Trump’s attention-grabbing tactics

With a keystroke, the Trump administration shifted the world’s attention onto something that didn’t happen. At the same time, the most serious abuses happened absent our attention.

Every year, multiple lists are published of the world’s most forgotten crises. Typically, such lists are dominated by conflicts and humanitarian crises on the African continent. As a result, people who work with Africa often complain – and with good reason – that the world does not pay enough attention to Africa.

Now such lists can be updated weekly, even daily, because the world’s attention shifts so fast that it is difficult to stay focused on anything for long. This is the result of a deliberate policy.

Perhaps Trump doesn’t want to take Greenland by force

Risk is described as the likelihood of something occurring multiplied by the consequences of its occurrence. This means that something that is very unlikely to occur can still be a major risk, because of the potential magnitude of its consequences.

This explains why we – however much we would like to – can never ignore the pronouncements of President Donald J. Trump. The US president has incomparable political sway. A post on X or Truth Social is enough to overturn major foreign policy agendas.  Perhaps it was never really likely that the United States would take over Greenland by force. Perhaps.

But what if it had? What if it does in the future? The risk is always imminent, both because such an event would have such huge consequences and because it is a topic that Trump returns to continually. As a result, we can never rest assured that the crisis is over. If Greenland is invaded, is that the end of NATO? But isn’t NATO already teetering on the brink because such a threat exists?

Various global actors profit from the posing of such questions. Perhaps the most obvious is the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who can sit back and observe the chaos in the Western alliance. This is a classic problem in power politics – weakness in one alliance is advantageous for its opponents.

Distraction tactics

Equally important for our understanding of who profits from such crises is what is known as the attention economy. In many fields it is accurate to note that Trump lacks expertise, or quite simply has contempt for it.

But when it comes to the attention economy, Trump reigns supreme. The fact that all attention is dragged in a specific direction each time he issues a hair-raising statement, causes such statements to have their own political value.

Flooding the zone, as the strategist Steve Bannon termed it, is one such strategy. The goal is to overwhelm the political system with so many major and minor issues that it is impossible for the administration’s opponents to oppose everything at once. Consequently, some of the vast number of initiatives end up getting implemented. Although flood barriers can be erected, when a flood comes, some areas will still be submerged.

‘If it keeps on raining, the levee’s gonna break.’

Attention grenade

Another strategy is to throw an ‘attention grenade’ into the global political arena.

Greenland is a classic example. On 3 January 2026, Katie Miller posted an image on X of Greenland overlaid with the US flag and captioned with the word ‘SOON’. Katie Miller is married to Stephen Miller, who is Trump’s perhaps most influential advisor.

The next day, journalists on board Air Force One asked Trump about Greenland. He confirmed that the United States needed Greenland. Suddenly we found ourselves in one of the biggest ever crises in the transatlantic relationship. The oxygen was sucked out of every other room. The Greenland crisis filled the ether.

The crisis first receded on 21 January in Davos, where Trump finally reassured the world that the United States would not take Greenland by force. At the same time, he left open the question of how he would react if the United States did not get to acquire Greenland: ‘They [Denmark] can say “no” and we will remember.’

The main losers

While the Greenland-related chaos dominated, the Iranian authorities engaged in the mass slaughter of their political opponents. Reports suggest over 20,000 deaths.

In Gaza, winter storms struck a destitute population housed in poor quality tents. In Jerusalem, Israel demolished the headquarters of the UN agency UNRWA and took another major step towards starting construction work for the so-called E1 settlement plan. This plan has long been considered a deathblow to any two-state solution.

In Ukraine, Russia intensified its bombings.

In Syria, central government forces took most of the Kurdish-controlled areas.

The list could of course be expanded, because the increase in armed conflicts is a global trend. And it’s not necessary to be a particularly attentive reader to notice that once again Africa is tumbling down the hierarchy of attention-grabbing topics.

In a world where uncertainty and violence are increasing, specific events are wresting away much of our attention. We may notice things happening, but our ability to react is much reduced.

In the case in question, the whole of the Western world’s attention was directed towards something that didn’t happen. The United States did not invade Greenland. But the imminent threat of it doing so was enough to trigger a full-scale political mobilization. We can only imagine how bad we would have been at focusing on anything else if the X post had been an actual event.

Each time someone with sufficient power throws another attention grenade, the biggest losers are the weakest people and the biggest structural challenges.

Where is Sudan on the above list? Where is the grave climate crisis? Where is the debate about the global crisis in humanitarian aid? How shall we save a UN that’s in danger of collapse?

We’re not equipped to deal with so many crises at once. The bigger and closer to us that a crisis is, the less we can focus on crises that are further away or more structural in nature. Because how can we think about the longer term when right now the ground is alight under our feet?

• Jørgen Jensehaugen is a Research Professor at PRIO
• This text was published in Norwegian by Panorama Nyheter