I agree with our editorial, “Trump’s Reckless Greenland Antics,” as far as it goes. But putting aside the damage to our relationship with allies, which I don’t think can be dismissed as just another instance of Trump being Trump, I believe this is one of those rare times when the law matters as much as the politics. On that score, to repeat what I recently pointed out, a president of the United States has no authority to buy territory.
I’ll concentrate mainly on purchasing Greenland because President Trump committed at his speech in Davos today that he “won’t use force” to take it — which is awfully big of him, no? Just to be clear, even to threaten seizure violates treaty obligations the United States has solemnly assumed. To take two notable examples, our country ratified the United Nations charter in 1945, accepting the obligation to refrain from threatening to use force against the territorial integrity of a member state. (Article 2(4)); and in the NATO treaty of 1949, of which the United States and Denmark are among the founding members, we agreed to refrain from threatening to use force — and, of course, from using force — in a manner inconsistent with the U.N. Charter, and to regard an armed attack against a NATO ally as an armed attack on all. (Articles 1, 5, and 7.)
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