A French perspective on the performative power games of Donald Trump
The beginnings of Trump’s second term as President of the United States have been eventful. A brutally disruptive tariff war was announced, then partially postponed. Statements on Gaza, Greenland, Canada and Panama have promised an era of American unpredictability, unmoored from humanitarian or any other principles, showing a readiness to abandon widely accepted norms about borders and power,
In a sea of hot takes – which may be partly Trump’s objective: to whip up a sense of fear, unpredictability and jeopardy amongst weaker states – Le Grand Continent has a thoughtful interview with Bruno Tertrais, one of France’s leading geopolitical experts. It’s a distinctly French/European perspective on how to read Trump’s power games.
Trump seems obsessed with borders and territory. But the neo-imperial turn in global politics and the erosion of post-1945 norms around the sanctity of international borders pre-dates him, both practically (the Russian invasion of Ukraine) and rhetorically (Tertrais cites President Erdoğan’s notion of the “borders of the heart”).
Trump has called the US-Canada border “artificial”. What interests Tertrais in the notion of an artificial border – and all borders are in a sense artificial, though some more than others – is its implied opposite: the idea of a natural border. He quotes the French revolutionary Danton in 1793 describing France’s natural borders as the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic. For Trump, there is perhaps some archaic notion of a naturally expanding American frontier ultimately bounded only by the Arctic.
(The idea of geography as destiny is sometimes sold as realism. Tertrais recounts an anecdote about Stalin on a visit to India looking at a map of the Indian sub-continent, pointing to the island then known as Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and asking what it was. On being told it was an independent country Stalin’s reported response was simply: “why?”)
Nonetheless, Trump shouldn’t be confused with Putin. Saying ‘all options are on the table’ is a classic rhetorical exercise of power. But there is, “a fundamental distinction between words and acts”. As Tertrais points out, “Trump hasn’t published a 20-page text entitled ‘On the Fundamental Unity of the United States and Canadians’ – as Putin did for Russians and Ukrainians”.
In any case, it’s not beyond the realms of science fiction to imagine Canada joining the United States peacefully the same way East Germany was joined to West Germany in the 1990s. While unlikely, it’s not inconceivable to imagine the US gaining control over Greenland within the framework of international law, perhaps after a deal with Denmark and a self-determination referendum.
For Tertrais, two things link Trump’s outbursts. First, his favoured technique of shocking his adversary before negotiating with them (his likely gambit with regards to Canada and Greenland). This, Tertrais points out, is how the “art of the deal” works. But the second issue tying it all together is China. “Even taken very seriously”, he says, “Trump’s imperialist rhetoric doesn’t ‘nullify’ the priority on China and Russia”.
Being seen to be a successful dealmaker clearly matters too. In insisting Hamas had to start releasing hostages before his inauguration in January 2025, Trump was probably thinking about January 1981, when newly elected President Reagan got the credit for Iran’s release of US Embassy hostages, despite having very little to do with it beforehand.
What do these unsettling power games mean for Europe, or the NATO alliance? It’s unlikely Denmark would invoke Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty on Greenland, Tertrais says. It has never been invoked in disagreements between alliance members, not even in 1974 (when Turkey invaded northern Cyprus to prevent possible Cypriot unification with Greece). He does not envisage French troops on the ice sheet.
But he uses a striking metaphor to describe the shift in America’s role in European security since the 1970s. It is parental authority which keeps peace between children, Tertrais says: “but once it is the father who becomes the aggressor, we’re in a different dimension”.
How should Europe act? Tertrais cautions against the notion of “preventative” concessions to Trump. And while trying to avoid the dangers of disunity, European states may occasionally find it more effective to play power games with the US on a state-to-state basis, rather than through the EU.
On Ukraine, there is a fear of being sidelined which evokes the old French fear of a American-Russian security condominium over their heads. Certainly, Russia would prefer to deal directly with Washington.
There are other dangers further down the line. If Greenland were to become American under some future circumstances, what would prevent the Russians trying to do something similar in Svalbard (an Arctic archipelago with an unusual international legal status under Norwegian sovereignty) or China taking an interest in the French Pacific overseas territory of New Caledonia?
Full original interview with Bruno Tertrais in French by Florian Louis and Mathéo Malik, published in Le Grand Continent on 18 January 2025 and available here.
Le Grand Continent is a French geopolitics magazine, also available in Spanish and Italian.A French perspective on the performative power games of Donald Trump.
