Washington Post columnist Phil Bump on Thursday warned readers that they should take President-elect Donald Trump's musings about using the military to seize Greenland from Denmark seriously.
In his column, Bump made the case that there are "some echoes of the pre-Iraq War era" in Trump's overtly imperialist desires to expand American territory even if it means declaring war on a fellow NATO ally.
In fact, he has noticed the same kind of rhetoric from Trump's congressional and media allies that was used by Republicans more than 20 years ago to set the stage for the justification of the invasion of Iraq.
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"Trump’s allies are already treating Greenland as a useful addition to the American empire, including using similar 'security' rationales to do so," he writes. "In his comments at Mar-a-Lago, Trump insisted that Greenland’s acquisition was necessary for America’s 'economic security.'"
Bump goes on to acknowledge that it is still highly unlikely that Trump would launch a war over Greenland if Denmark keeps rebuffing his offers to buy the territory from them.
However, unlikely is not the same as impossible.
"It isn’t impossible that government officials tapped by Trump — potential Attorney General Pam Bondi or Defense-Secretary-and-Fox-News-alum Pete Hegseth, for example — might work to figure out how to make the case for seizing Greenland," he writes. "Using whatever evidence they can cobble together — 'related and not,' as the Rumsfeld notes put it. It has happened before."
