Cosmopolitics by Elise Labott

As a former Assistant Secretary of State and senior military officer who served in Iraq and at CENTCOM, he has watched campaigns that looked decisive on paper but far less so in practice — wars where early battlefield success masked a much harder question: what comes next?

That’s why it was worth talking to him this week, at a moment when the conversation around the war with Iran is increasingly dominated by noise, rhetoric, and a striking lack of clarity about where this is actually going.

By any conventional military measure, the United States has done what it set out to do in the opening phase of the war. Air and naval dominance are firmly established. Hundreds of strike missions have been carried out. Iranian military infrastructure has been significantly degraded. Not a single U.S. aircraft has been lost.

On paper, it looks like a clean success. In reality, it looks like the beginning of a much more complicated problem. Because for all that operational progress, the central question remains unanswered: where is this headed?

Kimmitt’s answer is telling. So far, he says, the war has been defined by Israel’s attempt at leadership decapitation and a massive U.S. bombing campaign. What we are entering now is something far less defined — a transition point where military pressure continues, but strategic clarity does not.

That uncertainty isn’t a sideshow. It’s the story.

The administration has been careful — almost to the point of semantic gymnastics — in how it describes the deployment of ground forces. They provide “options.”

At a certain point, though, you wonder if “options” are flexibility or a placeholder for a decision that hasn’t been made.

To Kimmitt, what makes this conflict particularly difficult is that the United States and Iran are not fighting the same kind of war. America is fighting a war. Iran is playing for time.

The U.S. approach is familiar: degrade capabilities, destroy infrastructure, reduce the adversary’s ability to fight until it concedes. Kimmitt describes it as a war of “annihilation” — in its reliance on overwhelming force. Iran, by contrast, is fighting something closer to a war of endurance, or what he calls a war of “exhaustion.

“They don’t have to win,” Kimmitt said. “They win by not losing. By living another day.”

That distinction matters more than any individual strike. It explains why the destruction of targets does not necessarily translate into strategic progress — and why the idea of a short, decisive war may be more aspirational than real.

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There is a familiar trap in wars like this: the belief that if you can measure it, you’re winning.

In Vietnam, it was body counts. Today, it may be the number of strikes, missiles intercepted, or facilities destroyed. But Kimmitt warns these metrics are a “fallacy.” Tactical success, he notes, can create the illusion of progress without changing the underlying dynamics.

None of this is to discount the military campaign itself. By Kimmitt’s assessment, it has been extraordinarily effective — one of the most precise bombing efforts he has seen. But breaking things, as it turns out, is not the same as achieving something.

That disconnect becomes most visible when you look at what “success” is supposed to mean. For Kimmitt, the answer is straightforward and consistent with decades of U.S. policy: no nuclear capability, no ballistic missiles, and no network of regional proxies.

“All this other stuff is noise,” he said.

Overlaying all of this is a messaging environment that is, at best, confusing.

Kimmitt is careful here. There is a case for unpredictability in war — for keeping the adversary off balance. Confusing the enemy can be useful. But there is also a second audience: the American public and U.S. allies.

“It’s okay to confuse the enemy,” he said. “It’s not okay to confuse your own country.”

Right now, both may be happening at the same time.

For now, the United States is winning the part of the war it knows how to fight. Iran is playing the part it knows how to endure. How this is supposed to end is a question neither side seems in a hurry to answer.

Thank you Emily Kopp, VickijH78, Don Buckter, Herman Jacobs, Tee Ree, and many others for tuning into my live video with Mark Kimmitt! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Is the war eliminating the dead wood in the Iranian regime? If the regime survives — and survival, in some form, remains likely — it may not be the same regime that went in. A different generation could emerge from the wreckage, and there’s no guarantee it will be a more moderate one. The scenario that should keep policymakers up at night is an Iran run by IRGC hardliners who are no longer constrained by the clerical establishment and have been jockeying for power for years. Be careful what you wish for.

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Then there’s the fog of spin. There’s an enormous amount of disinformation out there right now, and some of it is coming from inside the administration itself. Is Trump quietly looking for an off-ramp? Is there real daylight between him and Netanyahu? Here’s a reality check: the 15-point framework Trump presented to Iran amounted to unconditional surrender. There is no diplomatic ladder being quietly constructed. What you see is what you get.

The honest answer — the part no one in the foreign policy establishment wants to say out loud — is that we don’t really know where this ends. We are spitballing. The administration has been searching for an Iranian Delcý Rodriguez: a pragmatic insider willing to deal, to pivot, to be the face of a transition. That person doesn’t appear to exist in Tehran in any position to act on it. So the goal may be something more modest for now — setting the conditions for an organic transition, fracturing the regime’s internal coalitions, creating space for something different to emerge from within Iranian society. Achievable? Possibly. On what timeline? Nobody knows.

As Dany put it — channeling Churchill in that way she has — “We are at the end of the beginning. We are not, at the beginning of the end.”

Check out our conversation below with…..🎶 shownotes.

We’ll be back next week, and yes — we are taking reservations for Dictator’s Café. Recipes welcome. See you there.

* The UAE stands up to Iran – Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba (Wall Street Journal)

* No, Trump is not losing his nerve on Iran – Marc Thiessen (Washington Post)

* #WTH: The Iran War: All the details

* #WTH: Trump’s Iran endgame: podcast with retired General Jack Keane

* Cosmopolitics: Iran is fighting a war - and itself: podcast with Arash Azizi

and…as promised..

* Iran war – the movie trailer

Thank you David Galinsky, Michael Martineau, Hava Salita, and many others for tuning into my live video with Danielle Pletka! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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If you haven’t caught my Substack Live with Arash Azizi, here is the recording. I really enjoyed this conversation and I think you will too.

In Washington and much of the media, the war is framed through the lens of US decision-making: what President Trump wants, what he might accept, what comes next. That focus obscures something more fundamental — Iran is not simply reacting. It is making its own calculations, shaped as much by internal politics as by external pressure.

Right now, Iran is fighting a war while simultaneously trying to figure out what it is becoming. And that tension is shaping everything. Iran is not just resisting — it is regrouping. That distinction helps explain both the trajectory of the war and why it may not end as quickly or cleanly as some expect.

A system without a center

The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not produce a clear succession. It produced diffusion.

Power is now spread across a range of actors — from the Revolutionary Guards to political figures like parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf — navigating a system that is more decentralized and uncertain than it has been in decades. Even if someone wanted to strike a deal with the United States - and it is far from clear anyone does - it is not certain they could bring the system with them.

Ending the war now, Arash argues, would mean turning inward at a moment of profound instability. The population is exhausted. The leadership is in transition. The economy is strained. A ceasefire would force all of those pressures to converge at once. Continuing the war, by contrast, buys time. It allows the regime to project resilience and to frame survival as success, while postponing harder internal questions about leadership and legitimacy.

This war, he notes, is not fundamentally about nuclear capability or territory. It is about the survival of the Islamic Republic as a system. In that context, enduring the conflict can be cast as victory.

The country behind the headlines

What often gets lost is how this looks from inside Iran.

Arash describes a population grappling with a stark contradiction: many fear the war, but they also fear what comes after it. There is a growing concern that a regime that survives this level of external pressure could emerge more entrenched and more willing to turn inward.

At the same time, early hopes that outside pressure might produce change have faded. The war has not created a clear path to transformation, and the idea that external actors will drive political change inside Iran now feels increasingly unrealistic. Iranians currently feel a mix of fear, resignation, and cautious hope for something gradual rather than sudden.

The narratives most commonly predicted assume either imminent regime collapse or decisive transformation. Neither is likely. The opposition remains fragmented, without the leadership or organization needed to translate dissatisfaction into a political alternative. The security apparatus remains intact. There is no obvious force waiting to step in.

Iran in transition

For all the uncertainty, Arash sees this moment as part of a larger shift.

Iran, he argues, is in a transitional phase — a period between what was and what comes next. The system shaped under Khamenei is already changing, even if its successor is not yet clear.

That does not mean Iran is on the verge of democracy. Far from it. Arash believes the more likely outcome, at least in the near term, is a system that remains authoritarian but becomes less ideologically rigid and more pragmatic — particularly in how it engages the region. In time, that could open the door to a more normalized role for Iran, even potentially a different relationship with the United States.

What stands out in Arash’s analysis is not just the structural argument, but the human one. His view of Iran is grounded in the lives of Iranians navigating this moment with fear, fatigue, and determination.

He speaks not only about democracy, but about dignity — about the possibility of a more stable, more livable future. He wants Iran to be free, democratic and prosperous.

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Arash does not expect that future to come quickly. But he believes this moment — as violent and uncertain as it is — may be part of a longer process moving the country in that direction.

For now, the war continues. But it is unfolding inside a system already in transition, shaped as much by internal change as by external pressure. And that is the part of the story that is too often overlooked: Iran is not just the target of this war. It is an actor in it — and a country in the midst of becoming something new.

Danielle Pletka and I hope to see you TODAY at 5:30 for Hot Takes Happy Hour.

Thank you David Galinsky, Linda Jean, Endicott Mongoloid, Assa Brown, Brent Maier, and many others for tuning into my live video with Arash Azizi! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman is one of the few Americans ever to have met Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - a surreal encounter he experienced as a top UN diplomat accompanying Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Tehran in 2012. As he told us in our conversation, he was struck by how little Khamenei actually understood about the United States. America’s picture of Iran may have its gaps, but Khamenei, Feltman said, described a caricature of the country - a portrait that bore little resemblance to the Great Satan his regime had spent half a century railing against. He wrote about the experience at length for Brookings, where he is currently a visiting fellow, and it’s well worth a read.

What also struck him was Khamenei’s utter ack of charisma. That stood in sharp contrast to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime Hezbollah leader whose commanding personality had frustrated Feltman during his years as US Ambassador to Lebanon. Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut in September 2024 - ending a 32-year reign at the helm of one of the region’s most powerful armed movements.

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Few people understand the Middle East’s fault lines - and America’s complicated role within them - quite like Jeff, who has spent decades navigating the region’s most volatile moments from the inside. In our conversation, he shared his unvarnished read on the current war, Iran’s strategic calculus, and what kind of Middle East may emerge on the other side.

Jeff - who oversaw the largest non-combatant evacuation in US history during the 2006 Lebanon war - had little patience for the Trump administration’s failure to evacuate Americans before this war began, calling it a flat-out “dereliction” of duty.

If you missed the live interview, the recording is below. It runs a bit longer than usual, because Jeff had that much to say, and frankly, we could have kept going.

Danielle Pletka and I are back in business later today with Hot Takes Happy Hour. Much to discuss. Hope to see you at 5:30p ET. Same bat channel, same old bats. 🦇🦇

Thank you Marcie Alexander, Edward F Dijeau, Janice Driver, Renée, Rick, and many others for tuning into my live video with Jeffrey Feltman! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Wars are fought with bombs and missiles. But they are also fought with narratives - the explanations leaders give their citizens about why a conflict is necessary, what success looks like, and what sacrifices may be required.

That was the focus of my conversation Emily Horne, founder of Allegro Public Affairs and author of the Substack Spin Class. Horne spent more than two decades in national security communications, including two tours on the National Security Council under Presidents Obama and Biden. She helped lead the Biden administration’s “declassify and share” information strategy ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - a communications effort designed to prepare the public and allies for what was coming.

Which is why the rollout of President Trump’s war with Iran has struck her as so unusual.

“I’ll be generous and say the messaging has been inconsistent and messy,” Horne said. “But honestly, that’s the most charitable description I can offer.”

Going to war is usually accompanied by a deliberate effort to explain the stakes. Even when administrations disagree about whether to seek formal congressional authorization, they typically attempt to level with the American people about the threat, the objective, and what success would look like.

None of that clarity has emerged here. In a line I plan to borrow forever, Emily wrote in the lead up to the war that the administration shouldn’t be able to “yada-yada its way past” the prospect of attacking Iran.

Instead, the administration has offered a series of shifting explanations - regime change, eliminating Iran’s nuclear capability, countering proxy militias, supporting Israel, backing protesters. Each may be part of the picture. But delivered piecemeal by different officials emphasizing different priorities, the result is confusion.

“The American people don’t know what this war is actually about,” Horne said.

She describes the problem in Spin Class using what she calls the “Underpants Gnomes theory of foreign policy.” The reference - borrowed from South Park - describes plans that leap from step one to step three while skipping the difficult middle.

In this case, the logic looks something like: strike Iran, destabilize the regime… and then somehow arrive at a peaceful outcome. The missing piece is everything in between.

Part of the problem, Horne argues, is the absence of the policymaking process that normally precedes a war. In previous administrations, proposals are stress-tested through an interagency process designed to anticipate second- and third-order effects before a president acts.

“When you work at the National Security Council or the State Department, your job is to poke holes in ideas,” she said. “You stress-test them so that by the time a decision is made, you’ve thought through as many ways as possible that it could go wrong.”

That process appears largely absent today.

The communications environment has also changed dramatically. Most Americans no longer receive their news from traditional briefings or presidential speeches. They get it from social media and algorithm-driven platforms. A modern messaging strategy must meet audiences where they are.

But that only works if there is a coherent policy to communicate.

“A good comms strategy requires a good policy,” Horne said. “And right now we don’t have a clearly defined one.”

At the same time, Trump has been conducting a steady stream of brief phone interviews with reporters, often offering new claims about the war or about Iran’s future leadership. The interviews may produce five minutes of exclusive headlines. But they also underscore the absence of something more important: a direct, sustained conversation with the American people about the road ahead.

And some of those comments risk undermining the administration’s own stated goals.

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If the objective is to give Iranians the chance to determine their future, publicly speculating about who should replace the country’s supreme leader is counterproductive.

If Trump wanted to give the Iranian people the best possible chance at something new, he would say nothing about who leads Iran next. Every time he opens his mouth about succession, he makes the reformers’ job harder and the hardliners’ job easier.”

In other words, the problem may not just be that the administration is misreading Iran. It may be that the messaging itself is actively working against the outcome it claims to want.

Thank you Cash Flow Collective, I. Avila, Pamela Jiranek, Hava Salita, Jessica Koester, and many others for tuning into my live video with Emily Horne! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Folks: forgive me - I sent out the recording of the discussion with Dany - but meant to send this out. Dany will send her version of the recordings with show notes later, which I will forward in the chat. Sorry for the spam.

Look forward to seeing you all tomorrow for some more important Iran discussions.

If you missed my conversation with veteran Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, you can watch the recording here. As always, Barbara’s analysis of the conflict with Iran — and its potential consequences — is sharp and clear-eyed.

Tomorrow Congress will vote on a war powers resolution, and much of the debate has focused on whether such authorization is even necessary. I’m less concerned about that question — administrations of both parties have often declined to seek it — than I am about the administration’s shifting rationale for war, and even more so about the endgame.

A lot of this comes down to mixed messaging from the administration — which will be the focus of my next conversation, with Emily Horne, author of the whip-smart Substack Spin Class on messaging, communications strategy, and the politics that shape them. I highly recommend subscribing.

In a recent column, Emily unpacks the messaging around the decision to go to war with Iran through what she calls the Underpants Gnomes Theory of Foreign Policy (yes, it’s a South Park reference). In a line I plan to borrow forever, she writes that the administration shouldn’t be able to “yada-yada its way past” the prospect of attacking Iran.

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I hope you’ll join us tomorrow at 1pm ET / 10am PT.

Danny will be sending out today’s special Hot Takes edition on Iran, and we’ll be back tomorrow at our regular time — 5:30pm ET / 2:30pm PT.

Thank you Emily Horne, David Galinsky, Lana, Courtney Busby, Maria I. Puerta Riera, and many others for tuning into my live video with Danielle Pletka! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Thank you Kimberly Briedis, The Nymph Channel, Kat Vav, Melissa Ebel, Henry Einav, and many others for tuning into my live video with Barbara Starr! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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If you didn’t catch my live conversation with Larry Diamond of Stanford University, here’s the recording. I encourage you to listen in full.

Larry has spent his career studying how democracies die. He’s watched authoritarianism creep into Venezuela, Turkey, Hungary, and India. Now he’s applying that same analytical lens to the United States . Nobody wants to think of America in that light. But Larry tells me he is seeing patterns that should concern all of us, regardless of party.

In our conversation, Larry walks through what he calls “the autocrats’ 12-step program” - the playbook used by leaders around the world to consolidate power: weaponizing state institutions, purging watchdog agencies, intimidating independent media, and manipulating electoral rules. He explains where we are on that trajectory and what he’s most worried about right now.

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This isn’t a conversation about despair. Larry talks about how authoritarianism has been reversed in Poland, Brazil, and Senegal. He explains what actually works - and what role each of us can play.

As he says: “This is not a one-party problem.” This is about defending institutions that belong to all Americans. And this is not a time to sit around being outraged. It’s time to reclaim our civic agency, regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum.

On that note, we hope to see you Thursday for Hot Takes Happy Hour. Danielle Pletka don’t always agree on the issues, but we debate them respectfully an effort to understand the complex challenges facing the country beyond the partisan noise. That’s the work!

Thank you Maria I. Puerta Riera, Karen C-Collector of Books 📖, CRope, Judy, renée, and many others for tuning into my live video with Larry Diamond! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Yesterday’s conversation with Steven A. Cook drew the biggest turnout we’ve had yet! So many familiar faces and so many new ones. Smart questions, sharp pushback. The kind of crowd that reminds me why we started Cosmopolitics in the first place - to slow the news cycle down just enough to actually think.

If you haven’t already, subscribe and join us. This community only works because you show up.

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Steven and I tried to map the region the way it actually is - not the way press conferences describe it. And here’s where I think we landed:

Everything right now looks like diplomacy. Everything right now also looks like war prep. Both things are true at the same time, which is… not exactly calming.

But first: Iran

After his three-hour meeting with Netanyahu this week, President Trump posted:

Preference. Not commitment. Not strategy. Preference.

Meanwhile - and this is the part people in the region notice - the United States is massing serious hardware in the Gulf. Carrier groups, destroyers, air defenses. The kind of posture that says: we’re talking, but don’t mistake that for hesitation.

It’s classic leverage politics: talk softly, park an armada offshore.

The problem is that leverage has a shelf life. You can’t keep tens of thousands of troops and billions of dollars’ worth of assets floating there indefinitely. At some point you either use it or you don’t, and everyone knows it.

Still, it’s unclear what Trump’s bottom line is. That uncertainty is supposed to scare Iran, but it also scares allies - and occasionally, U.S. officials.

Because here’s the quieter truth beneath the rhetoric: a big war with Iran would be hard, much harder than the slogans suggest.

Tehran may be politically fragile - protests, sanctions, a battered economy - but militarily it still has teeth. Missiles, drones, proxies. Plenty of ways to make life miserable for U.S. bases and Gulf energy infrastructure.

So Washington is threading a needle: threatening war while quietly rediscovering how complicated war actually is. And in the meantime, negotiations themselves may be giving the regime breathing room - which is exactly what makes Israel nervous.

Netanyahu’s position hasn’t changed: a narrow nuclear deal isn’t enough. He wants missiles and proxies on the table too. Tehran has already said no. So the two leaders are aligned on pressure, but not necessarily on what “success” looks like. And when the objectives aren’t clear, leverage starts to look a lot like drift.

Meanwhile: the West Bank

While everyone watches Iran, something quieter - and potentially more combustible - is happening closer to home for Israel.

The West Bank story isn’t dramatic. No aircraft carriers, no summits. Just paperwork, permits, jurisdiction tweaks, expanded enforcement. Incremental steps that, taken together, look a lot like annexation without anyone wanting to use the word annexation. Call it bureaucratic geopolitics.

At the same time, the administration is talking up diplomacy - Gaza stabilization, regional normalization, Trump’s nebulous “Board of Peace.” It’s a very Washington phrase that sounds great on a panel but is less clear on the ground.

Publicly, Netanyahu is playing along. Privately, many in his coalition still believe force, not frameworks, is what actually changes facts.

So again: diplomacy on top, pressure underneath. Same pattern as Iran. Talks in the daylight, tanks idling in the background.

The throughline: Everyone is negotiating. No one fully trusts negotiations.

Trump prefers deals but likes threats even more. Iran wants sanctions relief without real concessions. Israel wants guarantees that probably aren’t negotiable. The Gulf wants everybody to please calm down because they live inside the blast radius.

It’s less a strategy than a standoff, and it produces this strange, unstable middle ground where talks continue right up until the moment they don’t.

Which is why moments like yesterday matter. The headlines make everything sound binary - deal or war, diplomacy or strikes. The reality is murkier, more incremental, more human. It’s officials hedging, allies whispering, militaries planning for things leaders hope never happen. It’s uncertainty dressed up as strategy.

Thank you

One reason I’m so grateful for this community is that we get to have these conversations without pretending there are easy answers. We can say: this is complicated, this is risky, nobody really knows, and still keep reporting, asking, pressing.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do. Cosmopolitics runs on readers who want depth, along with some hot takes. Speaking of which, Danielle Pletka and I will be back next week with Hot Takes Happy Hour.

Thank you for showing up yesterday. For reading. For caring about foreign policy when it’s easier not to. We’ll keep convening smart people, keep asking uncomfortable questions, and keep trying to figure out – together - whether all this “diplomacy” is headed somewhere real… or just buying time before the next crisis.

More soon …

Thank you David Galinsky, Kimberly Briedis, Emma Schreiber, ahyeahatx, and many others for tuning into my live video with Steven A. Cook! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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If you missed my conversation with former Undersecretary Tom Shannon, here’s the recording. It’s essential viewing for anyone trying to make sense of President Trump’s strategy for the Western Hemisphere. Tom’s insights come from decades serving at the highest levels of government on regional issues in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Tom sees Trump’s second-term foreign policy as an explicit shift from values-based alliance management to transactional “ownership” politics driven by threats and pressure. He warns the blowback could be strategic isolation. Trump’s approach is a coherent “power-and-assets” strategy - one that trades away legitimacy, alliances, and long-term U.S. influence for short-term gains. Everything Trump is doing in the region and beyond - Venezuela, Colombia, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, NATO - shows that coercion may yield short-term concessions but ultimately weakens America’s global position.

Tom summed up his core thesis in one line I’ll be borrowing repeatedly:

Power without principle is a weak vessel.

Based on Trump’s remarks today during his two-hour press conference (if we can call it that), I predict we’ll see a deal with NATO on Greenland coming out of Davos this week - something short of outright American “ownership,” but one that allows Trump to claim victory. Trump will frame it as having focused NATO and Europe on the Arctic’s importance and securing agreement to move faster on boosting Greenland’s defenses against Russia and China.

One could argue that’s what he was trying to do all along, just very badly. But given the way markets are turning, and the pushback from Europe and Republicans in Congress, I think Trump will be looking to pivot away from Greenland soon.

I’ll write more later today after Trump’s speech at Davos.

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If you missed my conversation with former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder here’s the recording. Ivo walks through the strategic importance of the Arctic, how Greenland fits in and why cooperation with NATO strengthen’s US security in the region. My take is below.

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The United States doesn’t need to own Greenland to secure it. Under a 1951 defense agreement, the U.S. enjoys sweeping military access - the ability to “construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases, “house personnel,” and “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and waterborne craft.” We currently operate Pituffik Space Base, the northernmost deepwater port in the world, with a 10,000-foot runway and missile defense systems tracking threats across the North Pole.

A 2004 amendment made clear that expanding operations requires only consultation with Denmark and Greenland. In practice, the U.S. has a free hand.

More broadly, the Arctic is NATO territory defended by seven members with actual expertise: Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the United States. These aren’t theoretical allies - they’re countries that coordinate patrols, share intelligence, and maintain installations throughout the region. Norway monitors Russian naval activity in the High North. Denmark’s special forces conduct long-range patrols across Greenland using those dog sleds Trump mocked. Iceland’s location makes it essential for tracking submarines. Finland shares an 830-mile border with Russia and brings decades of experience managing that relationship.

Denmark just pledged $13.7 billion to upgrade Arctic security infrastructure and has repeatedly said it will accommodate any reasonable American security request. Finland and Sweden joined NATO specifically because they understand the Russian threat.

Trump claims “Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place” to justify the security threat. That contradicts both U.S. and Danish intelligence assessments. What’s actually happening is increased Russian and Chinese activity throughout the Arctic region - which NATO members are monitoring and responding to collectively.

None of this requires American ownership. It requires American partnership – which would require acknowledging that allies have value.

The new US world view

Stephen Miller made the administration’s worldview explicit on CNN: “We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

That’s the rejection of everything NATO was built to accomplish. The alliance was designed on the principle that collective security is stronger than individual might - that democracies working together could deter aggression better than great powers carving up the globe in spheres of influence.

The administration argues American security in the Arctic requires owning Greenland because NATO commitments aren’t sufficient. In their view, real security exists only for territories that are literally American.

Every NATO member is watching and adjusting their assumptions accordingly. If the United States doesn’t trust Article 5 to protect Greenland - NATO territory - why should Poland trust Article 5 to protect them? Why should the Baltic states believe American security guarantees?

What we lose

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was stark about the stakes: “If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops. That is, including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War.”

The alliance doesn’t survive the United States attacking a member. Even the threat fundamentally undermines trust. We just watched European leaders stand in Paris with Trump’s envoys announcing security guarantees for Ukraine - and hours later, the White House reiterated that military force is “always an option” for taking Greenland.

If the Trump administration genuinely cares about Arctic security - if this is really about deterring Russia and China rather than exploiting Greenland’s rare earth minerals - the solution is collective defense through the alliance that exists.

Increase U.S. military presence at Pituffik under the existing agreement. Expand joint exercises with Nordic allies. Invest in Arctic surveillance systems. Share intelligence more effectively. Support Denmark’s $13.7 billion infrastructure upgrade. Work with Finland and Sweden on the Russian threat they understand intimately.

All of this is not only possible but welcomed by allies who’ve been asking the United States to take Arctic security more seriously for years.

The opposite, blowing up up the alliance to seize territory from a country that’s been accommodating American security needs for 75 years is not a strategy. That’s not even particularly creative imperialism. It’s a self-inflicted wound born from the failure to recognize that cooperation is real power.

If the United States can’t figure out how

to work with willing allies on shared threats, the problem isn’t Greenland’s sovereignty. The problem is Washington’s rejection of the idea that alliances matter at all.

Thank you Margaret Groves, Levee, Susan J, Courtneye, HH, and many others for tuning into my live video with Ivo Daalder! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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