To the extent that White House aide Stephen Miller speaks for Donald Trump, he tells why the administration believes we should take possession of Greenland. As Miller puts it, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” Furthermore, “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.
These “iron laws” did hold true at the beginning of time, and clans and tribes and sovereignties formed as shelters for the weak and vehicles for the strong. Identities of blood, soil, lord and church reinforced those shelters and vehicles, to secure life and sustenance from an amoral Hobbesian world.
But in 1776, this nation conceived itself in a principle, reaching beyond narrow animal self-interest. We do need an institutional national edifice, and it surely must tend to people’s tangible needs. But it must do so for the sake of people’s rights, and must act in a manner consistent with that founding ethos. Free American individuals wrestle to reconcile “my” rights and selfish interests with the rights of all Americans, for the sake of our society of freedom. Just so, we as a nation must wrestle to answer the challenges imposed by a Hobbesian world – while keeping fidelity to our aspirational founding on rights. Can a People do both? America is the experiment that tests the question. The wrestling is our effort to pass the test.
It isn’t about niceties or a tidy “Liberal order,” and it isn’t per se indecision or weakness. Wrestling, balancing principle with power, is about preserving the nation’s existential basis. Our sovereign does not reside in anything other than we who hold the Truths – of rights and of government that exists to secure them. Its legitimate existence hinges on principle, even as defending its tangible existence demands power. The two do not blend automatically. Working to wrestle the exigencies of a Realpolitik world and our tenet of rights into a sustainable free life incurs risks and inconsistencies, and spawns frustrations. But to renounce the wrestling is to surrender the experiment that is America.
America will need comity in our creed to keep a unified civil society. Current political practice drives a growing alienation of two partisan identity groups from each other. As it happens, one side focuses on the hard dangers and needs, while the other would bind an ethos of liberty to its own iron rules.
In comity in our creed, Americans must still account for the hard facts of life. The Trump Administration thus claims a national security need behind its drive to annex Greenland. A sharper focus on Chinese and Russian interests in and around Greenland is appropriate, as noted by WSJ columnist Kim Strassel. But those interests and activities do not demonstrate a need to own the territory, and indeed pose strategic risks, as Strassel summarizes the analyses.
So the demand for Greenland, per Miller, boils down to: we have the power to take it, and might makes right. There is in fact a school of thought behind that sentiment. It is called Realpolitik, and at its elemental level it says people are creatures of self interest, fear is the truest motive, blood and soil are the real sources of order, and that rights and what we call liberal values are only pleasing illusions to keep hard facts bearable. And in Realpolitik, it doesn’t matter why an actor pursues any given interest. Everyone wants what they want, the strongest win, and the outcomes define simple reality.
This People, separating in 1776 from another to take its rightful place among the powers of the world, is a different kind of creature. It rejected the old “iron laws” and named itself as “We” who hold certain Truths, that personal rights transcend any human power, and that governments exist to secure those rights. This is our novel and still-exceptional national foundation. It happens also to confer us with power – we appeal to people over rulers, and that appeal keeps awakening new peoples to claim their rights, against the many versions of imposed rule that rulers have devised. True, as noted, we are still and always just an experiment, testing whether principle can supersede the “iron laws.” But that is who America is. To abandon the exercise of balance and wrestling, to surrender right to might – let alone assert might over right – is un-American.
Common Conviction 