OPINION | Frenetic 2026 military posturing sets tone for dangerous new era

Similarly, US threats this week over Greenland appear in part a tactic to shape negotiations with the Danish government.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said explicitly that “buying Greenland” had always been Trump’s intent.

Whether the suggestion of US military action to take Greenland helps or hinders that, however, is another question.

Within Europe, there is now talk of putting “tripwire” forces – detachments of troops akin to the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence forces in eastern Europe – in Greenland to offer at least the prospect of military resistance to any US attempt at a unilateral takeover of the autonomous Danish territory.

Nor is it clear that the confrontation over Venezuela is even close to over, while in the Gulf the reported death toll from an Iranian crackdown on rising street protests continues to significantly rise despite warnings from Trump that he might respond by launching military strikes.

The war in Ukraine, of course, remains – like the Iraq and Afghan wars – a savage reminder that a supposedly fast-concluded action like Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” can instead turn into a long, bloody and attritional conflict.

At the time of writing, the year 2026 is less than 10 days old and more frenetic geopolitical activity now seems likely.

Whether that will change the wider picture, further destabilise already messy crises or perhaps counterintuitively prompt a return to slightly more stability is not yet possible to know.

(By Peter Apps; editing by Mark Heinrich)