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If NATO collapses because of bullets fired in Greenland, Russian President Vladimir Putin might well assume that he could bury the Atlantic Alliance once and for all by attacking NATO’s Baltic members. As the political scientist Ian Bremmer, who founded the analytical firm Eurasia Group, said on social media this week, “Nobody wants the United States to take control of Greenland (and, accordingly, destroy NATO) more than Putin.” The Russians don’t need to fully occupy Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; the point would be to start a war aimed at isolating them. (The three countries together are about the size of Wisconsin.) Putin has taken ghastly losses in Ukraine, but he has enough of an army left, backed by drones and other assets, to pummel the Baltic states and grab pieces of territory that may have no strategic value but whose capture would serve to remind the world that the United States—the new masters of Greenland—will not save Europe.

Other nations, however, are unlikely to sit by, especially neighboring NATO countries such as Poland and Finland. Should they come to the aid of their Baltic allies, at least some other European nations would likely support those efforts, and the result would be a broader European conflict involving some of the most militarily capable states in the world. For the first time in almost a century, the continent would be at war, this time one involving multiple nuclear powers. U.S. forces, like it or not, would find themselves in the middle of this bedlam, and with each day of violence the chances would grow of a cataclysmic mistake or miscalculation by any of the combatants.

Meanwhile, a world away from Europe, China might wonder if America has finally tied itself in enough foolish knots to put the conquest of Taiwan within reach, especially with Trump’s “Golden Fleet” nowhere in sight. And although no one should try to predict what North Korea’s bizarre dynasty would do, South Korea and Japan would have to begin planning for the risks that will come during, and after, America’s voluntary strategic immolation, most likely with crash programs to develop nuclear arms.

And all this could happen—for what, exactly? The vainglorious demands of one man who can’t read a map?

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