The painful questions for Nato and the EU if Trump takes Greenland

On Tuesday, the so-called Coalition of Volunteers, comprised mostly of European leaders, met in Paris with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys to try to make further progress on a sustainable peace deal for Ukraine.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that the plan to end the war with Russia was “90 percent of it,” no one in that room wanted to jeopardize keeping Americans on board.

But in that great big field there was a huge Greenland-shaped elephant. glittering Paris meeting.

Greenland is the world’s largest island; It is six times the size of Germany. It is located in the Arctic but is an autonomous region of Denmark.

And Donald Trump insists he wants it; The USA needs this for its national security.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Federiksen was at the Paris meeting. He is an important EU ally of many of the leaders involved; An important NATO ally of the United Kingdom.

None of these countries want to risk antagonizing Donald Trump, but as political temperatures rise in Washington and Copenhagen, six major European powers, including Britain, France and Germany, have issued a joint statement on the issue. On the sidelines of Ukraine talks.

They said that security in the Arctic should be ensured collectively, together with NATO allies, including the United States, and that decisions on issues affecting Denmark and Greenland belong only to Denmark and Greenland.

But was this really enough to contain Trump’s ambitions?

The answer came within a few hours: No.

The White House issued its own statement that it was “discussing a number of options” for acquiring Greenland, all of which were unilateral, including the purchase of the island.

Chillingly for European leaders, a White House statement delivered by press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that “using the U.S. military has always been an option at the disposal of the Commander in Chief.”

This is far from the first time Trump has expressed his intention to take Greenland, but especially during his first term as president, many in Europe have scoffed at the idea—behind closed doors.

But no one is laughing anymore after the Trump administration’s controversial military intervention in Venezuela over the weekend.

The Danish prime minister said Trump’s intentions on Greenland should be taken seriously, and leaders left the Ukraine meeting quite worried indeed.

Consider the irony at play here. Immediately after the United States militarily attacked sovereign Venezuela and detained its president, while continuing to actively threaten the sovereignty of another European country (Denmark), numerous European national leaders and other leaders, including NATO and the EU, are seeking to engage the Trump administration to protect the future sovereignty of a European country (Ukraine) against the aggressive territorial ambitions of a foreign power (Russia).

To make the matter even more striking, Denmark and the United States are both members of the transatlantic alliance NATO.

According to Copenhagen, they are extremely close allies. Or it was.

Denmark says if the Trump administration unilaterally seizes Greenland, it would mean the end of the transatlantic defense alliance that Europe has relied on for its security since the end of World War II.

Copenhagen tried to engage the Trump administration regarding Greenland.

According to the bilateral agreement, the USA has a military base in Greenland, established at the beginning of the Cold War. It reduced the number of personnel there from 10,000 to around 200 during the height of Cold War operations, and the United States has been accused of not taking its eyes off Arctic Security for a long time.

Denmark recently pledged to invest $4 billion in Greenland defense, including boats, drones and planes.

But the Trump administration has shown no interest in talking to the Danes.

On Sunday, President Trump insisted that Greenland is very strategic right now: “Right now Greenland is covered in Russian and Chinese ships. We need Greenland for national security, and Denmark won’t be able to do that.”

Denmark denies this last statement.

“This whole situation has once again underlined Europe’s fundamental weakness in the face of Trump,” said an EU official who spoke to me on condition of anonymity.

While Denmark’s Scandinavian neighbors immediately rushed to verbal defense following Trump’s comments on Greenland over the weekend, Europe’s so-called Big Three (London, Paris and Berlin) initially remained deafeningly silent.

In the end, only Denmark and Greenland can decide the island’s future, British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also made a similar statement in the past. Emmanuel Macron visited Greenland in December as a sign of solidarity with Copenhagen. And today the joint statement came.

However, the declaration did not specifically include direct criticism of the United States.

“If there were a joint statement from the 27 EU partners, as well as NATO ally the United Kingdom, supporting Denmark’s sovereignty, that would send a strong message to Washington,” Camille Grande of the European Council on Foreign Relations told me. He served as Deputy Secretary General for Defense Investments at NATO between 2016 and 2022.

However, only six of Denmark’s European allies issued this statement together.

And this is the crux of the matter. His outspoken attitude, which some have called Trump’s bullying tactics, has made European leaders extremely uneasy.

Rather than stand up individually or together and risk confronting the US president and facing possible consequences, they often chose to lead the US president in order to preserve bilateral relations.

In the new world of Great Power Politics that we now live in, dominated by the US and China, as well as others such as Russia and India, Europe appears to be at best on the sidelines and in danger of being trampled underfoot.

Every year when I cover EU policies, the bloc promises to play a bigger role on the global stage, but has looked decidedly weak when it comes to Trump.

At the end of last year, the EU failed to fulfill its commitment to provide financial support to Ukraine using Russian state assets frozen in the EU. They found the money through other means, but critics say the bloc publicly missed sending a potentially strong message to both Moscow and the Trump administration, which has repeatedly dismissed the bloc as weak.

And in an area where the EU has long flaunted itself internationally: as a major trading power, it has once again chosen to defer to Trump.

When the EU imposed 15 percent tariffs on its goods last year, the bloc swallowed its pride and vowed not to retaliate; because he was afraid of losing the US support he relied on for the security and defense of this continent.

And now there is Greenland and Denmark; EU countries are deeply divided over their stance towards the Trump administration and therefore how far they would yield for Copenhagen.

As a result, this situation “risks tearing the EU apart” and is also an existential dilemma for NATO, Juliane Smith, the US ambassador to NATO until Trump was re-elected, told me.

Denmark’s prime minister warned on Monday that unilateral US action on Greenland could completely disrupt the NATO alliance.

Some might point out that Donald Trump has never been a big fan of the transatlantic alliance.

“Europe should take President Trump and his team seriously when they talk about ‘getting’ Greenland,” Julianne Smith told me.

“This means doing more than calling for restraint. Europe’s leading powers may want to start contingency planning; consider how they can make the most of [of international meetings, such as] the upcoming Munich Security Conference and Davos, where senior US officials will attend; “And also consider bold and innovative ideas like new defense agreements.”

NATO agreements do not distinguish between attacks on an ally from foreign countries or from another NATO ally; But there is an understanding that the alliance’s Article 5, called “all for one, one for all,” does not apply to one NATO country attacking another.

Take, for example, the conflict between member states Türkiye and Greece over Cyprus. The worst of the violence occurred during the Turkish invasion in 1974. NATO did not intervene, but its most powerful member, the United States, was able to help mediate.

Going back to geography, Denmark is one of NATO’s junior allies, although it is very active. The USA is the largest, most powerful member of NATO. So far.

A deep-rooted uneasiness is now felt in Europe.

The major European powers may have issued a joint statement underlining that NATO was a forum to discuss the security of the Arctic and insisting that only Denmark and Greenland could decide the future of the island; But how far can the United Kingdom, France, Germany and others actually go to guarantee this sovereignty?

“No one is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” the White House deputy chief of staff said in an interview with CNN on Monday.

“Europeans need to reduce their security dependence on the United States and speak with one voice,” ECFR’s Camille Grande told me about the tensions at the Greenland point – she says it again.

Last summer, Trump committed all NATO allies except Spain to greatly increase their defense spending.

But Europe is still heavily dependent on the United States in many areas, including intelligence gathering, command and control, and air capabilities. Washington is well aware of this.

Nato insiders say that even in meetings now held behind closed doors, the alliance’s European member states would not dare consider what might happen if Washington attacked Greenland militarily.

They may have to.

Top image credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images

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