Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 19 January 2026
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column, Founded 1932
A disastrous unforced error
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – A red line is being crossed, and it is time for a letter, and only a letter will do:
 
Mr. President,
Either your Cabinet or Congress will invoke the 25th Amendment to remove you from office, or Congress will initiate the impeachment process if you fail to immediately and unequivocally retract your Greenland demands and your planned punitive tariffs against several of our NATO partners.
Respectfully,
[Congressional leader(s) and/or a significant number of Republican senators and representatives]
 
The president has ignored back-channel overtures and continued to press forward with a policy that is anathema to American values, the vast majority of American citizens and American allies, and the founding principles of NATO, the greatest peace-keeping alliance the world has ever known.
The magnitude of this misbegotten venture has dwarfed all other actions of the administration because the potential consequences are so far-reaching. Each step taken on this ill-advised path is adversely affecting the U.S. and our partners’ economies and geopolitical alignments, and emboldening our adversaries, potentially irredeemably.
Specifically, the tariffs are already on the verge of forcing a trade war with the European Union, and saber-rattling has already brought several of our NATO allies together in opposition to the United States over Greenland, the first-ever crack in the NATO alliance, one that could quickly dismantle it.
This can only encourage Russian adventurism against NATO allies Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, over those countries’ Russian-speaking border areas. Without the certainty of the U.S. commitment to Article Five of the NATO Treaty – an attack on one is an attack on all – the other European nations are unlikely to come to the aid of these threatened Baltic countries. And Ukraine will increasingly be left to its own devices, and the ominous outcome that would foretell.
On the other side of the world, China, having long espoused its intent to take Taiwan one way or another – its version of Greenland – will view Trump’s Greenland gambit as a green light.
All this – economic disruption, alliance disintegration, and adversarial empowerment – will be threatened if the Greenland gambit proceeds, which in sports terminology would be described as an unforced error.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
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END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND