Content warning: this article contains extensive discussion of suicide

The Good Law Project (GLP) have published the results of a freedom of information (FOI) request which showed that suicides among trans youth spiked massively in 2021. This was immediately after the UK government suddenly halted almost all gender-affirming care for young trans people.

This is particularly significant given that, in 2024, the government published an ‘independent’ review dismissing the increase in suicides as statistically insignificant.

The review acknowledged 5 suicides. However, thanks to the FOI, we now know that there were at least 22. 22 young people took their own lives because their healthcare was suddenly ripped away by a bigoted, ideologically driven government.

In the week following the GLP’s publication of its findings, the BBC has remained completely silent on the government’s utter betrayal of trans youth. Instead, it chose to publish an interview with Dr. Hilary Cass, the woman responsible for continuing to deny healthcare to young trans people.

She claimed that children have been “weaponised” by both sides of the trans debate. She also denied preventing kids getting the medical care they needed.

At this point, I can hardly even blame her. I’d probably try to deny everything and blame everyone else too, if I had contributed to deepening the crisis for trans youth.

Tavistock, Bell, Cass

Back in 2020, the UK High Court ruled that it was “unlikely” that trans children could give informed consent to treatment with puberty blockers. Immediately afterwards, the NHS almost completely ceased puberty-blocking treatments.

A year later, the Court of Appeal overturned that decision. However, the NHS refused to resume its previous treatments. Instead, the then-Conservative government criminalised the prescription of puberty blockers for trans healthcare.

Following a review by Dr. Hilary Cass, the new Labour government also chose to uphold the criminalisation of puberty blockers in 2024. Dr. Cass is not a gender specialist. She had absolutely no experience or publications in trans healthcare, until the government chose her to decide the fate of trans youth.

Her report ignored basic scientific principles, applied impossible evidence standards, and was underpinned by the idea that being trans was itself undesirable. Rishi Sunak appointed her to the House of Lords for her trouble.

Whistleblowers

In 2024, the GLP raised whistleblowers’ alarms that the number of suicides among patients at the Tavistock clinic – the UK’s youth gender clinic – had risen sharply following the withdrawal of care. At the time, the whistleblowers stated that:

the seven years before the High Court decision there was one death of a young person on the waiting list for Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS). In the three years afterwards, there were 16.

In response, the government commissioned yet another independent review. The reviewer, Professor Louis Appleby, acknowledged just seven deaths in the three years following 2020-2021. The Appleby Review also criticised the GLP and other reporting on the issue, stating that:

The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing and dangerous, and goes against guidance on safe reporting of suicide.

Cover-up

However, the GLP’s recent FOI request revealed that the actual number of suicides among trans youth surged to 22 in the year 2021-2022. That’s compared to just 5 and 4 in the two years immediately prior to the Bell ruling.

The GLP’s press release explained that:

This new data was released via a freedom of information request made to the NHS-funded National Child Mortality Database (NCMD). The NCMD revealed that 46 trans children died by suicide from 2019-2025: 5 in 2019-20; 4 in 2020-21; 22 in 2021-22; and 10 in 2022-23. The NCMD adds “the numbers reported in more recent years will likely be underestimated, due to a higher proportion of child death reviews that have not yet been completed”.

It went on to state the the Appleby report’s sample size was notably small, focusing on a subset of children who were already at the Tavistock:

Forty-four of these deaths were within the time frame analysed for the government report by Professor Louis Appleby on suicides and gender dysphoria. That’s almost four times more than the number accounted for by the Appleby report, which stated that only 12 young people (over and under 18) who were current or former patients of the Tavistock took their own lives from 2018-2024.

The Appleby review chose to focus specifically on some – the review itself is not clear – patients connected to the Gender Identity Development Service service at the Tavistock, so would not have accounted for all 44 deaths recorded by the NCMD.

‘People at the extremes’

To put that another way, the government massively under-reported the suicides that resulted directly from its decisions. Then, it also blamed whistleblowers for drawing attention to the crisis.

In a normal country, such a massive betrayal of public trust and basic human decency might at least make a single headline.

Instead, the BBC chose to publish a puff-piece interview with Cass, one of the architects of the pitiful state of trans youth healthcare in the UK. In the interview, Cass repeated the spurious claim that children become trans because of gender stereotyping and homophobia:

I think what has kind of misled children is the belief that if you are not a typical girl, if you like playing with trucks, or boys who like dressing up or that you have same-sex attraction that means that you’re trans and actually it’s not like that but those are all normal variation.

And, following the Appleby report’s example, she bent over backwards to point the finger at trans-positive campaigners. The BBC reported that:

The vast majority of people in the middle of the debate were silent while the “people at the extremes” and rhetoric in the media had been “frightening for young people,” the clinician said.

She added that some activists for trans rights had been “so strident that it’s made it more difficult for trans people themselves who are just trying to live under the radar”, while equally people who had taken the view no-one should ever transition had “similarly made it difficult”.

What people like Cass will never acknowledge is that trans people shouldn’t have to live under the radar. They equate trans people advocating for ourselves with obnoxious activism because they can’t abide our speaking up. Our extremist belief is that trans kids are not an aberration, and they deserve healthcare like everyone else.

The issue is that trans adults don’t get to look away. We don’t get to turn our faces from the trans kids being treated as political punching bags. We can’t ignore the suicides within our community.

Those deaths resulted directly from the decisions of the High Court, the Tories and the NHS. Cass and the Labour government upheld those same decisions. If I believed these people had a conscience to speak of, I would hope that knowledge never let them sleep again.

We won’t roll over and be silent, because we remember what it was like to be trans kids ourselves. Cass would know that, if she ever had any intention of listening to trans people. But then, listening to us would involve acknowledging our humanity.

Featured image via the Canary

Why Is Labour Together Being Investigated?

What Has The Government Said?

What Has Josh Simons Said?

How Have Other MPs Responded?

4 min read11 min

Trade unions are at the heart of the fight for equality. It is trade unions that push employers for policies on discrimination at work, and who decades ago brought forward trans inclusive policies.

I have been campaigning for a ban on conversion practices for many years. I brought an amendment to the King’s Speech during the last government, and have for the last two years been working on legislation at the Council of Europe (CoE).

Because conversion practices don’t happen in theory. They happen in real life, to real people. To the teenager who is told their feelings are “wrong” and that love is something they must earn by becoming someone else. To the adult, pressured into silence and shame, sometimes by the very people and institutions meant to offer care. They happen in living rooms and places of worship, behind closed doors, under the guise of “therapy”, “guidance”, “deliverance”, or “counselling”.

And the message is always the same: you are broken. You are wrong. You need to be fixed.

I do not want to be part of a society that does that, or that makes parents feel they must encourage their children to change themselves just because they won’t be accepted.

The CoE is the home of human rights, which the UK helped set up before the European Union, made up of 46 different countries. The reports it passes provide frameworks for legislation for each country’s own parliament.

I am pleased to report that this month, the COE passed my report with wide support from across Europe, and across political party groupings, with backing from European conservatives, liberals, greens, and, of course, socialists like me.

This matters because it sets standards. When Europe’s leading human rights institution speaks, governments listen. Courts listen. Public bodies listen. Now is the time for the UK government to listen and to publish its own draft legislation.

I also want to recognise something that too often gets overlooked: the sheer hard work, persistence, and moral clarity of the trade union movement on this issue.

Trade unions have long campaigned against conversion practices and for the dignity, safety, and equality of LGBTQ+ workers — often when it wasn’t easy, and when it wasn’t popular. They have kept survivors’ voices in the public eye, pushed institutions to take responsibility, and reminded governments that “freedom” can never mean freedom to abuse. I am a proud trade unionist because of work like this.

Trade unions are often the ones who will bravely stand up when no one else will. I am deeply grateful to the movement for their leadership and solidarity over many years—and for standing firm on the side of people who simply want to live as themselves.

One of the cruellest realities is where conversion practices can happen. So often they are delivered in settings that should be supportive — at home, in a church, in a community space. The betrayal cuts deep when the place you seek shelter and support becomes the place you are harmed.

That’s why this is a human rights issue. History tells us of the damage that it does to people; we must not forget that harm and repackage and re-inflict it. We have an opportunity to end that cycle of abuse, now.

It’s also why equalities cannot be treated as optional extras in our workplaces or public services — they are part of the protection people need to live safely and openly.

That is why the wider context in which the Employment Rights Act matters: rights at work should go hand-in-hand with equality at work, so that people are protected not only from exploitation, but from discrimination and hostility too.

I was proud to vote for an Act that focuses on equality at work, by bringing in measures like requiring employers to produce Equality Action Plans.

When we strengthen workers’ rights with a clear commitment to equality, we are saying something simple but powerful: nobody should have to choose between having a job and being themselves; nobody should be punished, sidelined, or silenced because of who they are.

Kate Osborne is Labour MP for Jarrow and Gateshead East

Clean Up Britain have come up with a new way to make claimants’ lives hell. The national campaign announced on Twitter that they think unemployed people on Universal Credit should be forced to clean up litter – or else lose their benefit.

Litter picking MD talks utter rubbish about Universal Credit claimants

In the video, Clean Up Britain managing director, John Read, stands in a fly-tipping site. He talks the same amount of shit as he’s stood in when he says:

people who are recieving Universal Credit should be required to do at least four hours litter picking every single month.

He clarifies in the video that he just means unemployed Universal Credit claimants.

This is bad enough, but within Clean Up Britain’s 10 point action plan comes the real kicker. They think anyone who refuses to pick up rubbish should lose their benefits.

This, of course, is a vague as fuck soundbite that doesn’t contain any nuance. So it ignores many factors.

The first being that this is already (or should be) a paid job. People are paid to be litter pickers by councils. But with council budgets stretched, this would give them an excuse to cut jobs and make people do it for free. It’s a very slim possibility, but if this happened, someone could lose their job as a litter picker, have to claim Universal Credit, and then be forced to do their old job for free.

Using unemployed people as slave labour

In the video, Read says that if all the job seekers in the city did this, this city could be transformed. The important context here is that the city he’s talking about is Birmingham.  The reason those streets are full of rubbish is that the bin collectors have been on strike for the past 11 months.  They’re striking against pay cuts and for better pay progression.

So to propose that people work for free to clean up Birmingham is not only an insult to unemployed people, but to striking workers too.

Finally, unemployed people shouldn’t be expected to work for fucking free. There’s the argument from many that they’re working for free, they’re working for their benefit. But that’s not the gotcha my right-wing Twitter trolls think it is. The whole point of unemployment benefits is to support people while they’re out of work, looking for gainful employment. This could be employment, but instead it will be used to punish poor people.

And that’s the biggest problem with this: many of the British public would see this as something unemployed people deserve. And the government, which is already using the media to turn the public against claimants, would run with it. This would be used as a threat and punishment to further shame people who can’t find work.

Punishing the wrong people

Missing from this is, of course, disabled people. Would those who struggle in cold temperatures, can’t do physical tasks or have neurodivergent and mental health issues be forced to make their conditions worse? There’d probably be some clause in about “severe disabilities”, but this would miss out many disabled people. Especially if the way they’re trying prove many conditions aren’t real is anything to go by.

Litter picking has long traditionally been a part of community service sentenced after someone has committed crimes. So this would put unemployed people in the same category as literal criminals. Which isn’t that much of a stretch considering the DWP already treats claimants worse than criminals.

There’s also the fact that once again, we are blaming the wrong people for the destruction of the country and making them suffer the consequences. As well as their bullshit plan, Clean Up Britain also tweeted some stats about the national debt

BRITAIN is a three-quarters bankrupt country (at least). We can’t afford to be spending £1 BILLION a year on cleaning up litter.
We owe £2.9 TRILLION
We pay £275 million a day just in interest repayments
EVERY person in Britain owes £42,000 as their share of the national debt

Whilst we do have a huge national debt, it’s completely untrue that we all owe the same amount. The rich undoubtedly owe much more than a minimum wage worker. When the average minimum wage worker earns around £23,000 a year, and CEOs are on around £97,000 a year, how is this possibly fair?

Nobody deserves to work for free

More than anything, this is showing what the rich really think of unemployed people. That they don’t deserve real opportunities, so they should be forced to clean up the trash like them.

At the end of the day, people on Universal Credit are already made to feel shit about themselves at a time when they’re at their most vulnerable. Nobody should be forced into unpaid work all because they’re struggling to survive. And nobody should be made to feel that this is all they’re worthy of.

Featured image via the Canary

The Pentagon deployed AI technology linked to Palantir to kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. The AI program concerned, Claude, is integral to Palantir systems used by the US military. The settler-colonial state of Israel is Claude’s biggest per capita user.

Tech firm Anthropic developed the program. Claude is used within Palantir systems wielded by the Pentagon. Sources told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on 15 February the use of AI in the 3 January raid showed how:

AI models are gaining traction in the Pentagon.

But there is a problem. Anthropic has strict rules on military usage:

Anthropic’s usage guidelines prohibit Claude from being used to facilitate violence, develop weapons or conduct surveillance.

The sources said:

The deployment of Claude occurred through Anthropic’s partnership with data company Palantir Technologies, whose tools are commonly used by the Defense Department and federal law enforcement.

Anthropic’s programs can be used:

for everything from summarizing documents to controlling autonomous drones.

But could Anthropic’s ‘ethics guidelines’ have been breached?

Questions are being asked of Palantir

Questions were asked within the firm after the Caracas raid:

Following the raid, an employee at Anthropic asked a counterpart at Palantir how Claude was used in the operation, according to people familiar with the matter.

An Anthropic spokesperson said:

We cannot comment on whether Claude, or any other AI model, was used for any specific operation, classified or otherwise.

They added:

Any use of Claude—whether in the private sector or across government—is required to comply with our Usage Policies, which govern how Claude can be deployed. We work closely with our partners to ensure compliance.

The Open Tools tech website said Claude is a chatbot:

Claude, a chatbot developed by Anthropic, has seen diverse adoption patterns across the globe, with notable variances based on national economic statuses and technological infrastructure.

Open Tools reported that Israel in the highest per capita user of the program:

The Anthropic AI Usage Index (AUI) places Israel at the top of the leaderboard for Claude usage per capita, signifying not just a quantitative but qualitative edge in how AI is utilized across sectors in the country.

The WSJ reported Anthropic’s strict rules on ‘defence’ use might see the Pentagon divest. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the US military’s relationship with Anthropic was “under review”:

Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight.

Sources told WSJ the guidelines might endanger the $200mn contract awarded in summer 2025. Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei has:

 publicly expressed concern about AI’s use in autonomous lethal operations and domestic surveillance.

These are the “two major sticking points”

Defence secretary Pete Hegseth has said the US doesn’t want to use:

AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars.

Donald Trump’s shadow war in Latin America isn’t over, despite attention moving elsewhere after the 3 January Caracas raid.

Drones, raids and Israel

Nicolas Maduro is in a New York jail. Vice-president Delcy Rodriguez is running Venezuela in his absence. Venezuela’s left-wing government is still in power – if only in theory. Venezuela is shipping oil to Israel, for example.

The US was still hitting ‘narco’ boats in the Caribbean as of 13 February:

On Feb. 13, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known… pic.twitter.com/y50Pbtexfi

— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) February 14, 2026

The US boarded another tanker loaded with Venezuela oil on 15 February. This time in the Indian Ocean:

The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine —hoping to slip away. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down. No other nation has the reach, endurance, or will to do this.

We defend the Homeland forward. Distance does not protect you.

Overnight, U.S. forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding of the Veronica III without incident in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility.

The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s… pic.twitter.com/Tran3cLR9g

— Department of War 🇺🇸 (@DeptofWar) February 15, 2026

The US hasn’t finished its imperial interference in Latin American. The new Venezuelan leader is more pliable, but US piracy and drone strikes are still underway. The US has deeply embedded AI in its warfighting. Anthropic’s ethics might sink the Claude contract, but there are dozens of other AI firms ready to step in and take on lucrative military contracts.

Featured image via the Canary

Keir Starmer has told the Munich Security Conference that he’ll send the navy’s aircraft carrier group to the Arctic. The move is meant to appease US president Donald Trump who recently threatened to annex Greenland. In his speech on 14 February Starmer said:

I can announce today that the UK will deploy our Carrier Strike Group to the North Atlantic and the High North this year led by HMS Prince of Wales, operating alongside the US, Canada and other NATO allies in a powerful show of our commitment to Euro-Atlantic security.

Starmer also said he would increase the number of Royal Marines in Norway, alongside other measures:

Doubling our deployment of British commandos in the Arctic. Taking control of NATO’s Atlantic and Northern Command in Norfolk, Virginia. And transforming our Royal Navy by striking the biggest warship deal in British history with Norway.

You can listen to the full speech here:

Right on cue, defence minister Al Carns  – a former marine and rumoured coup candidate for Labour leadership – appeared 200 miles above the Arctic Circle:

-30°C. 200 miles above the Arctic Circle.

In the strategically vital High North, Britain’s Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron train where few others can.

Minister for the Armed Forces, Col @AlistairCarns, joined them in Norway. 🇳🇴

If you can operate here, you can operate… pic.twitter.com/I9Wv61JThg

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— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) February 16, 2026

It remains to be seen whether any of this will appease Donald Trump. So far in 2026, Trump has struck Venezuela, threatened various countries, and is amassing naval forces within striking distance of Iran.

Yet being a minion to US authority seems to be Starmer’s default response.

Starmer bowing to US

The US in turning inwards. In line with it’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the US focus in increasingly on the Western hemisphere. US secretary of state Marco Rubio told the conference Europe has to stand up for itself now:

We want Europe to be strong.  We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours, because we know because we know that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own.

He also lamented the imagined civilisational decay described in the NSS:

Controlling who and how many people enter our countries, this is not an expression of xenophobia.  It is not hate.  It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty… It is an urgent threat to the fabric of our societies and the survival of our civilization itself.

Trump appeared to back off annexing Greenland. Or rather he appeared to back off using force to do so. Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on 21 January, he said:

We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won’t do that.

I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.

Starmer can’t get a break at the moment. And, in fairness, it’s entirely his own fault. He is under fire at home over disgraced Labour grandee Peter Mandelson’s links to dead child rapist and power broker Jeffrey Epstein. He may not last much longer. Yet on what passes for a UK foreign policy – i.e., sucking up to Donald Trump – he has been remarkably consistent.

Featured image via the Canary

A coalition of Greater Manchester groups has announced a major campaign calling for opposition to Britain First’s upcoming ‘March for Remigration’ in the city.

The far-right fascist party, has previously announced its intention to host the march in Manchester city centre on 21 February 2026.

‘Resist Britain First’

Organisations from across Greater Manchester have launched a campaign, ‘Resist Britain First’, to oppose this march. It’s calling for people and groups across the country to stand together and oppose the march.

A spokespserson for Resist Britain First said:

Britain First’s ‘March for Remigration’ is a racist dogwhistle calling for a white supremacist ethnic cleansing of the United Kingdom by the forced expulsion of non-white people.

Britain First’s previous march led to multiple recorded instances of racism, homophobia, and violence by attendees of the march.

We call on people across the UK to come to Manchester to resist this racism on our streets and show that you do not support this bigotry.

Britain First is led by Paul Golding and Ashlea Simon, both of whom have made horrific racist statements in the past.

Simon once stated that “English people can’t be black” as “English blood is white”. Meanwhile Golding, a former member of the National Front, was convicted for his vile harassment of a mosque. Golding has also previously been accused of sexually assaulting one of the attendees of his marches.

Amongst those that organised Britain First’s last ‘March for Remigration’ in August was Lee Twamley, someone who himself has a conviction for people smuggling.

Golding publicly attended a Remembrance Sunday event at the Cenotaph drunk wearing women’s underwear on his head. Resist Britain First believes that all this information makes it clear that the party’s claim to be ‘Britain First’ is steeped in inconsistencies. They are racist thugs.

This comes against the backdrop of the Gorton and Denton by-election in Greater Manchester. Reform UK is happily amplifying the racist rhetoric of job-slashing Man United owner Jim Ratcliffe.

The full list of Greater Manchester based groups in Resist Britain First includes:

• Young Struggle Manchester.
• RS21 Manchester.
• Manchester Feminist Coalition.
• Greater Manchester Tenants Union, South Branch.
• No Borders Manchester.
• Northern Police Monitoring Project.
• Red Roots Collective.
• Anti-Fascist Action Manchester.
• South Asian Liberation Movement.
• Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly.
• Salford Anti-Fascists.
• Stockport Anti-Fascists.

Featured image Resist Britain First

Simon Bennett puts the current challenges to the rules-based world order such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine into historical context.

History repeats. In 1991, world leaders talked of the end of the Cold War. Some, like George H.W. Bush, claimed victory. Academic Francis Fukuyama posited the end of history. Such talk proved premature. Putin’s rise to power ended Russia’s experiment with liberal democracy. Stalin and Beria, head of the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s secret police, would feel at home in today’s Russia where press freedoms are curtailed, journalists persecuted, the political system gerrymandered and pacific neighbours such as Georgia and Ukraine invaded. During its war on Ukraine, Russia has kidnapped children, targeted non-military sites, destroyed energy infrastructure so people freeze, denied the developing world Ukrainian wheat and launched misinformation, disinformation and hybrid warfare campaigns against Ukraine’s allies.

The rules-based international order is in retreat as Russia, China and the US assert themselves. Imperialism – a soft power instrument – and colonialism – a hard power instrument – are in vogue. The doctrine of Might is Right is again to the fore. Putin’s war on Ukraine aims first, to recover that country to Moscow’s political orbit and secondly, to provide it a new source of raw materials, both mundane, such as coal, oil, methane and iron ore, and exotic, such as uranium and rare earth oxides (REOs).

Like Putin, Trump is asserting himself, albeit without waging all-out war. Trump’s tactics are subtler: First, hector the target. Denigrate its leaders. Patronise, belittle and misrepresent its people and security situation. If the target refuses to acquiesce, field soft-power instruments such as tariffs. If the target still refuses to acquiesce, threaten to take by force that which is coveted, for example, REOs. Presently, these tactics are being applied to Greenland and its champions.

Trump’s assertion that he wants to federate Greenland for security reasons is disingenuous – a false flag. Trump’s motivation is primarily economic. He covets Greenland’s oil, methane, uranium, nickel, titanium, tungsten, zinc, gold and diamonds. He most assuredly covets Greenland’s REOs. Geographical notes: ‘Estimates suggest that Greenland may have 42 million metric tonnes of rare earth oxides…. To put [that] into perspective… China currently has… 44 million metric tonnes of REOs’. Greenland is a glittering resource prize for any aspirant imperial-colonial power.

In seeking hegemony over Greenland, Trump is employing the imperial-colonial playbook used by European powers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Specifically:

• issue threats to test the subject’s resolve
• absentia a surrender, garrison the territory, possibly with a private army as Britain did India in the C18th through the East India Company
• install a puppet regime.

Given Trump’s ambivalence towards NATO , the fact that Greenland is linked to Denmark, a NATO member, is likely of little consequence to the US president.

Trump’s ambitions for Greenland should come as no surprise to those familiar with American foreign policy, as, like all great powers, the US has always meddled, sometimes with unexpected, if not catastrophic results. Eisenhower instructed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to depose Iran’s elected left-leaning leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh. In this effort the CIA was helped by Britain. Following Guatemalan left-leaning leader Jacob Arbenz Guzman’s seizure of American assets, Eisenhower instructed the CIA to destabilise his regime. During Eisenhower’s presidency the CIA trained Cuban exiles to unseat Fidel Castro. The decapitation plan, actioned in 1961 by Eisenhower’s successor, failed. In 1969, Nixon secretly bombed neutral Cambodia in an effort to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In 1970, US troops crossed into Cambodia.

In the 1930s, sociologist Robert K. Merton hypothesised that purposive social action may produce both expected outcomes (‘manifest functions’) and unexpected outcomes (‘latent functions’). Merton called undesirable latent functions ‘latent dysfunctions’. Eisenhower’s intervention in Iran brought Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power. While Pahlavi’s White Revolution emancipated Iran’s women, his secret police, SAVAK, coached by the CIA, imprisoned, tortured and disappeared thousands of political opponents. Persistent social inequality allied with SAVAK’s repression inspired the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that produced a theocratic regime as, if not more repressive than that fashioned by the Shah. Kennedy’s failed Cuba invasion likely cemented Castro’s hold on power. Nixon’s intervention in Cambodia breathed life into a sociopathic communist cadre known as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer emptied Cambodia’s cities and murdered anyone considered a threat to its Year Zero movement. Circa three million Cambodians were killed. It is not unreasonable to argue that Iran’s repressive regimes, Castro’s political longevity and Cambodia’s genocidal Year Zero movement were to some degree latent dysfunctions of American imperialism.

Practising strategic empathy, with disinterested geopolitics experts gameplaying outcomes from interventions, can help leaders avoid foreign adventures that risk accruing more costs, for example, loss of life, treasure, reputation and allies’ good will, than benefits.

Strategic empathy and gameplay can help Greenland’s allies scope what might happen to the territory. With an expanding American military at his back, Trump has the option of defying the rules-based international order and taking Greenland by force. Greenland is roughly the size of western Europe. If Trump invades, what is to stop Russia and China, perhaps acting in concert gratis their 2022 ‘no-limits’ friendship pact and numerous subsequent joint military exercises, emulating Trump’s tactics? They, too, could seize Greenlandic territory. Greenland could find itself being carved up by Russia, China and the US in the same way that Africa was carved up by Germany, Belgium, Britain and other powers in the 19th century. Were Greenland to be invaded by America’s geopolitical competitors, where would that leave Trump’s plan to exploit Greenland’s resources and secure the northern border? Further, where would that leave NATO, for decades one of the guarantors of the rules-based international order? If such an event came to pass, it is unlikely Trump, who eschews confrontations that involve putting boots on the ground, would join battle with the Russia-China axis. In this scenario, Trumpian colonialism would have rendered the US less secure. In Merton’s argot, it would have delivered to the US a latent dysfunction.

Decision-support instruments, strategic empathy and gameplay should be at the heart of foreign policy decision-making. Skilfully practiced, the instruments can help leaders first, gameplay third party perceptions and reactions, and secondly, make decisions that see objectives achieved with minimal risk.