action in Venezuela and threat to Greenland

His lordship's links to Epstein, far from being a reason for him to resign, are reasons why he was a well connected British Ambassador to Washington able to negotiate a good trade deal for us. 

From his article:

Europe’s growing geopolitical impotence in the world is becoming the issue now, and histrionics about Greenland is confirming this brutal reality. The future of Greenland is being misunderstood. Trump is not going to ‘invade’ it. He doesn’t need to. He’s already there. What will happen is that the threats to Arctic security posed by China and Russia will crystallise in European minds, performative statements about ‘sovereignty’ and Nato’s future will fade, and serious discussion will take over. Together, the US, Denmark and other allies will address how the Arctic region is properly secured with a considerably beefed-up role and status and military deployment by America.

The bigger issue is how both sides of the western coin – America and Europe – are going to establish a modus vivendi in this Age of Trump.

This era (of which, as I argued in September in my Ditchley annual lecture, Trump himself is more consequence than cause) is coming to terms with myriad conflicts going on in the world at the moment. Their handling, and the larger struggles and confrontations on the horizon, are all made more complicated by the fact that, for a long time, the ‘rules-based system’ beloved of foreign offices, thinktanks and academic seminars has effectively not existed.

President Trump is not some populist disruptor bent on destroying it; it ceased to have meaning before he was elected.

The article is here. 

The rules based order was never anything but words, true, but no, Trump's threat to take Greenland by military force if necessary is not a minor thing. 

A cold war with Russia and China is not necessary and a Danish Greenland can provide all the things Trump wants anyway. 

Becoming the 51st American state would have its advantages - two US senators, for example, to be elected by 45,000 adult Greenlanders - but the disadvantage for them that they would thereby become Americans.

I'd rather be a subject of the King of Denmark. Objectionable though Denmark is in some ways (bicycling monarchs, social liberalism) and admirable though Americans are in some ways (free speech, religiosity, inability to be embarrassed) there'd be no question if it were me. 

(See my paean of praise to Copenhagen here.)