The American President, a man whose grasp of global geography is primarily filtered through the lens of where he can bolt his name in gold-plated block letters, recently decided he wanted to buy Greenland. The world laughed, because laughter is the only involuntary reflex left for a species that has collectively decided to commit suicide via sheer, unadulterated stupidity. But in Europe, the laughter was brittle, thin, and quickly replaced by a performative 'fury.' The 'Old World'—that collection of fading empires currently masquerading as a cohesive trade bloc—found itself in a state of high-octane indignation. They call it 'fury,' which is a remarkably generous term for the sound a tea kettle makes just before it’s ignored by everyone in the room.

There is a peculiar comedy in the European response to the Greenland gambit. The suggestion currently wafting through the corridors of Brussels is that Europe should 'learn from China' on how to handle the American toddler-in-chief. It is the ultimate intellectual surrender. The birthplace of the Enlightenment, the cradle of modern democracy, is looking toward a high-tech autocracy for notes on how to survive a real estate mogul. It’s akin to a disgraced, bankrupt aristocrat asking a local loan shark for tips on how to maintain one's dignity while being evicted from the ancestral manor. The 'hardening' of opinions in Europe isn't a sign of newfound backbone; it’s the rigor mortis of a political class that has realized its relevance is melting faster than the ice caps it pretends to care about.

Let’s be clear: Trump’s desire for Greenland was the height of his characteristic brand of moronic transactionalism. To him, the world is a giant Monopoly board where the properties are inhabited by annoying NPCs who haven't yet realized they’re part of a branding exercise. But Europe’s reaction is equally pathetic. They cling to the 'rules-based order' like a child clings to a security blanket in a house fire. They speak of 'sovereignty' and 'international norms' as if those words still carry weight in a world where the highest bidder dictates the dictionary. The fury of the Danish and the broader EU isn't born of a moral stance; it’s born of the realization that they are being shopped for parts.

The notion that Europe could adopt a 'Chinese' approach to the U.S. is the most hilarious part of this geopolitical farce. China doesn’t get 'furious' in the European sense; China doesn’t waste time with sternly worded memos or televised huffing. China simply waits. They buy the debt, they build the ports, and they wait for the screaming circus across the Pacific to exhaust itself. For Europe to 'learn' from this would require a level of strategic cohesion and cold-blooded pragmatism that they haven't possessed since they were busy colonizing the rest of the planet. Today’s Europe is a bureaucracy in search of a soul, a committee that requires three months of debate just to decide what color the 'Stop' signs should be.

Denmark’s Prime Minister called the idea of selling Greenland 'absurd.' She’s right, of course, but for the wrong reasons. It’s absurd because it’s a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century psychodrama. But the European Union’s attempt to weaponize this absurdity into a new strategic doctrine is even more ludicrous. They are 'hardening' their stance? What does that look like in Brussels? A slightly more aggressive tax on imported tech? A subsidy for artisanal cheese? They are terrified of Trump’s volatility, yet they are equally terrified of their own deepening irrelevance. They hate him not because he’s wrong, but because he’s vulgar enough to say out loud what they’ve always feared: that in the grand scheme of the new century, Europe is little more than a scenic backdrop for American and Chinese interests.

The 'Greenland Affair' is the perfect metaphor for our times. A melting island, a transactional grifter, and a group of panicked bureaucrats trying to figure out if they should act like a superpower or a victim. The reality is that they are neither. They are the audience in a theater that has caught fire, arguing about the quality of the upholstery while the ceiling collapses. If Europe truly wants to learn from China, they should start by realizing that 'fury' is a wasted emotion. But they won’t. They’ll keep clutching their pearls and drafting their memos, pretending that the world still cares about the 'rules' while the men with the money and the madness continue to rewrite them. It’s a tragedy, but at least the scenery is nice before it all goes underwater.