After kidnapping Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela, a sovereign nation, US President Donald Trump now wants to take over Greenland !  Of course, he had given warning to other lands as well.

When US leaders speak casually about exerting control over territories, it reinforces a troubling idea. The idea that power flows from the barrel of a gun. This could trigger a new arms race and rush to become a nuclear power.

It seems unilateralism is the defining feature of American foreign policy. But when India wants to go to war, we need to “consult” them !

For decades, American leaders have insisted that hostility toward the US stems from envy of its “freedom and liberties.”

This explanation may be comforting, but it is simplistic and deeply dishonest. The world hates America for its hypocrisy. 

Russia going to war with its neighbour, Ukraine, to stop them from letting North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) place missiles close to Russia’s borders is wrong, but America can kidnap a nation’s President because it fears drugs are coming from that country? !

Large parts of the Middle East and Global South resent the United States not because of its freedoms, but because American policy has systematically undermined theirs.

Since the end of World War II, no nation has destabilised as many regions as the United States.

To be fair, the United States has contributed significantly to global innovation, trade and security architecture. But it has also left a long trail of wars.

They went to war with China (1945-46, then again in 1950-53); Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2004)… 

The long list must invite an uncomfortable thought. Has war become an instrument of US policy?

But hey, the US does not fight wars; it only has operations.

Yes, like surgeons who remove organs with clinical precision, the US also removes leaders that have become inconvenient to them.

Americans specialise in three kinds of operations — “Operation Freedom”, “Operation Justice” and “Operation Liberty.”

They also have a ‘sub-speciality’ like “Operation Geronimo”, which they perform only on special patients like Pakistan, their friend, supposedly. This operation eliminated Osama bin Laden.

Americans went to Afghanistan singing “Operation Enduring Freedom” and bombed Afghanistan into the Stone Age. Then they turned to Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction.

When none were found, it conveniently turned into “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Americans and other rich “white” nations have always found ways to keep nations with rich natural resources in a constant state of destabilisation. These nations are usually in Africa and the Middle East.

With Trump threatening Denmark and sending Europe into a tizzy, it has evoked Schadenfreude among nations that were colonised.

Schadenfreude, pronounced “Shah-den-froy-dud”, is a German word which means “the feeling of joy one feels after hearing of someone’s misfortune.” We, the colonised, may be experiencing it in the case of Denmark.

Now the Europeans will understand what imperialism feels like. Americans will do to them what they have done to Africa and Asia for centuries, which is to threaten and exploit.

That said, America today increasingly resembles not a global leader, but a class bully. It is loud, armed, impatient and convinced of its own moral exemption.

For now, when a nation abandons restraint, others abandon fear.

The world tolerated American dominance when it was paired with responsibility. What happens when it dominates without accountability?

The question is no longer whether the United States can police the world but whether the world will continue to tolerate a global bully that increasingly behaves like a rogue power.

And history suggests that no bully, however powerful, remains unchallenged forever.

P.S.: 1. Now in hindsight, we can thank Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Without our nuclear power, the bully would have “made us his bi**h” as the Yankee would say… like he is making Denmark. But that said, let’s see if Modi can stave off the attempt at economic castration and internal destabilisation of India.

2. Maybe Rahul Gandhi can now stop visiting Europe to save Indian Democracy, for the Europeans may need India’s help to save their own Democracies.

3. The threat to take over Greenland is a repeat of what the US did to Denmark in 1917.

Back then, the US felt the Caribbean Colonies, which belonged to Denmark, would be taken over by Germany, which could become a threat to US national security.

So, the US gave Denmark an ultimatum. Either you sell the Islands to us or we will take them over.

The Danes sold the Caribbean Colonies for 25 million dollars in 1917 to the US and it was renamed as US Virgin Islands.

Maybe it’s time for a real estate deal again. And Trump knows the “art of the deal.” After all, he wrote a book titled so.

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