Ivan Krastev

European Union is not easy to understand.

And in a certain way, in the European Union, what is totally absent is the possibility to have a politics based on a personal relationship.

Because having a personal relationship with whom?

And as a result of it, for him, everything that's coming is just bureaucracy constraints, everything that he hates about America, he sees there.

But also what is interesting in the case of Greenland is that Denmark is basically telling him before, we're going to give you what he wants.

And his message is, no, no, no, I don't want you to give to me.

I want to take it from you.

And this is the story where Europeans understand that it cannot work like this.

Because paradoxically, he is the society response also.

What he does not understand is the pride of others.

Danish people are proud people.

By the way, if he was playing a different way, there was a very good article in Foreign Affairs by a former American diplomat, how he can take Greenland, but he can do it in four or five years with investments and doing this and that, and basically talking to the Greenland population and Greenland elite.

But for him, it doesn't matter.

For him, it should come

fast.

It should come for July 4th.

It should be used for the midterm elections.

So in a certain way, this is the symbolism of this, and this is where I'm afraid he's playing symbolic games.

Europeans do not know how to play symbolic games because this is not where we are from, but he's totally underestimating the capacity of Europe not to cooperate.

We have a talent for this, I should agree very much.