Only one rule applies in this perilous global power-grab

From Greenland to Venezuela, Iran to Ukraine, Trump has shaken the world and reshaped global alliances to shore up a new world order under three kings

- Sam Kiley

Donald Trump publicly signalled that he wanted to grab Greenland for the US before he was formally installed as the 47th president.

Now, a year into his administration, the future of the ice-clad mega-island lies at the centre of a clash between Western civilisations and a potential trade war. But here, understanding the jumble of global contradictions that Mr Trump’s latest fetish for another country’s land can reveal, there’s method, as well as outright madness, in his relations with the outside world.

Trump has undone almost every branch of American democracy. In doing so, he has served the interests of America’s greatest rival, Russia, in ways that apparently make no sense and are hard to fathom.

Outside the US, he has backed Russia over Ukraine, undermining the scaffolding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

His national security strategy has adopted outright nonsense from the darker corners of social media, holding that Europe is on the verge of civilisation erasure as fact.

In doing so, he has behaved as only a former KGB officer, like Vladimir Putin, could have dreamed - enfeebling Europe and undermining the military alliance the Kremlin sees as most threatening.

Trump’s America First policy has veered from a promise to focus on domestic issues and forsake foreign interventions, to the use of force to remove Venezuela’s president, kill untried, alleged smugglers, on the high seas, and bomb Iran - all arguably illegal under international law.

He has even now said that Venezuela will be run by him and that he’ll keep its oil revenues to spend as he sees fit. And if Caracas doesn’t like that, he’ll attack Venezuela again.

This might-is-right attitude echoes Putin’s approach to his neighbours, notably Georgia and Ukraine - both of which the Russian president has invaded and ultimately wants to recolonise.

So all very pro-Russian so far.