Nancy's Notes

There are moments in time when you know something has shifted. Not because someone announces it, but because you can feel it. You recognize it the way people always have, with disbelief first and then a kind of quiet dread, because you also know that once it passes, there is no going back to the way things were. This feels like one of those moments.

And yes, I know this is yet another conversation about Greenland. I am not dismissing Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Venezuela, or Minneapolis. All of those matter deeply, and all of them exist inside a world already under strain. But this is the linchpin. This is the point on which everything else quietly turns, because if the rules give way here, they do not hold anywhere else.

Donald Trump doesn’t just want access to or to cooperate with Greenland. No, he wants ownership and control. He talks as if this is nothing more than a real estate transaction, and international law is nothing more than a minor inconvenience. We can talk about his narcissism, decline, or cruelty as unique, but history has seen men like this before. And history has repeatedly shown that political systems may recognize what is happening but only act when the cost becomes unavoidable.

We tend to remember the Second World War as if it began suddenly with the September 1, 1939, invasion of Poland. The remilitarization of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, the seizure of the Sudetenland, or the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia was not enough. Each step was met with caution, rationalization, and delay, not because leaders didn’t understand what was happening, but because they convinced themselves that each new violation could still be managed. The problem was that everyone had already taught Hitler that escalation worked. Poland was not unique just because it was bigger, more strategic, or more morally shocking than what came before. It was unique because it was the point at which Britain and France finally said that if this, too, was allowed, there would be no stopping it.

That is the lens through which I am watching what is happening in Greenland.

The justification keeps changing, which should tell everyone something. First, it was security, then it was economics. Now it is tariffs, pressure, and the misuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. This law was never intended to give one person the ability to coerce allies and destabilize the global order on a whim.

If this were truly about defence, ownership of Greenland would not be necessary. The United States already has access, as it has for decades. At its height during the Cold War, the U.S. presence on Greenland included thousands of personnel across multiple installations. Over time, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, that presence was deliberately reduced. Not because Greenland became less important, but because ownership was never required to meet security objectives and they U.S. always knew they could increase presence on the island when needed.

Trump has been explicit about how he sees the world. He talks about the Western Hemisphere as a spear, about dominance, about who sits at the tip. His is not a National Security Strategy rooted in necessity. It is a worldview rooted in power and control. Minerals, rare earths and leverage. That is what this is about.

What is hardest to comprehend is not Trump himself, but the response around him. The Supreme Court of the United States needs to bring down their tariff decision. Congress and the Senate need to act. Please don’t let this be another moment in history where institutions hesitated, calculated, or stayed silent, and then spent decades explaining why they did not move when they still could.

Canadians need to understand how close to home this is. Our proximity to Greenland is geographic, strategic, and directly tied to our own Arctic sovereignty. If coercion against allied territory becomes acceptable, Canada does not sit safely outside that logic. If you think this stops at Greenland, you are a fool.

I do not envy the position Mark Carney is in. There is a narrow line to walk when dealing with someone who thrives on instability and spectacle. A balance between diplomacy, restraint and action must be maintained.

But this is also not a moment for partisan comfort. Just as the United States needs bipartisan action, Canada does too. Our livelihoods are at risk. Our economy is at risk. Our military, and the people we love who serve in it, are not abstractions. They are real, and they will be affected by what happens next.

And to Canadians who cheer this on, minimize it, or frame it as clever politics, including those encouraging this thinking from within Canada and particularly in Alberta, stop and think about what you are endorsing. This is not about oil or slogans or sticking it to the other side. This is about whether the rules that keep smaller countries from being swallowed still matter.

Remember. the allies did not enter the Second World War because of Poland alone. But Poland was the moment when the world finally admitted that the pattern could no longer be managed. What followed was catastrophe, sacrifice, and eventually a new order built on the idea that borders, alliances, and rules mattered. That order was imperfect, but it held because enough people understood what was at stake. That order is now in jeopardy.

And the danger, as history keeps reminding us, is not always where people are looking. Most of what determines whether something holds or fails is not visible on the surface. What appears solid can already be thinning underneath, and collapse does not begin when it finally gives way, but when everyone convinces themselves that what they cannot see does not matter.