AS conjectured in my column (TMT, Jan. 21), Venezuela has slipped from the headlines, eclipsed by Trump’s designs on Greenland. A larger stage opened, and the world’s showman arrived — not to seek permission, but to overwhelm. Davos became theater; power became performance. Attention, not consent, is now the currency of influence.

The world of 2026 has crossed the threshold into a new order. The retreat of Arctic ice has exposed a deeper truth: The “pleasant fictions” of international law are yielding to a raw, transactional politics of power. Greenland, Davos and Manila are not separate stories but a single geopolitical parable. They reveal how sovereignty is priced and how alliances are renegotiated in public.

Small nations must relearn an ancient lesson: When rules melt with the ice, survival depends on power and resolve, not promises. The moral architecture of the postwar world is fracturing. For the Philippines, this is not distant theater — it is a mirror. What is rehearsed in the Arctic may yet be performed in our waters.

Davos debacle

The 2026 Davos World Economic Forum will be remembered not for grand bargains but for a geopolitical farce. Fresh from a campaign to “acquire” Greenland, Trump arrived with AI-generated memes of American flags draped over ice sheets. He spoke of sovereignty as if it were a deed, of territory as if it were inventory — assets to be acquired, priced and moved at will.

When Denmark and its European allies resisted, Trump responded not with diplomacy but with menace. He threatened 25-percent tariffs on eight NATO states, treating a security alliance less as a covenant than as a protection racket. It was power as reality TV: the strongman’s bluff, broadcast to the world.

Then came the collapse.

Defied by a unified Europe and credible whispers of an EU “anti-coercion bazooka” — including a coordinated US Treasury holdings sell-off — Trump abruptly folded, ruling out force, suspending tariffs in exchange for a vaporous “framework of a future deal,” which NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte diplomatically described as having “a lot of work to be done.”

TACO

Thus, was re-enforced the nickname circulating in diplomatic corridors.

The mockery is deserved. But the danger lies not in Trump’s retreat; it lies in the pattern. Bluff. Threaten. Fold. Repeat. This rhythm does more than bruise credibility; it shatters the very idea of “automaticity” in alliances — NATO Article 5. Defense becomes conditional. Commitments become bargaining chips. Guarantees acquire an asterisk.

For Manila, the implication is chilling. A presidency that treats Greenland as a property may one day treat Ayungin Shoal, or Bajo de Masinloc, as line items in a grand bargain with Beijing. An ally who prices territory can trade it. An ally who improvises strategy can improvise abandonment.

The end of pretend rules

Against this spectacle stood a quiet intellectual counterweight. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney invoked Václav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless,” likening the “rules-based international order” to the greengrocer’s sign in the window: a ritual everyone knows is hollow, yet everyone continues to perform.

Canada, Carney declared, is “taking the sign out of the window.” The old rules no longer restrain the powerful. Trade, finance, technology and supply chains are now instruments of coercion. Great powers weaponize interdependence. Pretending otherwise is not idealism; it is self-deception.

In place of illusion, Carney proposed “value-based realism,” a posture that remains anchored in sovereignty and human dignity, yet unsentimental about the decline of American reliability. It does not abandon values. It abandons naiveté.

For middle powers, his message was stark: If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

He urged a “variable geometry,” issue-specific coalitions that bypass paralyzed institutions. Canada will double defense spending, diversify trade away from America, and weave a dense web of global partnerships. Sovereignty, in this world, is no longer guaranteed by rules. It is earned by the capacity to withstand pressure. It was not a speech of comfort. It was a manual for survival.

The Arctic as the North’s South China Sea

Greenland and the West Philippine Sea (WPS) are separated by oceans yet bound by logic. The Arctic is fast becoming the North’s SCS/WPS — a maritime frontier where geography is rewritten by presence, and legitimacy follows occupation. The parallels are haunting:

– The shield of law. Both Greenland and the Philippines rely on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). Both discover its fragility. Just as Beijing ignored the 2016 arbitral ruling, Washington’s casual disregard for Danish sovereignty reveals that “national interest” overrides law — even among friends.

– The strategy of presence. In the WPS, China deploys maritime militias and concrete reefs into permanence. In the Arctic, Russia and China plant “scientific” outposts. The BRP Sierra Madre stands as our lonely pathetic sentinel; Greenland’s Inuit patrols play the same role. In a transactional world, unoccupied space is deemed vacant.

– Strategic real estate. Greenland is the cork of the North Atlantic. The Philippines is the hinge of the First Island Chain. Both are viewed less as nations than as buffers. Our debate over EDCA mirrors Greenland’s fear that too much military presence invites annexation by proxy.

Geography has become destiny again. The map is no longer drawn by treaties. It is drawn by who arrives first and who stays longest.

PH’s mandate: Diversify or subordinate

The Greenland climbdown teaches Manila a harsh lesson: Transactional alliances are unstable foundations. The Mutual Defense Treaty has long been treated as ironclad. Trump’s conduct suggests otherwise. Protection now comes with a price — and a mood.

The Philippines must adopt its own version of Carney’s realism. We see its outline already:

– Multi-alignment. Security ties with Japan, Australia and Europe create a flexible web of defense. No single capital becomes a point of failure. Alliance is no longer monogamy; it is architecture.

— The value of strength. Defense modernization is not just about hardware. It is about raising the cost of coercion — for Beijing and for a transactional Washington. Vulnerability rouses appetite.

– Regional solidarity. Asean must evolve from a forum of caution into a coalition of consequence. Southeast Asia must act as a collective middle power rather than a gallery of pliant clients competing for favor.

This is not defiance. It is adulthood.

Living without illusions

As Arctic ice melts, the map of power is redrawn. The age when small nations slept beneath the blanket of a benevolent order is over. Davos 2026 revealed a divided world: those who weaponize chaos, and those who build resilience.

Trump’s TACO diplomacy is not an aberration. It is a symptom of a deeper American transformation. To remain masters of our seas, we must look beyond the horizon of the 1951 MDT. We must take our own sign out of the window. Name the world as it is. Strengthen what is ours.

Weave ourselves into those who still believe sovereignty is worth defending.

In an age where ice retreats and seas rise, power belongs not to those who wait for the world they wish for but to those who learn to navigate the world that is.