The world is in great turmoil now, at a time when it is also perilously rudderless. America is the one nation that has the capacity to take charge of this teetering globe and right the ship. To fulfill that urgent role, our leaders must speak and act responsibly. After all, effective leadership requires possession of a great deal of moral authority.

I have thought all along that President-elect Trump’s frequent expressions of desire to buy Greenland from Denmark was some type of joke. But I was seriously troubled by this article in today’s issue of the Wall Street Journal. It mentions Mr. Trump’s threat to use both military and economic measures to take control of Greenland. He is quoted as saying that “People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to [Greenland], but if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security.”

That is quite a bizarre thing for a modern-day American president to say. As far as I know, the U.S. does not have a historical claim of any sort to Greenland. And Mr. Trump has not bothered to explain to anyone the basis upon which he is issuing those threats. In addition to this confrontation with Denmark over Greenland, the president-elect has made equally casual and problematic statements about Canada and Panama.

Mr. Trump is said to be a huge fan of the Monroe Doctrine. I argued recently that that doctrine should be dead and buried. We no longer live in a nineteenth century world where slavery and colonialism were largely unchallenged practices. That is how America was able to throw its weight around during that time and make demands of weaker nations, in the manner that the president-elect is doing with Denmark, Canada, and Panama today. This behavior shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone in Washington or anywhere in America today.

Currently, there is one authoritarian who is actively using force in his effort to subjugate another sovereign nation. America and its staunch allies have spent the past three years telling the world that such actions cannot be tolerated. Canada and Denmark happen to be two of those allies that have joined the U.S. to forcefully make this argument. What are the leaders and citizens of those two countries supposed to think about us when we sit silently and allow our incoming president to verbally bully them in such fashion?

Millions of Americans voted for Mr. Trump last November to fix some basic problems facing the nation. He should devote his time and energy to those issues. This fixation on Greenland is quite an unnecessary distraction.

It is a great disappointment that there has been no visible pushback from anyone in Washington on this rhetoric. The president-elect is wasting precious moral capital needlessly. The country needs some authority figures to speak up, and soon.