John Mearsheimer

hullabaloo about Greenland, all sorts of frictions had arisen within the alliance.

Ukraine is a really good example.

The Europeans and the Trump administration have long been doing battle over how to deal with Ukraine.

And Trump is fed up with the Europeans for resisting his efforts to try to strike a deal with Putin.

So when you look at that past history regarding Ukraine, you can understand why Putin

excuse me, why Trump is willing to play hardball with the Europeans and he's willing to facilitate some sort of divorce across the Atlantic Ocean.

Well, I think you want to realize that there are sort of two dimensions to Trump's foreign policy.

One is the great power politics dimension, and that's how he deals with Russia and how he deals with China.

And in terms of US-China relations, things are actually quite calm these days.

There's not a lot of trouble in East Asia.

And with regard to the Russians, Trump is doing everything he can to foster good relations.

with the Russians.

So in terms of great power politics, where we have this multipolar world, where we've moved from unipolarity to multipolarity, you don't see a lot of trouble between the United States under President Trump

and the Russians and the Chinese on the other side.

It's with middle-sized and smaller countries where Trump is really ruffling feathers, and where you see Trump behaving in quite radical ways.

So that, you know, he's picking on countries like Canada, he's picking on countries like Venezuela, Iran...

He's threatening to take Greenland.

He's playing hardball with the Europeans.

And this is not great power politics.

Trump is a very smart man in the sense that he understands that he cannot beat up on the Chinese or on the Russians.