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You might view the Greenland crisis as a conflict of the highest complexity, involving the nuances of old alliances, new visions, and a host of known and unknown unknowns. And you’d be right — up to a point.

But I think it all boils down to a pretty simple question: Can Donald Trump arm-twist and/or bluff Europe into caving? 

The way he got powerful institutions stateside to cave; the way he just got Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to cave; the way he seems to be getting Venezuela’s new president, Delcy Rodríguez, to cave. The way he now evidently believes he can get anyone to cave.

European caving would look like this: straight-faced statements that Europe will actually be more secure with the US minding the store in Greenland because blah blah blah. 

And, of course, assurances have been given that limited sovereignty and self-rule will continue to be respected and blah blah blah. 

And precious resources will be shared and distributed equitably, to the benefit of US and Europe alike and blah blah blah. A bright future for NATO and transatlantic relations…

Bullshit, but whatever.

Yet Europe will cave only if it believes the consequences of not caving would be catastrophic — that calling Trump’s bluff will lead directly to military invasion and the destruction of NATO or worse. 

That is what Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be doing over in Denmark next week — trying to convince the freaked-out Europeans that Trump will pull the trigger. That they should take as seriously as cancer Stephen Miller’s will-to-power, might-makes-right worldview, expressed so eloquently on Monday as “We live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” 

Rubio is carrying Miller like a Luger in one pocket. And in his other pocket he’s carrying, like a Glock, none other than Adolf Hitler himself. 

Rubio will let the Europeans know that Trump and the US, whose military he commands, are now in full thrall to that worldview.

Ghosts of Nazis Past

So Rubio is carrying Miller like a Luger in one pocket. And in his other pocket he’s carrying, like a Glock, none other than Adolf Hitler himself. 

Because Europe has a memory of words like Miller’s and threats like Trump’s. And it has a memory of what happened when they downplayed those words and threats, when they didn’t “get” Hitler and the Nazis until it was too late.

But — and here is where it gets interesting — Europe also remembers the folly of Neville Chamberlain, the folly of negotiating with Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop, of trusting their word, their assurances. 

Until very recently, it was inconceivable to these staunch allies that the United States could fall under the sway of those like Miller whose worldview seems indistinguishable from that which sent the Nazis marauding across Europe once upon a time.

For Europe, therefore — and I’m assuming here a basically united Europe — both appeasement and defiance evoke ugly memories. They know, or should at least strongly suspect, that caving will not end well. But are they prepared to make a stand now? 

We’ve seen one institution after another here in the US fold with far less at stake and with far stronger positions.

This is where I think the public — We the People, here and in Europe — come into play. 

When Hitler occupied the Sudetenland and executed the Anschluss to add Austria in 1938, when he took the rest of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he did so with very broad popular support in Germany and very little dissent. Germans believed the nation needed and deserved Lebensraum, and these “rooms” were right next door, full of ethnic Germans.

Now imagine, if you will, what the streets of our country will look like if Trump invades Greenland militarily. What if Europe counters — certainly a risk — and blood is shed? 

What about the streets of Europe? Surely millions among the people of Europe know their history, remember the Nazi scourge, remember how it began. Once their greatest ally, now recast as a foreign invader — indeed an intercontinental invader — the US under Trump could well inspire a latter-day Churchill to lead the people of Europe in their defense. 

Full-on war with Europe, and indeed World War III, are among the very possible outcomes.

For Greenland. One can imagine it won’t poll well for Trump and MAGA.

Gaming this out — and, again, it simplifies because there are really only two choices here — Europe might reasonably consider calling Trump’s bluff. 

If they cave and work out a “deal,” the immediate risk of conflict and war is averted, and the streets, while there would surely be No Kings–level protests on both sides of the Atlantic, would eventually calm down. 

But Europe will know they are walking in Chamberlain’s doomed shoes, that the new Trumpian world order, with its spheres of influence, leaves Europe very much out in the cold, without a sphere, to be devoured by Russia should Vladimir Putin be so inclined.

Historically, therefore, Europe just might come to view the current crisis as a kind of mulligan for Chamberlain’s duck hook into the pond at Munich. 

They might think that Trump — TACO Trump — will quail at the prospect of truly massive street protests, other mass actions up to and including a general strike, and approval ratings in the teens. They might gamble that Trump, Triumph of the Will bravado notwithstanding, will back down.

Frankly, given all the signs of Trump’s galloping megalomania, I wouldn’t make that bet. And, for better or worse, I don’t think that Europe will either.