Editor At Large: A Look Back at the War That Is About to Begin

“Historians differ about the real origins of World War III. Some think its roots lay in the disastrous U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s, which weakened American authority in the world, emboldened rivals, and sapped domestic support for assertive military projection overseas. Some argue that the rise of China from the 1990s onward made conflict more or less inevitable, the world falling again into the Thucydides Trap of an emerging power posing an existential threat to the strategic hegemon.

 

But there's general agreement about the crucial precipitating factor that led to the third global conflict in a little over a century: the brief and -- or so it seemed initially -- stunningly successful U.S. victory in the Battle of Greenland in early 2026.

 

It wasn't much of a battle, to be sure. President Trump, fresh off his swift and effective intervention in early January to topple and bring to trial in the U.S. Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and his wife (who were later pardoned by President JD Vance and now run a chain of retail cocaine stores based in Palm Beach, Fla.), doubled down on his "Donroe corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine.

 

He insisted that the U.S. needed to annex Greenland for its own security and that of the wider Western Hemisphere and initially sought to pressure Denmark, the Arctic island's sovereign authority, to sell it. Deploying his favorite diplomatic tool, import tariffs, Mr. Trump -- not unreasonably -- expected the Europeans to cave, as they typically did when confronted with the reality that decades of dependency and complacency had left them powerless in the face of strength.

 

But the Danes, a proud people whose soldiers had fought and died alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, refused. When Mr. Trump ordered U.S. forces to seize the island, Denmark enlisted a handful of nations to help with the resistance -- a coalition of the willing, but not very able.

 

It was never a contest. In addition to Danish and Greenlandic forces armed for winter warfare, the allies included a shipload of British Royal Navy admirals; a Canadian armored detachment handpicked in compliance with the nation's strict commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; a German fleet of battery-powered armored fighting vehicles that had to be abandoned when the only charging stations in Nuuk, the territory's capital, broke down; and a Dutch infantry battalion that was forced to withdraw because of a shortage of ammunition, and discovered that shouting "bang-bang," as they had been trained, was of little effect in battle.

 

Humiliated, the Europeans and Canadians retreated but regrouped, committed to do whatever they could to retaliate. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formally dissolved in late 2026. Europe expelled American troops. Deprived of its forward operating bases there, from which vital missions had been conducted across the world over the last 75 years, the U.S. tried to strike deals with Arab governments for bases in those countries. But domestic popular hostility to American military deployment, and continuing tensions over the U.S. alliance with Israel, meant there was to be no Middle Eastern replacement for Ramstein or Lakenheath.

 

The European Union escalated the economic warfare. It banned all American imports; U.S.-produced technology was regulated to within an inch of its life and eventually blocked completely. Baidu, Tiktok and BYD replaced Google, Instagram and Tesla in European homes and businesses. Military procurement from U.S. defense contractors ended. Only loyal Hungary agreed to take a couple of F-35s -- on generous financing terms.

 

The iconic McDonald's restaurant on the Champs Elysees became an interactive museum of American obesity.

 

The fallout did almost as much harm to the U.S. as to Europe. The dollar sank, pushing up retail prices in America and causing a run on Treasury bonds that flattened mortgage lending and battered corporate finances. Seizing their opportunity, Russia and China demonstrated the value of allyship and pounced.

 

Russia suspended its campaign in Ukraine and quickly moved on the Baltics.

 

With NATO gone, Europeans were deeply divided about whether to offer support; but as a harsh winter descended, the desperate need for cheap energy soon forced them to assent to Russian control over large swathes of Eastern Europe.

 

China imposed a blockade on Taiwan. With U.S. warships that once patrolled the strait now deployed chasing drug boats in the Caribbean and mopping up Inuit resistance on Greenland's coasts, Taipei quickly capitulated. Then, in a devastating move, Beijing ordered the release for open-source access of all of its most sophisticated artificial-intelligence algorithms. The explosion of supply of the technology crushed the U.S. market, cratering the valuations of the big U.S. tech companies, which had been built on their supposed AI dominance.

 

America's strategic superiority was constrained by the limitations of the new geopolitical realities, and it had no intention of starting a nuclear war. Instead, along with its remaining three allies -- El Salvador, Qatar and Senegal -- it struck an uneasy peace, a tripartite charter that replaced the American-denominated global order with a condominium of Russia, China and the U.S. dominant in their respective regions.

 

Still, we'll always have Greenland.” [1]

 

1. Editor At Large: A Look Back at the War That Is About to Begin. Baker, Gerard.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 Jan 2026: A17.