U.S. President Donald Trump listens to a question during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, on Jan. 3, in Palm Beach, Fla.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press
In the spring of 1944, George Klein, an 18-year-old Jewish-Hungarian, was shown a copy of a report prepared by two escapees from Auschwitz. In minute detail, it described the operation of the secret death camp.
The Nazis were at that moment in the midst of deporting the Jews of Hungary. Hundreds of thousands had already been taken and were already dead. Yet that The Final Solution was the policy of one of the world’s most advanced societies was still almost beyond comprehension, even to many of those about to become its targets.
“My supervisor gave me permission to tell my relatives and close friends about the report so that they could go underground,” Mr. Klein said. “Of the dozen or so people I warned, no one believed me.”
Every day, U.S. President Donald Trump and his minions say things that are not just at odds with generations of U.S. policy, the Atlantic alliance and international law, but viciously hostile to them. And each act of violating norms and harming allies only seems to whet the appetite of Mr. Trump’s bottomless id.
Within hours of the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a pumped-up Mr. Trump was waxing on about attacking Colombia and Mexico, overthrowing the government of Cuba – and taking over Greenland.
If it makes you sleep better, you can imagine that it’s all just talk. Just bluster. Just a negotiating strategy. Just lines from a reality-TV star.
Or you can accept that this is reality.
And in this reality, no country is more at risk than Canada.
Yes, it’s hard to believe that it’s not all a figment of our own overexcited imaginations. Washington has been our friend, ally and partner for generations. The idea that the U.S. President would wish to take a bite out of Canada, or seek our demise, is almost incomprehensible.
Or was.
One day, it may again be incomprehensible. But for now, the United States is run by a man who wants to dispense with the burdens of U.S. power, while embracing the Darwinian opportunities.
When it comes to Trump’s behaviour, the most plausible explanation is the stupidest
The plans for Venezuela are bad enough. A country run by a dictator, who stayed in power by stealing the last election, has not been liberated and turned over to its people. Instead, the old regime has been anointed by Mr. Trump. The U.S. economic blockade is being maintained, with the U.S. President proudly announcing that the stranglehold has compelled the new client government to turn over up to 50 million barrels of oil to his control.
And talk about taking Greenland from NATO-ally Denmark – using American military power not to protect friends, but to extort them – is now loud and frequent. Mr. Trump says it, and his minions compete to see who can more loudly repeat it.
In a remarkable interview this week on CNN, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller – the most important spokesman for and architect of Trumpism outside of the man himself – said that he was surprised anyone was surprised.
“It has been the formal position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration,” said Mr. Miller, “that Greenland should be part of the United States. The President has been very clear about that.”
Would he rule out using military force to attack a NATO member? No. “The United States should have Greenland. … Nobody’s going to fight the United States over the future of Greenland.”
The world, he said, is “run by those who have power.” All else is “legal niceties.”
Greenland, Denmark envoys urge Trump administration to drop takeover threats
Why does Mr. Trump want Greenland? Because it’s there, and it’s big. It would be the largest territorial acquisition in U.S. history, larger than the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.
What’s even bigger, and right next door?
Four decades after the end of the Second World War, Mr. Klein, by then a professor of microbiology in Sweden, met one of the authors of the report that had saved his life. Rudolf Vrba also survived the war, becoming a professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia.
Mr. Klein described visiting him “in Vancouver, in Canada, that paradise land that is never fully appreciated by its own citizens, a people without the slightest notion of the planet Auschwitz.”
This madness will one day pass. But who knows when, and who knows what will pass before it does. Perhaps the U.S. Congress and American voters will stop Mr. Trump, or knock him off course. Maybe soon. Maybe not.
Do not take our country’s existence for granted. We are in the sights. Believe it.