The monstrous King Richard III, at the start of Shakespeare's play, supposes that, as he thinks his physical disabilities make him unlikely ever to be lucky in love, he is instead "determined to prove a villain". It might not be stretching the literary analogy too far to suggest that the motives behind the American president's recent actions aren't too dissimilar: that is, because the Nobel committee decided not to award him the Peace Prize he so openly craves – and because the International Association Football Federation added insult to injury by instead giving him their utterly ridiculous version of that coveted honour – he has now resolved to become the planet's greatest warmonger – the very biggest and best ever, as he might say.

Following the failure of his plan to turn Gaza into a massive golf resort, and his continuing inability to bring to Eastern Europe the peace that he promised would blossom in the first week of his second term, he appears – like England's last Plantagenet monarch – to have grown tired of seeming to seek benign solutions to the world's problems, and, having abandoned that thin pretence, has gone all-out in pursuit of his own short-term corporate, geopolitical and personal interests.

When he has been busy dismantling his own country's democracy – indicting political opponents, pardoning those who murdered police officers in an armed insurrection intended to overturn the American constitution and keep him in power, putting thugs on the street to kill innocent citizens – we in the West have done our best to maintain the pragmatic but increasingly untenable fiction that we can work with him.

When he has militarily intervened – and threatened to intervene – in the internal politics of America's neighbours (with Colombia and Cuba the latest in his sights, after Venezuela) or other, more distant (but oil-rich) nations, western governments have for the most part mumbled gentle concerns or have simply turned a blind eye.

But now that he has turned his rapacious gaze towards a territory under the aegis of a major Western European democracy, a key member of the European Union, and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the leaders of France, Germany Italy, Poland, and Spain – and even the UK's own most famously conflict-averse Prime Minister – have chosen to show solidarity with their Danish allies and, rather than appeasing Mr. Trump, have jointly declared that "Greenland belongs to its people" – and that it is therefore "for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland".

Nordic explorers – who arrived there more than a thousand years ago – are reputed to have named the frozen Arctic island "Greenland" in an attempt to make it sound more appealing than the relatively hospitable Iceland. While the territory may have always had some strategic significance, it is only in the last few years that the melting of polar ice has made its precious mineral deposits more practically accessible to international mining corporations, and that it has thus attracted the interest of an Oval Office intent upon stripping the Earth of its remaining resources in the course of its final decades.

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Donald Trump has demonstrated his characteristic mastery of the principles of international law by declaring that – while he is of course "a big fan of Denmark" – he believes that "the fact they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean they own the land" – an argument which would doubtless go down well with the surviving indigenous peoples of the lands from Alaska to Florida currently occupied by the United States.

The White House has meanwhile clearly asserted its willingness to annex this sovereign territory by force.

The idea of one NATO member invading another would simply have been unimaginable just a few months ago. It would inevitably signal the demise of the Western alliance. Germany has already suggested that it would be willing to offer Denmark military support in its defence of Greenland against an attack from the USA.

Those who claim that the mentally ailing president (and his friends in transnational corporations and in British parties of the Radical Right) are brazen agents of foreign powers set on destabilizing Western liberal democracy, and the global economic and geopolitical order, neglect to appreciate the full and immediate impact of the absurd and insane venality which seems to underpin the actions of the current American administration.

As a threat to world peace, this situation makes the Cuban Missile Crisis feel like a mild disagreement over the seasoning of cucumber sandwiches at a vicar's tea party.

Global commentators may wish to point out that if America's traditional Western allies had stood up to Trump's bullying earlier – if we hadn't appeased him and normalised his escalating breaches of democratic and diplomatic norms and international agreements and laws – we wouldn't now be in the firing line ourselves. That is almost certainly so.

If we'd defended our global neighbours, this Anschluss wouldn't have reached us.

And, if history's taught us anything, it's surely that those willing to share a bed with monsters shouldn't be surprised to find themselves getting mauled.