The New Trump World Order
Sources
Anna, Cara, and Josh Boak. “$1 Billion Gets a Permanent Seat on Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza, as India and Others Invited.” AP News, January 18, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-palestinians-board-peace-hamas-5f902ea2b1158f0a806c247d139ff62f.
Brancolini, Janna. “Trump’s Insane New Threat Leaves No Doubt: It’s Time for the 25th Amendment.” The Daily Beast, January 19, 2026. https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-appalling-threat-leaves-no-doubt-its-time-for-the-25th-amendment/.
Chen, James. “Understanding Reserve Currency: The U.S. Dollar’s Global Impact.” Investopedia, August 23, 2025. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reservecurrency.asp.
Chernova, Ivana Kottasová, Anna. “Putin Invited to Join Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ for Gaza, Kremlin Says.” CNN, January 19, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/19/europe/putin-board-of-peace-gaza-trump-intl.
Edwards, Jim. “Stocks Sell off Globally as Traders Digest Trump Message Saying He Wants Greenland Because ‘Your Country Decided Not to Give Me the Nobel.’” Fortune, January 19, 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/01/19/stocks-sell-off-trump-text-message-greenland-nobel-peace-prize/.
Ma, Jason. “Dollar Sinks as Trump’s New Tariffs Raise Fears about U.S. Debt and Reserve Currency Status. ‘When It’s Lost, Economic Collapse Will Follow.’” Fortune, January 18, 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/01/18/dollar-euro-reserve-currecy-us-debt-trump-tariffs-nato-greenland/.
Ma, Jason. “Europe Can Wield This $8 Trillion ‘sell America’ Weapon as Trump Reignites a Trade War over His Greenland Conquest Ambitions.” Fortune, January 18, 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/01/18/europe-retaliation-8-trillion-sell-america-us-debt-bonds-stocks-trade-war-greenland-trump/.
Ma, Jason. “The EU Could Fire a Never-before-Used ‘trade Bazooka’ to Retaliate against Trump Tariffs Aimed at NATO Allies Sending Troops to Greenland.” Fortune, January 18, 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/01/18/eu-trade-bazooka-anto-coercion-instrument-trump-nato-tariffs-greenland/.
NATO History | NATO. “A Short History of NATO.” Accessed January 19, 2026. https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/nato-history/a-short-history-of-nato.
Peter Schiff [@PeterSchiff]. “Trump has it backwards. The U.S. doesn’t subsidize the world; the world subsidizes the U.S. The dollar’s reserve-currency status allows us to live beyond our means. Soaring debt, tariffs, and military threats jeopardize that status. When it’s lost, economic collapse will follow.” Tweet. Twitter, January 17, 2026. https://x.com/PeterSchiff/status/2012659883070357793.
Reynolds. “Trump’s Bizarre Letter to Norway’s Prime Minister in Full.” The Independent, January 19, 2026. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/trump-letter-greenland-nobel-peace-b2903022.html.
Transcript
Hi it’s Monday, January 19th, 2026, you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. Hey so what the fuck is going on with Greenland, amiright? Today I decided to peek out from the absolute pressure cooker that is living in Minneapolis right now, hi, it sucks, to make sure we’re also paying attention to the other deeply troubling shit the regime has been up to. My central questions are what is NATO, what is Greenland, why does Trump want it, and what’s the potential fallout. Because things aren’t looking good, the dollar might be falling, we might enter armed conflict with Europe, and it might all be because Trumpy wumpy didn’t get his little Nobel Peace Prize?? Again, this is the stupidest timeline. And I’m here to cover it all just for you.
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So here’s what’s been going on. Months and months ago, Trump jokingly said he wanted to make Greenland another US state, haha, we all had a laugh. Turns out he was really serious, or has kept it in his back pocket as an option for creating leverage when he needed it. And Trump knows how to use leverage, it’s one of the only things he does know how to do. How to find leverage and how to use it at opportune moments to get people to do what he wants. Doesn’t matter if they’re friends or foes, leverage is the name of the game. In recent weeks he has amped up those threats against Greenland, saying that the US would either buy the island from its owner Denmark or take it by force if Denmark refuses to comply. And Trump just upped the ante, posting on Truth Social that there would be a new 10% tariff on some of our key allies in NATO starting February 1st, which would go up to 25% in June unless a deal for the US to obtain Greenland is reached.
For a while, Trump’s stated reason for wanting Greenland was because he’s worried about China and Russia closing in on the island and taking it for themselves, which would pose a threat to the United States because of how close Greenland is to us. Let’s just look at a map because to be quite honest with you I never have really historically paid much attention to Greenland so I had to remind myself recently where exactly it is. I knew its general location but if you look it is quite close to the US. Well, really, to Canada, but you know, for a Trump follower with zero interest in critical thinking or facts, just a glance at a map might convince them that oh yeah China and Russia can’t get a piece of that, that would be really close, thank god we’re intervening.
There’s also the oil–Greenland is home to a lot of oil. Reportedly, it would take $1 trillion dollars in investments and years and years for any of that oil to result in profits to the US or whomstever extracts it, but sure yeah it’s all about the oil. Then over the weekend Trump sent a letter to the prime minister of Norway indicating that all of that was a farce. I mean we knew it was a farce but he made it really clear. His letter said, in its entirety, quote “Dear Jonas, Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.
“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.
“I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT.”
Ok so for those of you following along at home, Trump wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Norway complaining that the Nobel Prize Committee, which is entirely independent from and unrelated to the government of Norway, didn’t give him a peace prize related to the 8 wars he made up in his head, and because of that he is going to take Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark. To say we’ve lost the fucking plot is an understatement.
The problem with all of this is a little thing called NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949 in the wake of World War II and 12 countries originally signed onto it, including Canada, Denmark, France, Norway, the UK, and the US, among others. It now has a total of 32 member states. It cannot be overstated how devastated much of Europe was in the aftermath of World War II. over 36 MILLION Europeans died in the conflict, major urban areas were bombed into oblivion, infant mortality and homelessness was rampant, and an entire generation was DEEPLY traumatized. Meanwhile, though the US participated in the conflict and many US soldiers died, other than Pearl Harbor our borders were unscathed. Our industries were booming thanks to the influx of business that the war brought. America emerged from the war the dominant world power. And the lingering fear of the Soviet Union and communist aggression that could bring further conflict and devastation led to an agreement that a transatlantic security pact would be the best option for deterring Soviet aggression and infiltration into Europe. In the treaty that formed NATO, Article 5 states that quote “an armed attack against one or more of them… shall be considered an attack against them all.” It binds each ally to take quote “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force” in the face of an outside attack. Over the years the agreement would expand to include scientific cooperation and other objectives, but the overall theme was to form an alliance aimed at maintaining security and avoiding another global conflict in the post World War II world order of Democracy vs Communism. Obviously that’s an oversimplification, but that’s the general idea.
Around the same time of the formation of NATO, at the end of World War II, the whole US prosperity thing led to another important change that matters for our discussion today. In 1944, the Bretton Woods agreement named the US dollar the official reserve currency for the 44 nations that signed on. Ever since, the US dollar has been THE reserve currency of the world. According to investopedia, because I’m no expert, quote “A reserve currency is held by central banks to facilitate international transactions and minimize exchange rate risk. … Holding a reserve currency reduces exchange rate risk because a country doesn't need to swap its currency for the reserve currency. Since 1944, the U.S. dollar has been the primary reserve currency used by other countries. Foreign nations watch U.S. monetary policy closely to make sure their reserves aren't hurt by inflation or rising prices.”
Initially the stability of the US dollar was because it was all backed by gold, but then we kept printing more and more cash in part to help finance the Vietnam war, which led to an eventual crisis during the Nixon administration which led to a decoupling of the US dollar from gold, so now the value of the US dollar is based on “floating exchange rates” and backed by what investopedia calls “the safest of all paper assets, US Treasuries.” Because so many countries already had so many US dollars, and the dollar was still backed by US treasuries and a country that was economically incredibly prosperous and stable, the US dollar remained the global reserve currency. That has given the US a favorable position in global trading, allowing us to borrow money very very cheaply and amass a debt far greater than what we can afford. While Trump claims that the US subsidizes the world, some economists argue that it is actually the world that subsidizes the US by giving us what the French call “exorbitant privilege.” But a lot of that privilege was based on trust–holding assets in US dollars, trading in US dollars, extending lines of credit to the US, all of that was based on trust that the US would continue to prosper, that it wouldn’t squander alliances it had formed over petty personal vendettas, that the status quo would largely continue uninterrupted because the parties all acknowledged that the absence of the alliance could lead to the type of global conflict the alliances were formed to avoid. That seemed to work for a long time, 80ish years, but perhaps that’s too long and the collective memory of what it means to exist in a world without those alliances has died along with the survivors of the atrocities of World War II. I mean obviously not everyone has forgotten, but especially in the US where we didn’t experience the brunt of that war, there seems to be less concern about maintaining the world order that has avoided all out global conflict for nearly a century.
Okay so with this backdrop we can better understand the fuckery that is happening, and why this entire conflict can truly be boiled down to a vain petty vendetta because the President didn’t win a special prize for doing nothing. So his claim that Denmark is incapable of protecting Greenland and therefore the US must take it, is clearly nonsensical. First of all, despite what Trump has claimed, Denmark intelligence has confirmed there have been no Chinese or Russian ships patrolling the waters near Greenland for at least the last decade. There is no imminent threat. Even if they were, the very nature of NATO means that the US is free to send military there to protect Greenland, in fact the US is obligated, especially in the face of an attack, to send protection to Greenland to protect our ally from outside forces. Denmark has the military might of the entire NATO alliance behind it and Russia and China know that that’s the literal entire point of the NATO alliance. Additionally, if Trump were truly concerned with Russia and China gaining a greater foothold anywhere in the world, alienating us from our closest European allies and creating a potentially unmendable rift in the NATO alliance sure isn’t gonna fucking help on that front. And ON TOP OF ALL THAT, Trump is further stirring the pot with his whole “Board of Peace” that he’s trying to create.
The Board of Peace comes out of the US’s 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan that the UN security council endorsed last year. The board of peace is meant to usher in the next complex phase of the ceasefire agreement (an agreement Israel has violated literally hundreds of times since it was brokered in October). However, recent developments make it clear that the Trump regime envisions the board of peace as something larger, in direct competition with the UN security council. The US has veto power on the Council and has frequently conflicted with the security council about Gaza and other issues.
Trump called it “the greatest and most prestigious board ever assembled.” A series of letters were reportedly sent out on Friday inviting various countries to become “founding members” of the board, saying that it would quote “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict” indicating Trump has plans far beyond a Gaza peace deal. The letters he sent out stated that members would have 3 year terms unless they made a $1 billion dollar investment, then their seat would be permanent. And it names Trump as chair of the board permanently. Not the US, Donald J Trump, the person, gets permanent lifelong chairmanship. It’s unclear how many countries were invited to the board, though if it’s fundraising he’s after I imagine he probably cast a wide net. And many of the invitees aren’t exactly who you would consider to be arbiters of global peace. They include Hungarian strongman Victor Orban and Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, known as “Europe’s last dictator.” Oh and also Vladimir Putin himself. So TELL ME WHY Trump claims to be so concerned about Russian aggression in Greenland while literally simultaneously inviting Russia to become an ally in an international alliance? I’ll tell you why because none of Trump’s geopolitical choices are based on giving a shit about anyone but himself. HE wants the Nobel Peace Prize, HE wants to get back at his enemies, and ultimately he sees Russia and China as wealthy countries run by strongmen he is envious of. For the longest time the US has acted as the giant bully protecting all the European kids at the lunch table and he looks over at the table where Russia and China are sitting and he sees himself in them, he figures he might actually like to join them, seems fun to be friends with the other big giant bullies, instead of all these prissy Europeans. Because Trump doesn’t give a fuck about democracy or, god forbid, the poors. He gives a shit about his own power and increasing his ability to do absolutely whatever the fuck he wants, and he sees especially in Putin someone who does just that and he wants that. Fuck peace. Fuck economic prosperity. Fuck the hordes of people who may be hurt in the process. Fuck all the reasons why the current world order was created in the wake of the horrors of World War II and the holocaust. He wants to grab as much power as he can, BECAUSE he can. Period. There are other calculations happening behind the scenes among his goons, whether its Venezuela or Greenland, but for Trump, and probably largely for his goons like Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, it’s about ego and it’s about taking whatever we can because of the simple fact that we can get away with it. The Trumpian world order, the one that is seeming increasingly likely to be taking root permanently, is one of pure self-serving narcissism. Full stop. We took Nicolas Maduro because we can, and we’ll do it to you next if you step out of line. We want Greenland because we can. We have to get what’s ours and fuck everyone else.
And because this is all based on short sighted, self serving aims for the benefit of Trump and his rich friends and fuck all the rest of us, there doesn’t seem to be much concern coming from the White House or Trump’s allies about the potential fallout from all of this, which is very great. It’s like in the movies when the rich and powerful villain feels so powerful they believe they can’t fail, they can get away with anything, only to have their own hubris be their downfall in the end? Yeah we are the villain in that scenario. And despite it being a predictable trope in every major hollywood film for decades the lesson doesn’t seem to have stuck. In the wake of the announcement that Trump wants to take Greenland because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize and would be enacting steep tariffs until he gets what he wants, markets across the world fell this morning and gold and silver, traditional safe haven investments, hit new record highs. The value of the US dollar sank as well, .31% against the Euro. Remember the whole thing about the US dollar being the global reserve currency? When its stability falters, that impacts the entire world. As Republican representative Thomas Massie put it on Twitter, quote “When reserve status is lost, maintaining current spending levels and servicing the debt will be even more painful for Americans who will bear the full inflation tax.” As Chief Economist at Euro Pacific Asset Management Peter Schiff put it, quote, “The dollar’s reserve-currency status allows us to live beyond our means. Soaring debt, tariffs, and military threats jeopardize that status. When it’s lost, economic collapse will follow.” And we, the everyday joe schmos, will feel the brunt of that fallout. The average person is not sitting on a whole lot of gold these days and if we do have any wealth it’s usually tied up in our 401ks and our homes IF we own one. The unrest that would come from upheaval in the value of the dollar and its status as the reserve currency, not to mention the current upheaval and potential upheaval if tariffs hit the EU would have major impacts on US businesses that could lead to mass layoffs and price increases, creating a cascading effect that, again, would hurt us the most.
But I’m not trying to fearmonger anyone, .31% drop in value against the Euro isn’t like a death knell by any means and the dollar has remained the stable currency even through major catastrophes and Nixon fucking everything up. But according to Fortune, there could be further chaos depending on how Europe responds to these threats from Trump. Quote “the EU holds significant leverage over Trump as European countries own $8 trillion of U.S. bonds and equities, almost twice as much as the rest of the world combined.” As the EU alliance strengthens in the face of increased threats from Trump, this could come with retaliatory tariffs from the EU or massive sell-off of US dollars in favor of the Euro, which would impact inflation and treasury yields in the US. I’ll be honest I’m not 100% clear on how all that works, but suffice to say it would be bad and yes once again average Americans would likely bear the brunt of that inflation.
The EU could also implement an anti-coercion tactic called its “trade bazooka” against the US, meant to protect EU countries from economic coercion by outside forces. According to Fortune, quote “In addition to limiting trade in goods and services, the anti-coercion instrument could also target foreign direct investment and financial markets. In response to Trump’s new tariffs, such measures could include taxes on U.S. tech companies, restrictions on investments in the EU, or limits on access to the single market.” This, again, would impact businesses which would then pass on those consequences to consumers in the form of higher prices and layoffs.
But it is truly impossible to predict what will happen, how Europe will respond, and how we will all be impacted by the economic and political fallout of alienating ourselves from our closest allies. The world order that has been relatively stable over the last 80 years is on extremely thin ice right now and no one knows what will happen because this has never happened before because no one has been stupid enough to try to fuck with the geopolitical alliances that have served the US well for decades, no matter what Trump claims about trade deficits and defense spending. It’s certainly not making us any friends. Over the weekend thousands of protesters came out across Denmark and Greenland, with 10,000 appearing outside Copenhagen’s city hall. Many of them were sporting familiar looking bright red hats. But instead of Make America Great Again, their ballcaps said Make America Go Away. The hats have reportedly sold out across Denmark. And as someone living in a currently federally occupied city in Minneapolis, with threats of even greater military presence to come, I can’t say I don’t agree with the sentiment.
Okay so what can we learn from this? Things that Trump says that initially come across as “just a joke” and as too out there to even remotely be taken seriously eventually become a serious threat. Him running for president in 2016 was haha funny until it wasn’t. His desire to take over Greenland was haha funny until it wasn’t. So when he talks about the insurrection act, when he jokes about not holding elections in 2026 or 2028, we need to take him at his word. This is not a time to brush it off as just him bloviating. He now has the power, the will, the madness, and the people in the right places to help him do literally whatever he wants at a whim. And ceding power certainly is not on that list. This could include sending troops into our cities and cancelling our elections. And especially when it comes to legal gray areas or areas where there is little by way of actual enforcement mechanisms, like international law, for example, he’ll do so without even trying to make up a valid legal justification. Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of Trump’s latest inauguration. One year. Congress and the Supreme Court have shown limited will to stop him. And international law has no teeth. Anyone attempting to predict the fallout from Trump’s various geopolitical moves is making an educated guess at best. Now is the time to get to know your neighbors and embed yourself deeply in your community. We will need to lean on each other more than ever to weather the storm ahead. And I’ll be here every week to keep you as informed as I can.
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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from Wednesday with updates on what’s happening on the ground here in Minnesota.
