If Donald Trump thinks Greenland should be his, how long before he sets his sights on Scotland? | Zoe Williams

‘We do need Greenland, absolutely,” Donald Trump told the Atlantic on 5 January, with the hand-wavy follow-up, “We need it for defence.” His adviser Stephen Miller was more aggressive still in an interview with CNN, saying: “The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? … The US is the power of Nato … obviously Greenland should be part of the United States.” His wife, Katie Miller, posted an image on X of a map of the country papered over with the US flag, with the caption “soon”. It’s hard to orientate sensibly towards things that happen on X these days: if she had posted a Grok-generated image of Greenland in a bikini, would that be more or less concerning?

Still, we’re right to be concerned. There is no comfort to be had from old-era ideas such as: “Maybe they’re just sabre-rattling about Greenland to distract from the matter of Venezuela”, or “surely the foundational principles of Nato, a defensive alliance, will prevent the US from any act of aggression towards its own allies?”

The question is, by what logic does Trump make his claim? He talks a lot about the Monroe doctrine, describes his foreign policy as its “Trump corollary”, but close watchers of Hamilton, the musical, will sniff out immediately that Trump is no heir to the doctrine’s origins in the Federalist papers, which essentially wanted Europe to curtail its colonial ambitions and butt out of the Americas. The 2020s version is fixated with the western hemisphere, which Greenland is in, but Denmark is not. This is the basis for Miller’s confident dismissal of centuries of Scandinavian relationships: the meridian says no.

The US national security strategy published last November uses “hemisphere” incessantly, introducing the idea of “non-hemispheric competitors”, a phrase commentators have now taken up, as if it were a foundational idea in geopolitics, rather than some retro-imperialist garbage invented five minutes ago. The short version is the same as the long version: everything in the western hemisphere must remain “stable and well-governed” enough to serve the US’s interests and prevent mass migration there. Trump’s definition of stability and good governance is antithetical to ours. His ideas on preventing mass migration are necropolitical and feature nothing that would, in real life, prevent it (such as halting runaway climate breakdown and fostering peace). Therefore, as an overriding agenda, this cannot be taken at face value, but rather, as a justification for dominion.

If you’re the kind of person who likes clicking on maps, you could spend an enjoyable half hour looking at which bits of the UK Trump could lay claim to, under his hemispheric approach: Norwich would be fine; Scotland would not.

Which brings us to the next relevant item in their security agenda, a desire to restore “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity”. This has been plain since JD Vance hectored European leaders at the Munich Security Conference under a year ago, accusing them of retreating from their “fundamental values” . When he spoke of Christianity and freedom of speech, he meant whiteness and hate speech. That really couldn’t have been plainer. A leaked document from Marco Rubio to US diplomats, late last year, parroted related white supremacist talking points: migration as a threat to social cohesion and public safety, and its association with violent crime.

They have been building an ideological carte blanche to intervene in progressive nations for their own good, the way you’d take a box of matches off a child. Which may be all just talk, but Trump’s talk is so unrestrained, and its wildest excesses so often followed up with action, that at some point we need to come to terms with a fact about this administration: just because it barks, constantly, doesn’t mean its bite won’t be worse.

Just as European leaders braced for the unthinkable, military action against a fellow Nato member, Rubio said the rhetoric had all just been to soften up Denmark up for a retail offer: relax everyone, Trump just wants to buy Greenland. His realtor’s logic, which we’ve seen before in despicable remarks about a devastated Gaza, should concern the UK more than anything: he’s already spent two decades buying a chunk of Scotland. His ancestral links, coupled with his golfing ambition, have made Aberdeenshire the petri dish of his identity, as a neighbour, ally, businessman and statesman. When Trump buys a country or part thereof, he makes investment promises he doesn’t keep, he alienates and bullies everyone in the vicinity, he wreaks environmental havoc, he blocks renewables or at least tries to, and he creates a playground for the super-rich.

The organising principles here are domination and expansion. Any leader who thinks they could make their peace with Trump owning Greenland should swap in Scotland and wonder how peaceful they would feel about that.