I
n the Trump era, no moment of
tranquility can be taken for granted.
I went to the beach for what I
thought would be a quiet August
break. I returned to find President
Trump plotting to annex Greenland.
On Sunday, Trump confirmed that he
would be interested in buying the terri-
tory from Denmark and that “we’ll talk
to them” about it. “Essentially, it’s a
large real estate deal,” Trump explained,
reasoning that Denmark might be will-
ing to part with the huge land mass be-
cause “they carry it at a great loss.”
The great Danes reacted indignantly.
“Greenland is not for sale,” Prime Minis-
ter Mette Frederiksen proclaimed on a
defensive visit to the island Sunday, call-
ing the idea “an absurd discussion” and
saying “I strongly hope that this is not
meant seriously.”
Fighting words! There is only one
proper response to such intransigence:
The United States must take Greenland
by force.
Greenland has no regular military, so
we should be able to occupy every
Nuuk and cranny of the place without
much struggle. It’s possible, of course,
that this attack on Danish territory
would prompt a response by NATO un-
der the alliance’s mutual-defense pact,
but Trump has already defanged that
alliance.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) foresaw such a
moment, saying in 2016 during the GOP
presidential nominating battle that
“we’re liable to wake up one morning
and Donald, if he were president, would
have nuked Denmark.”
Trump has demonstrated little famil-
iarity with the kingdom — his White
House once spelled it “Denmakr” —
which is why I speculated that he might
bumble into a misplaced (and mis-
spelled) assault on that country (“You
may be shoked by my military attak on
the Kingdom of Denmakr...”). After that
prediction, an anxious man in Copenha-
gen emailed me with a plea that I cease
giving Trump such ideas.
But a U.S. attack on Greenland would
meet the definition of a just war. It
would be an act of self-defense against a
violent people: Erik the Red, who found-
ed the first European settlement in
Greenland, was exiled from Iceland for
his murderous ways.
Besides, Greenland attacked us first.
It was 1,019 years ago, give or take —
and they still celebrate it: In the town of
Qassiarsuk, according to the website
VisitGreenland.com, stands a bronze
statue of Leif Eriksson — one of Erik the
Red’s sons — on the site from which the
Viking departed to invade North Ameri-
can shores. (If you doubt how traumatic
that Viking invasion must have been,
you haven’t watched the saga of Ragnar
Lothbrok on the History channel.)
Greenland hit us again, in 1912: It is
well established that the iceberg that
sank the Titanic originated in Green-
land. Furthermore, the island resumed
its incursions in recent years, flooding
our shores with rising water from its
melting ice sheet.
Some might wonder what Trump sees
in an ice-covered island that has zero
percent arable land, lacks major roads
and has more vowels than people. Its
national anthem is “Nunarput utoqqar-
suanngoravit,” translated as, “Our Coun-
try, Who’s Become So Old.”
The answer, as usual, is to be found in
Trump’s TV-viewing habit. I suspect
that, during his recent Executive Time,
he watched the James Bond film “Quan-
tum of Solace,” in which the villains con-
quer a country by monopolizing the
fresh-water supply. Greenland’s ice, with
enough water to fill the Great Lakes
115 times, is the world’s second-largest
supply of fresh water.
If Trump’s Greenland move was in-
deed inspired by his screen time, it
would be consistent with his pattern.
His claim that women are being smug-
gled across the southern border with
“duct tape on their faces” had no basis
in reality but figured prominently in the
Benicio del Toro film, “Sicario: Day of
the Soldado.” Trump’s use of an emer-
gency declaration to build a border wall
without congressional approval had a
precedent in Netflix’s “House of Cards,”
in which Frank Underwood declared an
emergency to enact his pet project over
congressional wishes. And many of
Trump’s policy pronouncements origi-
nate in Fox News segments.
But this latest example of life imitat-
ing Trump’s TV screen isn’t necessarily
to be discouraged. The world’s largest is-
land, Greenland is three times the size
of Texas and almost 50 percent larger
than Alaska. Such a vast territory would
surely gain statehood before long, and
representation in the House and Senate.
And there’s little mystery about which
way Greenland’s representatives in Con-
gress would tilt: Its two biggest political
parties are both varieties of socialists.
Trump likes to warn that Democrats
want a “socialist takeover.” But by an-
nexing Greenland, he’d be the one
bringing genuine socialists to these
shores.
Even Erik the Red couldn’t achieve
that.
Twitter: @MilbankDANA MILBANK
WASHINGTON SKETCHIt’s time
to invade
Greenland
H
ere’s the surprising truth behind the fact
that 250,000 Guatemalan migrants have
been apprehended at the southern
U.S. border since October 2018: The mass
exodus reflects the tremendous social and eco-
nomic progress that the Central American country
has made in the past half-century.
Life is still hard for most people there, much
harder than it is in the United States, so it’s
understandable that Guatemala’s poverty and
violence figure prominently in the usual explana-
tions for the northbound movement.
Yet the necessary condition for mass migration
is sustained population growth, enough to pro-
duce a critical mass of youthful would-be emi-
grants. Guatemala’s 2018 population of 17.2 mil-
lion represents a quadrupling since 1960, accord-
ing to the World Bank. The current median age is
22.5, vs. 38.2 in the United States.
And this resulted from vastly improved public-
health conditions, which continued to get slowly
better over the past five decades despite bloody
military rule, civil war and official corruption.
Guatemala is experiencing a transition first
seen in 19th-century Britain — and superbly
explained by Paul Morland in his book about
demography and political development, “The Hu-
man Tide.”
For most of human history before 1800, high
death rates offset high birth rates, leading to
stagnant population growth. Thanks to rising
food production, urbanization and better hy-
giene, England’s death rate fell and its population
boomed. It generated working-age people to
spare, many of whom migrated — to North Ameri-
ca, Australia or elsewhere.
In due course, the demographic transition
spread from England to continental Europe —
and beyond. Now Guatemala’s turn has arrived. In
1960, 1 in 7 babies died before their first birthday;
in 2017, only 1 in 50. In 1960, life expectancy at
birth was 46.7 years; in 2017, 73.6 years. Life
expectancy for Guatemalan females, 76.5 years, is
now about the same as for American males.
Some 200,000 young Guatemalans — many of
whom might not have survived infancy in the
recent past — enter the labor force annually.
Labor-force growth helps explain why Guatema-
la’s economy has expanded over the past decade,
with real output per capita up 12 percent, accord-
ing to the World Bank. Guatemala’s growth
doesn’t create jobs for all, though, hence the
migratory pressure.
Guatemala’s demographic trajectory closely re-
sembles that of the former No. 1 “sender” of
migrants to the United States — Mexico — albeit
on a smaller scale and with a time lag.
In the 20th century’s last two decades, Mexico’s
rapidly improving infant mortality and life expec-
tancy yielded a growing population whose medi-
an age hovered in the high teens and low 20s. Its
economy grew but not quite fast enough to absorb
all new workers.
Consequently, more than 9 million Mexicans
moved to the United States between 1980 and- Mexican migration to this country peaked in
the early 2000s, however, and essentially ceased,
on a net basis, not long thereafter. Between 2010
and 2017 the number of Mexicans in the United
States fell, from 11.7 million to 11.2 million, accord-
ing to the Pew Research Center.
Why did the seemingly endless stream run dry?
Partly because Mexico stopped producing new
people as fast as before; its birth rate, now nearing
2 children per woman, is down dramatically from
7 per woman in 1960.
Twenty-first-century Mexico’s worry is societal
aging, as it is for England, the United States and so
many other industrial countries that have com-
pleted the demographic transition to a low-
birth-rate, low-death-rate, slow-growth future.
Eventually the same will happen in Guatemala.
Childbearing per woman is about 2.9, and falling.
The median age is still in the early 20s, but rising;
in six years, it should hit 25, which was Mexico’s
median age when its exodus peaked. (Demo-
graphic trends for Honduras and El Salvador
closely resemble Guatemala’s.)
Policy and short-term events shape migrant
flows, as well as long-term population trends. For
Guatemala, these factors include a punishing
drought and a 2015 U.S. federal court ruling
making it easier for migrant families with chil-
dren to seek asylum and stay in the United States.
If violence and poverty caused migration in
some simplistic sense, however, there should be
less of it. Guatemala’s homicide rate declined by
more than half between 2009 and 2018, from
45 per 100,000 to 22.4, according to the World
Bank and InSight Crime. Income inequality,
though still high, has also improved over the past
30 years, as measured by World Bank statisticians.
Reports of Guatemalans selling or mortgaging
land to pay human smugglers suggest that the
distressed middle- and lower-middle class, not
the poorest of the poor, predominate among the
emigrants.
In Central America today, human beings are
responding to circumstances and incentives as
countless others, our own ancestors included,
have done before.
President Trump’s demonization of them dis-
honors this common heritage and squanders
U.S. moral capital; his attempted crackdown may
stop some migration at the price of pushing the
rest further into illicit channels. The Wall Street
Journal reports that Trump’s threats to close the
border spurred many Guatemalans to move while
they still could.
Meanwhile, opening the border to demograph-
ically and economically driven migration — as
well-intended suggestions by Democratic presi-
dential candidates might do — would defy reality
in a different, but also potentially destabilizing,
way.
What’s needed is trade, investment and aid that
helps Central America consolidate social progress
and share the fruits more widely. And we need a
lawful, humane process for screening and admit-
ting would-be newcomers — while this wave of
immigration, like previous ones, runs its course.
[email protected]
CHARLES LANEGuatemala’s
migration
paradox
BY OLIVIA GIOVETTIT
he summer of 2019 has been
a fraught one for opera. In
June, diva soprano Anna
Netrebko came under scru-
tiny not only for her use of skin-
darkening makeup to sing the role
of Verdi’s Ethiopian princess Aida
but also for her blunt defense of a
practice that has been widely dis-
credited. This month, the legal bat-
tle between the Metropolitan Opera
and its one-time music director
James Levine — which began when
the former fired the latter last year
after accusations of sexual miscon-
duct — quietly ended with a settle-
ment. And last week, nine women
accused superstar singer and con-
ductor Plácido Domingo of sexual
harassment over the past 30 years.
(I previously worked for a consult-
ing firm that did work on behalf of
both singers.)
It would be hard to come up with
three artists more famous and be-
loved. Netrebko and Domingo have
especially transcended the insular
world of opera to make names for
themselves in popular culture. De-
spite the headlines, fans and col-
leagues have defended all three
musicians. All are regarded as as-
sets in an art form that has been
considered to be “dying” for decades
due to declining ticket sales and an
aging audience.
But to really save opera — and
classical music in general — we have
to let it die.
Imagine if Hollywood were to
issue shot-for-shot remakes of D.W.
Griffith’s gauzy history of the Ku
Klux Klan, “The Birth of a Nation,”
every few years. Imagine Tom
Hanks re-creating Mickey Rooney’s
infamously slant-eyed Mr. Yunioshi
in a new “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” orMorgan Freeman cast in a live-ac-
tion remake of Disney’s “Song of the
South.”
This is the reality of opera-house
programming year after year. It is
an art form that, like Miss Hav-
isham in Charles Dickens’s “Great
Expectations,” insists on wearing
the same wedding dress every day
for the rest of its life. Only one of the
25 operas scheduled for the Metro-
politan Opera’s 2019-2020 season,
Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten,” was writ-
ten in the past 50 years. And if you
ask certain administrators and art-
ists, this is a genre we must save.
Opera grew out of a tradition of
court entertainment in Renaissance
Italy. As it became more widespread
with the advent of public opera
houses, the tastes of the 1 percent
continued to govern which operas
were performed. Many productions
rely on designs and staging conven-
tions from the time of their pre-
mieres, which date as far back as
1607, with Monteverdi’s “Orfeo.”
For many fans, this is the ideal.
The Facebook group Against Mod-
ern Opera Productions has 60,
members committed to seeing the
works staged in accordance with the
composers’ intents. A stark produc-
tion of “Tosca” that opened to some
boos at the Met in 2009 was re-
placed last year with a production
that returned the work to its gilded
19th-century setting.
But selling opera to the next
generation means selling opera to a
more diverse and liberal demo-
graphic, which has more options
than ever for entertainment.
And for singers, who go through
years of elite training to land on
stages such as the Met, champion-
ing the classic works they’ve studied
for years doesn’t excuse them from
examining these operas in the con-text of life offstage, either. In a
statement given to the Associated
Press, which broke last week’s news
of the #MeToo allegations against
him, Domingo said: “The rules and
standards by which we are — and
should be — measured against to-
day are very different than they
were in the past.” But if we continue
to cleave to the rules and standards
of the past, production after pro-
duction, season after season, how
can we possibly be expected to also
meet the rules and standards of
today?
Perhaps it’s time to decentralize
the star system that currently fuels
opera. There are plenty of compos-
ers, performers and directors who
manage to reflect on the canon even
as they create works that speak to
audiences today.
Many work on the fringes, but
some are coming to main stages.
Next year, the Santa Fe Opera will
give the premiere of Huang Ruo’s
“M. Butterfly,” an adaptation of
David Henry Hwang’s play of the
same name, which rethinks Pucci-
ni’s opera via the lens of a real-life
encounter between a French diplo-
mat and a Chinese spy. The Tuscan-
born Puccini’s themes of exoticism
and orientalization will be repur-
posed by a composer born in the
Chinese province of Hainan.
Calling for the death of opera
doesn’t mean calling for the Met to
close. Nor does it mean the whole-
sale abandonment of composers
such as Mozart and Puccini. It does,
however, mean we must no longer
romanticize the bygone eras of op-
era’s so-called golden age so much
that we fail to imagine the genre’s
future.Olivia Giovetti is a New York-based
classical music writer.To save opera, let it die
DWAYNE NEWTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Plácido Domingo performs in the San Francisco Opera's production of "Herodiade" in San Francisco in 1994.BY RICHARD HAASSC
ritics of President Trump’s for-
eign policy tend to focus on his
attacks on America’s allies, the
way he praises authoritarian re-
gimes or his habit of rejecting interna-
tional agreements. But another aspect
of the Trump foreign policy is equally
important: its lack of diplomacy.
Diplomacy traditionally comes in
two forms: consultations and negotia-
tions. Consultations are exchanges of
views between governments. Normal-
ly, the goal is to influence the thinking
and behavior of the other, or, more
modestly, to reduce the chance of
surprise or a miscalculation that could
be dangerous. Negotiations tend to be
more specific and undertaken to reach
an agreement in which the obligations
of the parties are explicit.
Under the Trump administration,
the United States appears uninterest-
ed in either. The administration has
largely stood aloof from the show-
down between China and Hong Kong.
The president issues cryptic tweets
expressing confidence that the two
sides will work things out and states
that they “don’t need advice.” Missing
is any emphasis on the fact that China
made commitments to Britain to re-
spect Hong Kong’s special character at
the time of the territory’s hand-over in
1997, and that we expect China to meet
these commitments. Also largely miss-
ing are suggestions for how the stand-
off can be resolved in a peaceful
manner that still supports the basic
rights of the people of Hong Kong.
There is, as well, the growing crisis
between India and Pakistan, triggered
partly by the president’s offer to medi-
ate their long-standing dispute over
Kashmir, something no Indian govern-
ment would accept. That the offer was
made in the Oval Office, in the presence
of Pakistan’s prime minister, made abad situation worse. India’s reaction
was to strip the Muslim-majority re-
gion of much of its autonomy.
Regular consultation might have
headed off the change in Indian policy
or, failing that, shaped Pakistan’s re-
sponse. There is the danger that with-
out U.S. diplomatic involvement, these
two nuclear-armed countries might
again find themselves on a path of
confrontation and escalation.
Then there is the growing rift be-
tween Japan and South Korea over
historical issues stemming from Ja-
pan’s harsh occupation from 1910 to- Left to their own devices, the two
U.S. allies are caught up in a war of
words and sanctions. U.S. consulta-
tions might help the two bridge their
differences so there can be essential
coordination vis-a-vis North Korea
and China.
I expect supporters of the president
reading this will push back. What
about North Korea? The Middle East?
China and trade?
Well, what about them? None quali-
fies as diplomacy, which almost always
requires a degree of give-and-take.
Instead, what we see is a demand that
the other side capitulate.
Hence the demand that North Ko-
rea fully denuclearize. But there is no
chance Kim Jong Un will give up all of
his nuclear weapons, as he believes
they guarantee his and his country’s
security. Kim saw what happened to
Ukraine after it gave up the nuclear
weapons it inherited from the Soviet
Union, and he likely took note of the
fates of Saddam Hussein and Moam-
mar Gaddafi. Diplomacy would entail
some sort of interim agreement in
which North Korea dismantled certain
facilities and accepted constraints on
its arsenal in return for a degree of
sanctions relief. Something for some-
thing.
The approach to the Israeli-Palestin-
ian conflict is so one-sided it does not
even count as diplomacy. This adminis-
tration has cut aid to Palestinians,
moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem
and recognized Israel’s annexation of
the Golan Heights. There is no support
for a Palestinian state or limits on
Israeli settlements. The danger is that
this seemingly pro-Israeli bias will
prove to have been anything but should
Israel cease to be both Jewish and
democratic.
With Iran, there is a possible accord
that, in exchange for some sanctions
relief, would extend constraints on
what Iran can do in the nuclear realm.
But this cannot even be explored so
long as the Trump administration ap-
pears intent on regime change in
Tehran and sanctions its top diplomat.
There is a trade pact to be had with
China, one that deals with market
access and protection of intellectual
property, but not one that requires
China to change its economic model
and stop subsidizing critical firms and
sectors. Sometimes, less is more.
To be fair, negotiations with the
Taliban do qualify as diplomacy. The
problem here is that the administra-
tion appears more interested in a U.S.
withdrawal than peace. Thus the one
potential diplomatic success may well
lead to strategic failure.
This, though, is the exception. Most
often the administration eschews di-
plomacy and embraces sanctions and
tariffs. But there are limits to what they
can accomplish, and many hurt Ameri-
can consumers and businesses. And,
without diplomacy, U.S. interests in the
world will suffer, pressures to use
military force will increase — or both.The writer is president of the Council on
Foreign Relations. He previously served in
the Defense and State departments, as
well as in the George H.W. Bush White
House.Trump doesn’t negotiate. He demands.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 20 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
TUESDAY Opinion