U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the White House on Tuesday.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press
While you were sleeping – and when he should have been – the President of the United States posted an image of a doctored map of the U.S. that included Greenland, Venezuela and Canada. It was the type of thing that your great uncle, having just discovered AI, posts while sitting in his underwear at 1 a.m., after his wife kicked him out of the bedroom for snoring.
Years ago, we might have shrugged off such online provocations, even from the U.S. President, as no more consequential than Uncle Stan’s sloppy Facebook memes; he’s just blowing off steam, poking the bear. Maybe he lost the sticky note with his online banking password on it and needs a temporary distraction. But in 2026, it is foolish – reckless, even – to take Donald Trump at anything but his word. We must assume he is as reckless, dangerous and fatuously unhinged as he himself claims to be.
For years, both the U.S. and the larger Western alliance has borne the consequences not of underestimating Mr. Trump, but of overestimating him. We have assumed, erroneously, that logic, strategy, morality would prevail; that Mr. Trump wouldn’t actually pardon those convicted of offences related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, because it would fundamentally undermine the rule of law. That Mr. Trump wouldn’t openly defy court orders, because it would plunge the country into a constitutional crisis. That he wouldn’t actually allow masked federal agents to roam the country and demand citizens show their papers to avoid arrest, because that is fascist. That he wouldn’t levy tariffs on imports from all around the world, because that would just hurt the U.S. economy and, by extension, Mr. Trump’s own approval ratings.
Exclusive: Military models Canadian response to hypothetical American invasion
But those assumptions all assigned Mr. Trump a level of reasoning and foresight of which he demonstrated he is patently incapable. On Sunday, Mr. Trump wrote to the Prime Minister of Norway explaining his increasingly fervent pursuit of Greenland. “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” Mr. Trump wrote, “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”
“The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
Late last year, the Trump administration released its national security strategy, which promised to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.” Mr. Trump has repeatedly cited security vulnerabilities in the region for his pursuit of Greenland, though his 29-page foreign-policy blueprint did not actually mention Greenland once. Nevertheless, it is tempting to try to contrive some sort of bigger picture here, and insist that there must be some strategy at play.
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Indeed, we want to believe that Mr. Trump understands the value of Greenland’s natural resources and strategic location, and that he appreciates the gravity of threatening tariffs on NATO countries for opposing his pursuit of the island. Because to yield to the simpler explanation – the one that Mr. Trump himself cited in the first line of his letter – is to concede that the safety and security of the world hinges on the whim of a man who is all id. The President didn’t get his prize, so he’s readying his troops for Nuuk.
The world has suffered for years for overestimating Mr. Trump: for believing he could be tethered by market forces, tempered by precedent, restrained by logic or moderated by a sense of morality. Indeed, over and over again, we have set expectations too high, assuming that Mr. Trump wouldn’t pursue the riskiest, dumbest path possible. And over and over again, he has proved us wrong. He started building that impossible border wall. He lied about losing the 2020 election. He has begun prosecuting his political enemies. And he is now threatening to dismantle the NATO alliance. Canada cannot take the risk that he won’t pursue the dumbest, most dangerous, once-inconceivable path when it comes to our sovereignty, too.
It sounds hysterical, granted. But the Canadian Armed Forces have recognized that the risk is real, and a century after the drafting of Defence Scheme No. 1, which modelled an attack on the U.S. in the event of an American invasion, our military is again modelling out a response to a hypothetical U.S. attack. Mr. Trump and his allies have used the same language about security vulnerabilities in Canada’s Arctic as they are now deploying in their case for acquiring Greenland. It’s obvious Mr. Trump wants to make that big, beautiful map he posted while we were sleeping a reality. Canadians can’t keep their eyes closed.