It is a rare and agonizing privilege to witness the terminal decline of Western civilization played out like a low-rent property dispute in a Florida circuit court. Our current protagonist, a man who views the entire Earth as a distressed asset waiting for a foreclosure notice, has once again graced us with the delusion that he is the sole architect of global stability. Donald Trump’s recent assertion that NATO would be a 'defunct' memory if not for his personal intervention is the kind of breathtaking arrogance that only a career spent slapping gold leaf on cheap drywall can produce. It is, of course, a lie—but it is a lie that perfectly encapsulates the pathetic state of modern geopolitics. On one side, we have a narcissist who thinks a military alliance is a protection racket; on the other, we have a European Union so terrified of their own shadows that they consider 'bristling' to be a form of tactical combat.

The spectacle of Trump taking credit for NATO’s survival is like a pyromaniac demanding a medal because he only set fire to the garage instead of the entire house. He claims he 'saved' the alliance by bullying the various vassal states of Europe into paying their 'fair share,' as if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were a shared Netflix account and Germany was the roommate who never Venmos their portion of the bill. It is a transactional, soulless view of history that ignores the fact that NATO is less about 'defense' and more about maintaining a bloated military-industrial complex that keeps the gears of the American empire grinding over the bones of the rest of the world. But to Trump, it’s just a deal. And in his mind, he’s the only one who can close it.

Then we have the Greenland obsession—a saga so absurd it feels like a rejected plot point from a mediocre political satire. Trump wants to buy Greenland. He views a sovereign territory of Denmark as a giant, frozen piece of prime real estate, a strategic slab of ice where he can perhaps build a hotel with a very large, very gold 'T' on it. It is the ultimate expression of the American id: if you see something you want, you don't negotiate for it; you try to buy it, and if they won't sell, you threaten to burn their house down with tariffs. The man is treating the Arctic Circle like a mid-market golf course in New Jersey, and the sheer stupidity of the proposal is only matched by the 'unflinching' response of the Europeans.

Ah, the Europeans. The European Union has vowed an 'unflinching' response to the threat of tariffs sparked by this Greenlandic fever dream. They speak of a 'downward spiral' in EU-US relations, as if we weren't already at the bottom of the drain, swirling around the hair and soap scum of twenty-first-century diplomacy. Watching the EU 'bristle' is like watching an elderly librarian shush a hurricane. They issue sternly worded communiqués and talk about 'multilateralism' while clutching their pearls, terrified that the American bully might actually follow through on his threats to tax their luxury sedans and artisanal cheeses. They are performative, weak, and utterly dependent on the very system they pretend to find distasteful. They loathe Trump’s methods, but they love the security umbrella he provides, provided they don't have to pay too much for the privilege.

The irony is suffocating. We are trapped in a world where the 'leader of the free world' operates on the logic of a 1980s corporate raider, and his 'allies' are a collection of bureaucratic fossils who haven't had an original thought since the creation of the Euro. The Europeans wail about the 'downward spiral,' ignoring the fact that they helped build the slide. They spent decades outsourcing their defense to Washington, and now they are shocked—shocked!—to find that the person in charge of the Pentagon treats them like a group of underperforming franchises.

Greenland remains, for now, a part of Denmark, much to the chagrin of the man who sees it as the ultimate trophy property. NATO remains, for now, a functional relic of the Cold War, much to the credit of a man who wouldn't know a diplomatic treaty from a lease agreement if it wasn't printed in 24-point font. The rest of us are left to watch this slow-motion train wreck, where the only thing colder than the Arctic ice is the realization that these are the people in charge of the planet. There is no nobility here. There are no heroes. There is only a petulant real estate mogul and a group of terrified bureaucrats, all of them fighting over the crumbs of a collapsing world order while the planet literally melts beneath their feet. It would be funny if it weren't so exhausting.