White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said that the 'formal position' of the US is that Greenland should be American for national security reasons, and that it was President Donald Trump’s for the taking. Photo / Juliette Pavy, for The Washington Post
For the past year, European friends-turned-frenemies of the United States have delicately navigated one shock after another, hoping for the best as US President Donald Trump threatened to lay waste to the global order.
When Trump scolded Nato allies, lambasted Ukraine’s president, laid on tariffs and framed ratified treaties as conditional deals, the go-to play by European leaders was to placate - with military spending pledges, trade concessions, disciplined summits, in language scrubbed of morality or judgment.
It wasn’t always elegant, or dignified, but the policy of strategic acquiescence seemed to be working, sort of.
US arms kept flowing to Ukraine, an all-out trade war was averted, and Trump deigned to say some nice things about Nato.
Then came the strikes that rocked Caracas, explosions that echoed in capitals around the world.
Governments that spent years preaching restraint, legality and multilateralism found themselves scrambling for words to express unease without triggering Trump’s fury.
The precarious strategy of managing Trump, rather than confronting him, looked more exposed when the US President and his inner circle revived their talk of “getting” Greenland and even floated the idea of military action.
To European ears, it sounded less like bluster than a retrograde worldview now backed by unvarnished American might: power over process, leverage over law, loyalty conditioned on utility.
“It’s approaching a full-on existential crisis,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
“It could be far greater than Russia invading Ukraine because Russia is an adversary. Now, it’s the guarantor of European security undermining European security.”
Where many European leaders’ reactions to the Venezuela raid were muted, caveated or outsourced to legal abstractions about the United Nations Charter, European leaders came out with uncommonly forceful rebukes about the Trump Administration’s greediness over Greenland.
The prime minister of Denmark, a Nato member, said a US action on Greenland, a territory of the kingdom of Denmark for more than 300 years, would be the end of the alliance.
Leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Britain closed ranks with Copenhagen, issuing a joint statement that Greenland’s future is a matter for “Denmark and Greenland, and them only”.
Denmark and Greenland have stated emphatically, and repeatedly, that the huge Arctic territory - sparsely populated with 57,000 mostly Indigenous residents and boasting potentially rich deposits of rare earth minerals - is not for sale.
Greenland is officially designated as an autonomous region, and residents say they have no intention of living under the yoke of a new colonial ruler.
Trump, posting on Truth Social today seemed to bristle at suggestions that he was endangering Nato, boasting that he had pressured allies to raise spending. “Most weren’t paying their bills, UNTIL I CAME ALONG,” Trump wrote.
“RUSSIA AND CHINA HAVE ZERO FEAR OF NATO WITHOUT THE UNITED STATES, AND I DOUBT NATO WOULD BE THERE FOR US IF WE REALLY NEEDED THEM,” Trump said.
“EVERYONE IS LUCKY THAT I REBUILT OUR MILITARY IN MY FIRST TERM, AND CONTINUE TO DO SO. We will always be there for NATO, even if they won’t be there for us.”
Numerous commentators, after Trump’s post, pointed out that Nato had indeed sprung to America’s aid after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, invoking the alliance’s collective defence mechanism for the first and only time in its history within 24 hours of the events.
Numerous Nato members deployed tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan in Washington’s war to clear the country of the Taliban.
With Greenland, however, conflicting signals from Washington have only heightened the anxiety.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday told lawmakers in a closed briefing that Trump’s goal is to buy Greenland from Denmark, playing down military action.
A day later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump and his team are “discussing a range of options” and that “utilising the US military is always an option at the commander in chief’s disposal”.
Today, House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) discounted the likelihood of force.
“The US always has military options for everything,” Johnson told reporters. “I think with Greenland it’s very clear that we are working through diplomatic channels.”
Rubio told reporters that US and Danish officials would meet to discuss Greenland next week, without offering details.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for more details. The Danish Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
Europe had been riding out Trump’s shocks, betting there would be limits. To many, those bets now look much riskier.
Nato has survived clashing allies before.
Greece and Turkey, notably, have been in a standoff since Turkish forces occupied northern Cyprus in 1974. But, as Rahman noted, the US, Nato’s wealthiest and most powerful member, was instrumental in mediating that rift.
“Now it is causing it,” he said.
“Nato can’t survive a forceful annexation. The alliance would be meaningless even if it continues to exist on paper.”
Tensions over Greenland’s status were already escalating even before the Venezuela raid.
In December, Trump appointed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (R) as his “special envoy to Greenland”, a post Denmark and Greenland rejected. Landry embraced the goal of working to “make Greenland a part of the US”.
The Danish Government called in US diplomats to personally object to Landry’s comments, the second time in recent months Denmark summoned American officials for a face-to-face wrist-slap as it reached for Greenland.
After the Caracas operation, the rhetoric grew edgier and - following Trump’s effective takeover of a sovereign neighbour - far more believable.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on Tuesday that the “formal position” of the US is that Greenland should be American for national security reasons and, that essentially, it was Trump’s for the taking.
“Nobody’s going to fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller said.
Miller’s wife posted an image of the American flag superimposed on a map of Greenland with the caption “SOON”.
“It’s clear that some people in and adjacent to the Administration felt empowered by the success of the operation,” said Heather Hurlburt, an associate fellow in the Americas Programme at Chatham House, the London-based think-tank.
Hurlburt cited a retired US general who viewed the White House move in Venezuela and its fixation on Greenland as reminiscent of teenagers playing the geostrategic board game Risk.
“Once you start down the road of the Monroe Doctrine or the ‘Donroe’ doctrine, or whatever we’re saying now, you look at a map of the Western Hemisphere, and there is Greenland,” she said.
Whether it is gaming or grasping, European leaders face unpalatable choices.
One is to stick with the unified hard line that emerged in recent days, making it clear that any move on Greenland could trigger a response by European allies - not against Russia or China but, unthinkably, against the US.
Invoking the Nato treaties collective defence clause, known as Article 5, under which an attack on one member is regarded as an attack on all, requires the unanimity of all 32 allies. The US, of course, would reject any plea for help by Denmark - effectively neutering the treaty.
“Article 5 did not anticipate that the invading country would be a member of Nato,” Senator Chris Murphy (Democrat-Connecticut) told reporters asking about a bill in Congress to prohibit Trump from acting in Greenland.
Military experts say Denmark and Greenland would stand no chance against American military might.
In reality that is a non-starter in every way. Political analysts across the board agree with Miller that no one will go to war over Greenland. Europe is too dependent on the US militarily and economically to risk a true break.
But the mere prospect of such conflict only highlights how much more difficult it is now for US allies to toe the line with Trump.
That, too, could lead to a drastic deterioration of the transatlantic alliance if not its end, analysts say.
“Many European countries are still seeking to ride both a European and an American horse,” Rahman said. “That may become impossible.”
Another option would be to make a deal on Greenland - a sale or lease, with expanded access to mineral rights, and US role in security.
In the event of a crisis, “the rest of Europe will lean on Denmark to make some kind of arrangement with the US”, Rahman said.
A Louisiana Purchase-style transaction may be the least likely. Danish law recognises Greenlanders as a people with the right to decide their own future, meaning Copenhagen cannot barter the island away even if it wanted to.
Any change in sovereignty would first require Greenland to choose independence - a separate legal, electoral process - before it could negotiate anything with Washington.
Politically, there is deep public resistance in both countries to any transfer of sovereignty.
A YouGov poll last year found that 78% of Danes oppose selling the island to the US, while 85% of Greenland residents said in a separate survey that they do not want to be part of the US. The office of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen declined to comment.
Some European officials are arguing quietly that the pushback coming from European capitals may be counterproductive.
A flat “no” never sits well with Trump, they point out, and his most hard-line supporters delight in turning up the volume whenever the White House is challenged.
“This Administration, when provoked, doubles down,” said a European diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
“That’s a bit dangerous at the moment. We should be saying there are indeed serious security concerns in the Arctic and how do we go about addressing them together.”
European militaries largely agree with Trump that the icy northern reaches of the Atlantic are going to be a strategic hot spot in coming decades, an obvious pathway for Chinese missiles and Russian submarines.
Many say there would be little resistance to any US plans to beef up its presence around the territory, which is already covered by Nato and numerous bilateral agreements between Washington and Denmark, and where the US already has a military base.
Their fear, which has spiked since the White House delivered its object lesson in Venezuela, is that the old protocols really may be out the window.
And their bigger fear may simply be: what comes next?
- Adam Taylor contributed to this report.
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