JANUARY 18 — The recent Politico report on Europeans whispering “last-resort options” such as denying US access to European military bases and intelligence assistance, to save Greenland has revealed more than anxiety over the Arctic.

It has exposed a growing temptation in Europe to internationalize its domestic political unease with Donald Trump – and to drag unrelated regions into a thinly veiled Dump Trump campaign.

That temptation must be resisted, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

Europe’s Greenland panic is, at its core, a Euro-Atlantic problem.

It revolves around sovereignty, alliance credibility, and the future coherence of NATO in an era when Washington is openly transactional.

The Arctic, Denmark, and Greenland sit squarely within the European security imagination.

The Indo-Pacific does not.

Two strategic theatres, two political logics:

The Indo-Pacific is not an ideological extension of Europe’s struggle with Trumpism.

It is a distinct strategic theatre shaped by balance-of-power logic, economic interdependence, maritime security, and crisis avoidance.

Asean states, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India are not invested in European domestic politics.

They are invested in predictability.

For South-east Asia, the overriding concern is not whether Trump should be “dumped,” but whether the United States – under any president – remains a stabilizing presence rather than a disruptive one.

Linking Indo-Pacific strategy to Europe’s political anxiety over Trump risks turning Asia into collateral damage in a transatlantic identity crisis.

Europe’s Trump problem is not Asia’s problem

Europe’s frustration is understandable.

Trump questions alliance norms, flirts with unilateralism, and treats strategic geography as real estate.

Greenland, in this sense, is symbolic – a reminder that American power is increasingly exercised through blunt, property-like logic rather than shared values.

But Asia has long operated under this reality.

Indo-Pacific states never assumed the United States was driven primarily by sentiment or solidarity.

They assumed power, interest, and hedging.

That is why Asean practices non-alignment, why Japan invests in autonomous defense capabilities, and why regional states engage China economically even while hedging strategically.

To ask Asia to join a moral-political Dump Trump coalition is to misunderstand how the region survives.

The danger of strategic contamination:

If European elites fuse Arctic anxiety with Indo-Pacific discourse, three dangers follow.

First, Asia’s carefully calibrated neutrality risks being politicized.

Asean does not take sides in US elections, nor should it be pressured to signal preference for or against Trump.

Second, regional credibility collapses.

The Indo-Pacific cannot function as a stabilizing space if it becomes an echo chamber for Western domestic politics.

Third, while China and Russia may benefit from the collapse of NATO, Asean and related summits would be in disarray – especially when the two great powers are vested partners in all summitries too.

A distracted, moralizing West that cannot distinguish theatres creates openings for Beijing and Moscow to argue that US alliances are fickle and ideologically driven.

Thereby unreliable.

More than anything else, a trade-dependent Asean does not want to be dragged into such a geopolitical mess – especially when Trump is ready to tariff any country that does not agree with his Greenland plan that is now defined as US national security.

Thus it is important to keep the Indo-Pacific clean of the European discourse.

Europe is entitled to debate Trump.

Europe is entitled to fear strategic abandonment.

Europe is even entitled to explore contingency plans for Greenland.

But it is not entitled to conscript the Indo-Pacific into its political anxieties.

Asia does not need a Dump Trump campaign.

It needs continuity, restraint, and strategic clarity from all major powers – Washington included.

The Indo-Pacific survives not by choosing leaders, but by managing power.

Mixing Europe’s Trump dilemma with Indo-Pacific strategy would not save Greenland.

It would only destabilize Asia.

And that would be a strategic error of global proportions.

*Phar Kim Beng is professor of Asean Studies and director of the Institute of International and Asean Studies.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.