There is a particular, wearying rhythm to the collapse of the liberal international order, and it sounds remarkably like a dispute between a property developer who has forgotten his medication and a middle-manager who has mistaken himself for Winston Churchill. Sir Keir Starmer’s recent declaration that he 'will not yield' to Donald Trump’s covetous glances toward Greenland is perhaps the most exquisite piece of political theater we have been forced to endure this season. It is a performance of such high-minded absurdity that one almost expects the curtain to fall and the lights to reveal that the entirety of the British government is merely a rehearsal for a particularly bleak Beckett play.

To the uninitiated, or those who still cling to the quaint notion that geopolitics involves things like 'treaties' and 'diplomatic norms,' the premise is simple: Donald Trump, a man whose worldview is shaped entirely by the aesthetics of a 1980s Atlantic City casino, has decided he wants to buy Greenland. Again. It is his white whale, though in this case, the whale is a massive, melting tectonic plate covered in ice and inhabited by people who would rather set themselves on fire than be governed by a man who thinks wind turbines cause cancer. And standing in his way—or so he would have us believe—is Sir Keir Starmer, a man whose personal charisma is often compared to a wet weekend in Slough, but who has suddenly found his backbone in the defense of a territory that doesn’t even belong to him.

Starmer’s language was, we are told, his 'most hostile' yet. He insisted that the future of Greenland should be decided by Denmark and Greenland. It is a bold stance, much like declaring that the future of a neighbor’s garden shed should be decided by the neighbor and not the man living three blocks away who wants to turn it into a tanning salon. By stating the blindingly obvious, Starmer has attempted to drape himself in the tattered robes of a principled defender of sovereignty. It is a classic maneuver from the bureaucratic playbook: find a conflict where you have no actual skin in the game, wait for the most obnoxious participant to say something ridiculous, and then issue a stern press release asserting your commitment to the status quo. It is the political equivalent of a ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ tweet, but with more expensive tailoring.

One must admire the sheer, unadulterated cynicism of the moment. Starmer is currently presiding over a Britain that is increasingly defined by its own shrinking relevance, a nation struggling to decide if it wants to be a high-tax satellite of Brussels or a low-rent theme park for American tourists. What better way to distract from the dismal domestic forecast than to engage in a war of words over a giant ice cube? It allows him to look ‘tough’ on Trump—a prerequisite for his base—without actually having to do anything that might jeopardize the ‘Special Relationship,’ which at this point resembles the relationship between a fading aristocrat and the brash billionaire who is about to foreclose on his estate.

On the other side of this tragicomic ledger, we have Trump, whose interest in Greenland is less about strategic depth and more about the primal urge of a developer to acquire a lot with a ‘water view.’ To Trump, the world is not a collection of nations or cultures, but a spreadsheet of undervalued assets. He looks at the Arctic and sees a missed opportunity for a gold-plated hotel with a subpar steakhouse. The fact that Denmark has repeatedly stated that Greenland is not for sale is, to him, merely an opening gambit in a negotiation. He assumes everyone has a price, and Starmer’s intervention is likely viewed by the Mar-a-Lago set as nothing more than an uninvited guest complaining about the noise at a private auction.

There is a profound exhaustion in watching these two archetypes collide. Starmer represents the terminal stage of the technocratic elite—refined, procedural, and utterly convinced that ‘not yielding’ to a hypothetical purchase of a foreign territory constitutes a historic victory for democracy. Trump represents the terminal stage of the American experiment—loud, transactional, and viewing the globe as a giant Monopoly board where the rules are whatever he can shout the loudest. In between them lies Greenland, a place that actually exists, populated by actual humans, who must watch this performance with the grim realization that their home has become a rhetorical football for men who couldn't find Nuuk on a map without an aide pointing it out for them.

I have told you before: we are living in the era of the spectacular incompetent. Starmer’s ‘hostility’ is a carefully calibrated lie, a way to project strength while the foundations of his own house are rotting. He will not yield? He has nothing to yield. He is a spectator shouting at a screen, pretending he’s the director. Meanwhile, the theater continues its descent into the absurd, and the only ones laughing are the ghosts of the old empires, who at least had the decency to be honest about their greed. Today, we just get press releases and property disputes masquerading as principle.