By T N Ashok
NEW YOTK: When President Donald Trump stood before the assembled worthies of global capitalism in Davos last week to discuss his designs on Greenland, he offered a masterclass in the very behaviour America has spent decades condemning. The irony was apparently lost on no one but the speaker himself.
For the better part of a century, the United States has positioned itself as the guardian of a rules-based international order—one founded on sovereignty, self-determination, and the peaceful resolution of territorial disputes. It has invaded countries, toppled governments, and imposed sanctions in service of these principles, or so the official story goes. Yet here was an American president openly pursuing the acquisition of another nation’s territory through a combination of economic threats, diplomatic pressure, and barely veiled coercion. That he ruled out military force—after weeks of studied ambiguity on precisely that question—hardly merits applause. A bank robber who decides against shooting the teller still intends to leave with the money.
The Greenland affair would be remarkable enough on its own terms. But it forms part of a broader pattern that reveals something unsettling about contemporary American statecraft: the growing gap between the democratic principles Washington preaches and the authoritarian methods it increasingly practices.
Consider the toolkit Trump deployed in Davos. First came the threat: 10% tariffs on European Union nations that dared support Denmark’s sovereignty over its own territory. Then the diplomatic squeeze: pressuring NATO allies to acquiesce to what amounts to territorial revision by fiat. Finally, the gracious retreat: withdrawing the most extreme threats while maintaining the underlying demand, a classic negotiating ploy that leaves the victim grateful for reduced coercion rather than outraged by its presence.
This is not the language of partnership. It is the language of subjugation, dressed up in the polite vocabulary of “negotiations” and “frameworks for future deals.” When Russia employed similar tactics in Crimea—combine military pressure with a façade of local consultation, then present the world with a fait accompli—Washington denounced it as thuggish revanchism. When China asserts historical claims over contested territories, American officials invoke international law with the fervour of seminary students. The rules, it seems, apply differently depending on who is wielding them.
The Greenland episode becomes more troubling still when viewed alongside Washington’s recent actions elsewhere. In Venezuela, the United States has spent years attempting to engineer regime change through sanctions that have devastated the civilian population, recognition of opposition figures as legitimate leaders regardless of electoral outcomes, and open discussion of military options. The stated goal—restoring democracy—rings hollow when the methods employed undermine the very principle of sovereign peoples choosing their own governments.
Iran offers another case study in selective principle. Washington withdrew from a multilateral nuclear agreement, reimposed crushing sanctions, and has repeatedly threatened military action—all while portraying itself as the aggrieved party. European allies who sought to maintain the deal found themselves facing American secondary sanctions, a form of economic warfare that punishes third parties for the crime of respecting international agreements. The message was unmistakable: American preferences supersede international consensus.
The trade threats levelled at Europe, India, and China follow a similar logic. Tariffs become instruments of political compliance rather than tools of economic policy. When Trump suggested that European opposition to his Greenland ambitions might trigger punitive trade measures, he made explicit what has long been implicit: America’s economic relationships are conditional on political deference. This is precisely the behaviour Washington condemns when practiced by Beijing, which stands accused of “economic coercion” for linking trade to political positions.
The cumulative effect of these actions is to reveal American foreign policy not as a principled defense of democratic norms, but as a naked pursuit of hegemonic control. The rules-based order turns out to have an asterisk: rules apply unless they constrain American power, in which case they are suspended, reinterpreted, or simply ignored.
What makes this particularly corrosive is the gap between America’s domestic self-image and its international behaviour. Americans overwhelmingly view their country as a force for democracy and freedom in the world. This belief is not entirely unfounded—the United States has, at various points in its history, genuinely advanced these values. But it has also consistently subordinated them to strategic interests, propping up dictatorships when convenient, overthrowing democracies when they proved insufficiently compliant, and invoking high principles to justify actions driven by raw power calculations.
The Greenland affair crystallizes this hypocrisy because it involves America’s closest allies—fellow democracies, NATO partners, countries that have largely accepted American leadership for three-quarters of a century. If Washington is willing to threaten economic punishment against Denmark for asserting sovereignty over its own territory, what constraints remain on American behaviour toward less powerful nations, or those outside the Western alliance structure?
European reaction to Trump’s Davos performance reflected this dawning recognition. The furious rebukes from Copenhagen, Paris, and Brussels were not merely about Greenland. They reflected a broader anxiety about whether the transatlantic partnership rests on shared values or simply American dominance. When the German foreign minister warned that “sovereignty cannot be negotiated under pressure,” she was articulating a principle that America itself has long championed—except, apparently, when doing so conflicts with American objectives.
Perhaps most damning was the response from Greenland itself. Here were Indigenous communities and local political leaders rejecting the premise of the entire discussion—asserting that decisions about their future belonged to them, not to great powers bargaining over their heads. This is precisely the principle of self-determination that America claims to defend. Yet Trump’s rhetoric treated Greenlanders as props in a strategic drama, their preferences an inconvenient complication rather than the central consideration.
The parallel to past American behaviour is uncomfortable. From the Philippines to Central America to the Middle East, Washington has a long history of invoking the interests of local populations while systematically ignoring their actual expressed preferences. Democracy promotion becomes a cover for strategic positioning. Self-determination applies only when it produces outcomes favourable to American interests.
What distinguishes the current moment is not the presence of these contradictions—they have always existed—but their increasingly brazen expression. Previous administrations at least maintained the fiction of principled consistency, couching strategic calculations in the language of universal values. This provided a framework for accountability, however imperfect, and allowed allies to hold Washington to its stated standards.
Trump’s approach dispenses with such niceties. The president sees international relations as purely transactional, a contest of power in which the strong dictate terms to the weak. This is not a bug in his worldview but its defining feature. The problem is that this vision is fundamentally authoritarian—it rejects the legitimacy of constraints on power, whether legal, institutional, or normative.
When combined with similar trends in domestic American politics—the erosion of democratic norms, the politicization of law enforcement and the judiciary, the embrace of strongman rhetoric—a troubling picture emerges. The United States is not experiencing a temporary departure from democratic principles in its foreign policy. It is revealing what has perhaps always been true: that American democracy extends to its borders, but American power beyond them has always operated according to different rules.
The implications extend far beyond Arctic geography. If the United States can threaten allies with economic punishment for defending their territorial integrity, why should anyone believe American security guarantees? If Washington treats sovereignty as conditional on compliance with American preferences, what becomes of the principle when China makes similar arguments about Taiwan or Russia about Ukraine?
American officials will object that these comparisons are unfair, that America’s intentions are benign even if its methods are occasionally rough. But intentions are invisible; actions speak. And America’s actions increasingly resemble those of the autocratic powers it claims to oppose—coercive, transactional, indifferent to international law when it proves inconvenient.
The tragedy is that this approach is ultimately self-defeating. American power has rested not merely on military and economic strength, but on a degree of legitimacy that came from at least appearing to operate within a framework of rules. By abandoning that framework—or revealing it as a convenient fiction—Washington undermines the very foundation of its global influence.
European nations are already drawing the obvious conclusion: they need strategic autonomy from an unreliable partner. China and Russia, meanwhile, can point to American behaviour as evidence that Western lectures about the rules-based order are pure hypocrisy. Smaller nations learn that sovereignty is respected only when backed by sufficient power to resist coercion.
The question now is whether the Greenland episode represents a breaking point or simply a more honest expression of long-standing American practice. The answer matters enormously. If this is an aberration, then a future course correction remains possible. If it is the culmination of deeper trends, then the international order is entering a period of even greater instability, with America having forfeited its role as a credible arbiter.
What seems clear is that the gap between American rhetoric and American behaviour has grown too wide to be ignored or explained away. A country that threatens allies for defending their sovereignty, that uses economic coercion as a routine diplomatic tool, and that treats international law as binding on others but optional for itself has lost the moral authority to lead a democratic coalition.
The rules-based order may yet survive, but not with America as its principal guardian. That role requires not merely power, but principles consistently applied. Until Washington can demonstrate both, its democratic pretensions ring increasingly hollow—a fading echo of a more confident age, when American power seemed sufficient to obscure American hypocrisy. In Davos, the emperor’s clothes were revealed as threadbare. The question is whether anyone in Washington noticed, or cared. (IPA Service)
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