Please, world leaders, don't appease America

PRESIDENT Donald Trump pounces on weakness, but retreats from strength.

- By Nicholas Kristof

That’s one reason for Europe’s present troubles: For too long it was weak both toward Russia in the East and toward the new menace arising in the West.

That’s certainly Trump’s perception. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said last month of European leaders, and he had a point. They fawned over him and meekly surrendered as he steamrolled them with tariffs.

Trump was preying upon that weakness as he threatened to seize Greenland and effectively destroy NATO, while warning of a new trade war if Europe resisted. In Davos on Wednesday, perhaps reacting to European pushback, he backed off somewhat: “I don’t have to use force” to acquire Greenland, he said. “I won’t use force.” Later in the day he withdrew, at least for now, the threat to impose new tariffs on Europe over the Greenland dispute.

Earlier, he had posted a map showing Greenland, Canada, and Venezuela all as part of the United States.

It has come to this: Canadian military planners reportedly are gaming how they might repel a US invasion with guerrilla tactics similar to those used by Afghan fighters.

Fortunately, the shock of Trump’s Greenland demands may finally be leading world leaders to awaken to the American threat. (How weird even to type that!)

“Until now, we tried to appease the new president in the White House,” Prime Minister Bart De Wever of Belgium said on Tuesday. “We were very lenient, also with the tariffs, we were lenient, hoping to get his support for the Ukraine war.”

“But now so many red lines are being crossed,” he added. “Being a happy vassal is one thing, being a miserable slave is something else.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk made a similar point on social media: “Appeasement is always a sign of weakness,” he wrote. “Europe cannot afford to be weak — neither against its enemies, nor ally. Appeasement means no results, only humiliation.”