Either We Become a Radically Different Country or the Republican Party Becomes Essentially Extinct for a Lifetime

Trump now appears intent on unraveling the U.S. commitment to NATO—reportedly over his desire to seize Greenland by force.

If you still believe “Russia, Russia” was a hoax, you may be clinging to a delusion that recent events are making harder to sustain. What once sounded implausible now fits an emerging pattern.

It is difficult to overstate how dramatic—and dangerous—a break this would be from American policy over the last century. It would amount to a wholesale reversal: from leading a coalition that helped secure a peaceful Europe to adopting the posture of a power willing to invade territory and redraw borders by force.

That is not merely a policy shift; it is a moral realignment. It would mean switching sides—from the defenders of a rules-based order to those who openly violate it.

If the Republican Party cannot or will not stop Trump, it risks suffering the kind of long political exile the Democratic Party endured for roughly sixty years after Lincoln—and that Republicans themselves endured for roughly fifty years after FDR. Parties, like nations, can survive many mistakes. What they rarely survive is abandoning their fundamental role in history.

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The fact that Trump is repeatedly threatening to invade and seize Greenland should alarm any serious person. Not because it is theatrical or provocative rhetoric—but because it crosses a line that Americans have not had to contemplate in generations.

Had anyone told me even a few years ago that a U.S. president would openly discuss invading and conquering territory belonging to a NATO ally, I would have dismissed it as absurd. Not “unlikely”—inconceivable. That idea simply did not belong in the realm of American politics as it had existed since World War II.

And yet here we are.

Trump has expressed this intention repeatedly, not as a joke, not as satire, but as an assertion of power. The repetition matters. This is no longer an offhand provocation; it is a declared posture. When a leader with control over the world’s most powerful military speaks this way, disbelief is not a strategy.

This would not represent a minor deviation in foreign policy. It would be a historic rupture—one that signals a shift from a rules-based international order to raw territorial ambition. From a nation that helped build NATO to one that treats alliances as obstacles. From a power that deterred invasions to one that contemplates launching them.

Trying to “tone down” that reality risks confusing sobriety with denial. There are moments—rare, but real—when calm language no longer clarifies the danger. Telling people not to worry because the idea sounds outrageous is like reassuring shoppers while someone is actively firing a weapon: the implausibility of the situation is precisely what makes it so dangerous.

The tragedy is that Americans are being asked to adjust, psychologically and morally, to something they were never meant to normalize. Threatening conquest is not part of our political tradition. It is the language of regimes we once defined ourselves against.

Disbelief was once the appropriate response. Now attention is.