Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | World on Trump’s Radar: Global Anarchy Looming

One act of brigandage follows hard on the heels of another for Donald Trump, 45th and 47th President of the United States of America. If this be “the Golden Age of America” that began with his inauguration in January 2025, as Mr Trump proudly proclaimed at the time, heaven save us from what he might consider the Dark Ages of his presidency, as Indians wait in trepidation for the possibly fearsome 500 per cent duty he has threatened to impose on imports from this country.

Mr Trump’s earlier grab for Greenland was not unlike Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of the Crimea and Ukraine’s Donbas region or Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s stranglehold on the Gaza Strip and 19 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, which belong to Palestine. Venezuela’s vast oil reserve is obviously what prompted Mr Trump to oust its President, Nicolás Maduro. In none of these instances is any valid legal reason advanced beyond avarice for additional territory.

Since then, the US President has also threatened to intervene in Iran if it lays hands on any of its protesters. Again, Mr Trump is exploiting a seemingly rational current issue to pay off old scores and gain a backdoor economic advantage. He has long opposed Iran’s sanctioned nuclear project and -- as with Venezuela- also had his eye on Iranian oil. Both ends might be served by ousting Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Iran’s second supreme leader since 1989.

As for Greenland, the US already maintains a permanent military presence at the Pituffik Space Base, a right that Denmark had granted in 1951. The strategically vital base, a US Space Force installation critical for missile warning and space surveillance in the Arctic, was formerly known as the Thule Air Base. “Thule” refers in ancient Greek and Roman literature to mythical northern lands, later applied to the Arctic. It a key hub for scientific missions like NASA’s Operation IceBridge, and for operating radar systems for missile warning, missile defence and satellite tracking.

The site has been one of the major hubs of Operation IceBridge since it began in 2009, the largest ever airborne survey of the earth's polar ice. Denmark supported a US military presence and Nato security guarantees because of its own limited ability to defend Greenland. The Americans could not have established a radar base at Thule during the Cold War without Danish support.

This is not the only sensitive border territory. There’s also the US’s 49th state, Alaska: Mr Trump sat down with Mr Putin for a highly anticipated summit on August 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war. Experts emphasize the historical significance of this location, specifically how the US purchased it from Russia in 1867.

According to the US State Department’s Office of the Historian: “Russia had a keen interest in this region, which was rich in natural resources and lightly inhabited.” But Russia was also hard up, and the treaty was signed in March 1867, with the formal transfer seven months later. The US paid $7.2 million, or about two cents per acre. The deal was initially mocked but later seen as a bargain, with inflation pushing the price up to more than $150 million. The narrowest distance between mainland Russia and Alaska is approximately 55 miles.

This body of water, the Bering Strait, contains two small islands known as Big Diomede and Little Diomede.

Big Diomede is still owned by Russia while Little Diomede belongs to the US. The stretch of water between the two islands is only about 2.5 miles wide and freezes over during the winter so that it is technically possible to walk from the US to Russia on this seasonal sea ice.

As with Alaska, Americans have long seen Greenland as strategically important. With the melting of the ice around Greenland, the possibility of new trade routes has increased the Arctic’s importance.

Now, amidst criticism from Denmark and Greenland, as well as from Mr Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Mr Trump claims that Greenland’s strategic location is critical for the US ballistic missile warning system. He wants to expand his country’s military presence on the island to monitor Russian activities in the surrounding waters. Currently, shipping data indicates that most Chinese and Russian shipping in Arctic waters occurs near their own coasts. However, there is concern about Russian submarines operating around Greenland, the world’s biggest island.

Venezuela is a different case. Globally respected experts believe that the drugs that are a social menace for Americans are smuggled in via Colombia, and not Venezuela. True, there is evidence to suggest that Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election was stolen from Mr Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González. However, this does not legally justify Mr Trump’s illegal invasion or the capture and imprisonment of Venezuela’s President and his wife. Also, the identity of the lawful winner is contested since some countries recognise Mr Maduro as the winner, while the Opposition controls no Venezuelan territory, which might have given the US the right to intervene on its behalf. America’s actions are only lawful if supported by a resolution from the United Nations Security Council or if the lawful government of Venezuela consented to the intervention.

There was no UN authorisation for the US to intervene. Nor has the US been the victim of any act of aggression by Venezuela. There was no letter of complaint either by Venezuela’s lawful government, which means Mr Maduro.

Naturally, the Venezuelan Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Maria Corina Machado, says the “hour of freedom” has arrived. But even she can’t ignore the unsavoury US record in Latin America.

When Theodore Roosevelt, the 29th US President, wanted the Panama Canal, which meant slicing off some Colombian territory, he obtained it by buying a bunch of rebel Colombian politicians who became Panama secessionists and promptly signed a treaty in 1903 giving Washington everything it wanted. The Canal Zone agreement has rankled ever since.

Mr Trump is acting like a bullying schoolboy who, not being content with his own sizable lollipop, wants to gobble up the lollipops of other children. That is the surest way to global anarchy. If the US President wants his administration to be respected and obeyed on a reciprocal basis, he must abandon all thought of “might is right” as the basis of worldwide co-existence.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author