Here's the first of a two-part look at Donald Trump's first 100 days in office of his second term as seen by columnist Barry Zellen.

Trump 2.0 has been a whirlwind of creative, innovative, paradigm-shifting foreign policy, staggering in its vigour and bold in its willingness to take risks (largely in non-military terms) for what is hoped will be transformative gains. It's been one of the most exciting starts to a new presidential term since former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the pinnacle of the Soviet system and kept the West on its toes as Russia underwent its revolutionary transformation.

But the risks Gorbachev took in the end caused the entire Soviet system not to reform, but to collapse, both at home and abroad. Will we see the same happen to America? With Trump鈥檚 鈥淟iberation Day鈥� trade war starting off with a bang, world markets teetered on the brink of collapse with China briefly emerging (oddly enough) as a safe haven for much of the world, forcing a rethink and a slowdown of its rollout, but hopefully not an end to this fascinating and courageous restructuring of the world economy and an historic and just rebalancing of trade with America.

As an old Arctic hand, it was both surprising and heartwarming to see the Arctic feature so prominently and centrally in American policy. This is both smart geopolitics for a warming world, and an ironic recognition of the deep, strategic impacts of climate change on world politics. But there is risk in hyping the wrong things in the Arctic, such as overstating the threat posed by China, which is not an Arctic state, or Russia, which is the largest Arctic state but one that is inherently defensive in its utilization, development and ultimately its defence of its Arctic territories and waters.

With the largest Arctic population, economy and territory, Russia has much more skin in the game and much more to lose in the event the region becomes destabilized.

The real and present danger to the Arctic is not posed by either China or Russia, but rather by internal gaps in wealth, human development, cultural stress, and marginalization of its native peoples who have made great strides but who still find themselves to a large degree second class citizens in their own homelands, whose powers while greatly expanded remain subordinated to the still largely colonial states that govern over them and their traditional territories. I've been writing about this fundamental risk to the Arctic's human terrain for decades, and to the importance of rebalancing state-tribe relations across the region and the world. 

President Trump, with his and Vice-President J.D. Vance's direct appeal to Greenlandic Inuit to join America and leave their colonial existence behind them, understands that this internal fault line that runs across the entirety of the circumpolar Arctic is not only salient to the region鈥檚 order, but increasingly essential to American and global security.

Looking ahead, we can be prepared for many more innovations to come, such as a more inclusive approach to tribe-state relations around the world (including the Arctic) than that which we experienced during the Joe Biden years that (ironically, for a diversity-sensitive administration) shunned Indigenous consultation and inclusion in its effort to isolate and encircle Russia in the Arctic, which as noted above is the most diverse, populated, economically developed and territorially significant of the Arctic states. 

We can also look forward to an end to America鈥檚 own 鈥済reen colonialism鈥� (a phrase I first heard from Greenlanders who opposed the EU's ban on seal products central to their local Arctic economies), and a more robust integration of Alaskan resources into America鈥檚 growing energy independence, with more federal support for oil and gas development on and off shore, and new mining ventures both in Alaska and perhaps, if Trump succeeds in his goal to integrate Greenland into America's constitutional polity, Greenland as well 鈥� joining Russia, Canada and the other Arctic states in their continuing efforts to develop their vast repositories of Arctic resources, enriching Arctic peoples along the way.

As for Greenland, we can anticipate continued creative and dynamic diplomatic engagement, with Trump鈥檚 instincts for strategic and economic opportunity aligning with the continuing polar thaw and converging with Greenland鈥檚 own aspirations for continuing decolonization culminating in, Greenlanders hope, their sovereign restoration and independence, and we Americans hope in their eventual constitutional union with America. 

How might this play out? 

The conversation with Trump started with his territorial acquisition/statehood vision, and has been evolving from there toward support for Greenland's independence as his administration's relationship with Greenlanders grows, along with his desire to extend more robust American protection to Greenland 鈥� this is somewhat akin to how Trump 1.0 de facto evolved its views on Afghanistan, whose forever war Trump inherited and which, despite two decades of mission creep and institutional momentum within the pro-war military-industrial-academic complex, he brought to an end. 

Trump found through peace negotiations with the Taliban that his administration and his political base rooted in the MAGA movement had ultimately more in common with their military opponent (the Taliban), as people of faith, than they did with America鈥檚 own military ally, its very own (and very corrupt) client state that it had installed in Kabul 18 years prior.

As a change-making president with a mandate to "drain the swamp," Trump 1.0 internationalized this mandate and extended it not only to the forever war in Afghanistan where in the end, it chose its opponent over its own client state much that way America did during its long peace talks with the North Vietnamese in the 1970s, culminating in the reunification of Vietnam and its sovereign restoration under communist rule (with America as Hanoi鈥檚 emergent ally, and no longer its opponent 鈥� sacrificing the corrupt regime in Saigon in favor of its more austere, less corrupt and more truly independent-spirited opponent in Hanoi). 

Trump 2.0 has taken its "drain the swamp" mission even further in both domestic politics and foreign policy, with DOGE purging federal payrolls of hundreds of thousands of overpaid, overly generously-benefitted, underworked, self-serving, and often cronyistic and/or nepotistic federal employees, while shuttering wasteful foreign aid programs that propped up corrupt governments around the world, freeing their budgets for military adventurism and endless graft as the American taxpayer footed the bill for social and health programs they are often denied, or can't afford, at home.

Trump's just and principled war against the tyranny of DEI and its empowered mafia of sexist, bigoted, oversexed (and over-sexualized) faithless people of the flesh, in government, academia, and in the ever-weakening military, has been one of his many shots heard 'round the world, helping bring sense to the senselessness and sanity to the madness that had become weaponized and anti-constitutional DEI at home and throughout the western world 

One way he did that was by shutting down unnecessary, self-serving and corrupted institutions like the Wilson Centre, whose polar program was a parody of a "think tank" run on the noxious fumes of cronyism and an unthinking, anti-intellectual climate fostered by self-serving and self-aggrandizing bureaucrats - a true example of the deep state and proof that is it in fact a shallow state driven by vanity and egoism that has undermined American values.