Yesterday we posted about Matt Pottinger and Roy Eakin’s Why 2026 Could Prove as Important as 1989, referring mainly to the similarities between the mass protests of the Russians and East Europeans that overthrew communism and the Iranians’ uprising against jihadist Islam.
Pottinger and Eakin think a collapse of the government in Iran and Trump’s overthrow of Venezuela’s Machado might start other dominoes falling, to the benefit of the United States. They briefly, though, raise another possibility:
It is possible to hear echoes of the late Cold War, and imagine regime change in Tehran, Caracas and Havana—which would strike a heavy blow to the ambitions of Beijing and Moscow. It is also possible Donald Trump will detonate NATO unity by coercively annexing Greenland, and that Beijing will wage war to subjugate Taiwan and seize its semiconductor plants, toppling a century of American-led Western technological dominance.
That got me thinking. Just as communism, the political and economic system that governed much of the world, suddenly collapsed, could that happen to democracy and free market capitalism? If the Soviet Union could fall apart, turning into a different nation, could that happen to the United States?
Consider: I’ve read that one reason the Soviet Union and its empire dissolved is that its inhabitants and even its leaders stopped believing in communist ideology. Today, Americans are increasingly disunited and polarized. That’s a major weakness in itself. And yet both extremes are being critical of “liberal democracy,” the ideology embodied in our Constitution.
Many on the hard left believe our Constitution is just an instrument to allow wealthy white men to oppress everyone else. The Bill of Rights enables “hate speech,” religious exemptions, gun ownership, and individualism over the collective good. Many on the hard right oppose the Constitution in the name of being “post-liberal,” seeing its values of freedom and individual rights as opening the door to feminism, gay marriage, the sexual revolution, and all our woes. Both the left and the right are talking down free market economics. And hardly anyone knows the ideas, the ideals, or the artistic expressions of what used to be called “Western Civilization.” Religion is no longer a cohesive force. So is there anything holding us together?
More recently, to the rest of the globe, the West has been defined in terms of its advanced technology. But the apex of that technology, artificial intelligence, is a development that even most Americans fear.
Pottinger and Eakin give President Trump credit for being the catalyst for most of the positive changes they hope for, but they are worried about his increasingly bellicose posture over Greenland. Though our companies are free to develop Greenland’s mineral wealth and although we already have treaty rights that let us build whatever military bases we want to on Greenland in order to counter Russia and China, President Trump wants “ownership” and is threatening to take it by military conquest. This past weekend he launched what amounts to economic warfare to coerce Denmark and other NATO countries to let us have Greenland. CBS reports:
President Trump said Saturday that he would impose 10% tariffs on countries that have sent military forces into Greenland amid his push to annex the Arctic island.
Mr. Trump said in a Truth Social post that the tariffs will be levied against Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland and take effect on Feb. 1, 2026. All eight countries are members of NATO.
The tariffs will be increased to 25% on June 1, Mr. Trump wrote, and remain in place “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
This is an act of aggression. It is also a betrayal of America’s traditional commitment to democratic self-government. Polls show that 85% of the citizens of Greenland don’t want America to take them over. Economic coercion of NATO allies already breaks the accord we used to have with them. Military action against Greenland would, by treaty, provoke war with the other nations of NATO. Presumably, NATO would dissolve instead, but in either event “the West” would no longer exist as a block of nations. The U.S. would instead form a de facto axis with Russia and China, which have stronger territorial claims on Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, than America does on Greenland.
Though the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the collapse of communism took a few more years to be complete, with the Soviet Union dissolving in 1991, with a new constitution and a new set of laws to form the Russian Federation. Perhaps by 2028, America will adopt a new post-liberal constitution, incorporating Greenland and perhaps other conquests like Canada into a new nation, featuring a state socialism modeled after that of China, allowing the private ownership of businesses (satisfying the right) as directed by the state (satisfying the left) and a government strong enough to keep order (satisfying the right) and to supply all our needs (satisfying the left).
I’ve got to wake up from this nightmare! What can prevent it from happening in real life? Americanism. Classical education. Christianity. Prayer. What else? Help me out here.
Photo: Fall of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, 1989, by Lear 21 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3692038
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