Cajamarca
Morning flight from Lima to Cajamarca in northern Peru, just over an hour in the air, looking mostly at a thick layer of clouds, now and then a glimpse of the snow-capped Andes. I consider flying a waste of time. The road is an adventure, but driving from Lima to Cajamarca would take me up to 18 hours, and those I do not have.
Cajamarca is a warning, a tragic history, gathered around its Spanish Baroque cathedral. Here, in 1532, Spanish conquistadors wiped out the Inca Empire, a highly cultured and civilized power, but – unlike the Spanish – without knowledge of the horse, gunpowder and cannons, not even an alphabet. Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador, promised the Incan ruler, Atahualpa, who ended up as his prisoner, that he would let him live if he filled a room with gold. The gold was delivered, whereupon Pizarro had the Inca executed.
Cajamarca makes me think of Ukraine, then naive and confused, now almost ruined Ukraine, which 30 years ago handed over its gold – in the form of the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal – to its historical oppressor, Russia, in exchange for beautifully worded, but empty guarantees of secure borders and territorial integrity, issued not only by Moscow, but by Washington, which in those days we saw the protector of the weak, of democracy and decency. What a mistake! What a terrible mistake, allowing Vladimir Putin, a modern version of Pizarro, that dirty and stinking Spanish swineherd, to kill and maim in Europe without restraint.
We think we know more or less what Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin wants for Europe: the destruction of European culture for the benefit of his Orthodox Russian Empire. We know more, but not much more, about the goals and means, that motivate Donald Trump in the US. We note his overt aggressiveness towards Greenland, Canada and Panama and an indirect aggressiveness towards the rest of the world. Trump is repeating the cunning with which Adolf Hitler, the leader of the German Nazis in the 1930s, terrorized Europe.
The room, which Atahualpa filled with gold, can still be seen in the shadow of the Cajamarca cathedral, a gruesome and clumsy monument – Spanish baroque at its worst – reminding us of lies and treachery, of evil and greed. Pizarro and his men set themselves up as slave owners, landowners, mass killers and outright robbers. They were the oligarchs of their time. Their triumph teaches us that we should fear what we don’t know and especially what we don’t know that we don’t know.
Where is Europe today? On the sidelines of big politics, pushed back by a Russian empire, recently also by a North American empire, led by an insane megalomaniac, who on the phone allows himself to abuse the Danish Prime Minister, because she does not click her heels and deliver, when he demands that she hands over to him and his oligarchs 56,000 Danish citizens, living on the island of Greenland.
With his constant threats and lies, Trump is in a class of his own, and this must be made clear – in the ongoing Danish-American talks about Greenland, in the UN Security Council, where Denmark has a permanent seat until the end of 2026, and in the EU, whose presidency falls to Denmark on July 1.
It must be made clear from the Danish and European sides that the Trumpists can get all the security in Greenland that they are entitled to according to the experts and existing treaties. It must also be clear that this security can only be granted within the NATO framework and based on Danish sovereignty. Greenland cannot be Denmark’s Crimea or Donbas. The government in Copenhagen cannot and will not cede Greenland. It cannot. That right belongs solely to Greenland, should their majority in the course of an honest plebiscite choose full independence, which the rest of the kingdom will grant them with regret, but without undue delay.
In the meantime, the message must be, also from NATO minus the US, that Denmark will rearm in and around Greenland, not because Denmark insists on ownership, but because Denmark and the rest of NATO minus the US defend the international legal order, including the principle of inviolability of borders and territorial integrity, which the elected US president is threatening.
The small state of Denmark cannot muster any serious military power in the Greenlandic context, but it doesn’t take much effort to sink a few ships in the entrances to the main ports and block the runways of the few airports with half a hundred old trucks. Then the Americans at their base outside Thule can ponder how to move forward.
Should their commander-in-chief in Washington dare to order a parachute invasion over the permanent ice cap, I will say: Let him do it. It could be a very costly enterprise.
Europeans are beginning to grasp the existential threat to their security and sovereignty, emanating not only from Putin’s Kremlin but from Trump’s Washington. They try to gain insights, to evaluate what they know what they do not know, and what they do not know, that they do not know. They try to find ways.
Putin is considered to be beyond educational reach. Can Trump be educated, this professional liar and swindler, who in his grotesque ignorance the other day declared that Spain, a member of the EU and of NATO, belonged to the BRICS group, the third-world alternative to the West? Perhaps the Lord of The White House should learn that “S” does not stand for Spain, but for South Africa. Maybe he should learn to keep his mouth shut until he has thought for himself or asked others to think for him.
Europe has the forces, both military and economic, to defend itself, Ukraine included, and the international legal order: half a billion people, considerable armies, and two nuclear powers. We do not need to fill a room in Washington or Moscow with gold, let alone be strangled by a mafia boss who, since his teenage years, has been a fraudster, starting with stealing a uniform jacket in a private military academy, because it had more medals than his own.
By evening I am back in the square in front of Cajamarca Cathedral. It is rainy and cold. A small group of Indigenous huddles on a street corner. Do they know that 500 years ago they lost everything in this very place? Their country, their culture, their language, their memories? That they lost badly to an enemy, because their then leaders, the Inka and his entourage, knew next to nothing about the reality confronting
them?
Is Europe moving into the twilight of its civilization and its culture, because we underestimate our enemies? Maybe, but then maybe not. The Europeans must make clear no later than at the NATO summit in The Hague in five months that they will defend their democracies and the international legal order. And should Trump use the summit to once again abuse Mette Frederiksen, I hope she will show him her back and leave the room. The man is simply unbearable.
By Per Nyholm
*These opinions are solely those of the author. The Ukrainian Review takes no, position and is not responsible for the author’s words.
Per Nyholm has been a Danish journalist since 1960. He is based in Austria and is a columnist and foreign correspondent at the Jyllands-Posten, a liberal Danish daily newspaper.
Tetiana Stelmakh adapted this text for The Ukrainian Review.
