Trump wants our attention. Let’s stop falling for his geopolitical clickbait | Catherine De Vries

Whether he's targeting Greenland, tariffs or Iran, Trump's agenda is to distract - because a Europe that is always reacting is never planning

When Donald Trump reassured the world that he would not, after all, use force to acquire Greenland - after days of threatening as much - he was doing what he does best: turning geopolitics into a spectacle. Whether Trump ever truly believed the US should acquire a vast Arctic territory belonging to a Nato ally is secondary to the fact that, once again, he ensured that Europe and the rest of the world were focused on his agenda.

Trump is not a politician who responds to events - he seeks to make them. Not because he is deeply invested in policy detail, but because he understands a defining feature of contemporary politics: attention is power. In an era of information overload, there is no scarcity of data or analysis; what is lacking is attention. And whoever controls that controls the debate.