Donald Trump has increasingly ramped up the rhetoric concerning a possible takeover of Greenland by the US. Photo / Getty Images
Britain and Europe appear hopelessly weak in the face of United States President Donald Trump’s threats over Greenland.
European efforts to calm the mercurial US President’s desire for the island with a joint military mission to the Arctic have backfired.
Trump is now warning that he will hit the United Kingdom and its European allies with tariffs unless Denmark sells him Greenland.
It is a classic example of “escalation dominance”, where a superior military power in a conflict uses its heft to ratchet pressure up or down.
So what happens next in the Greenland crisis? Here are Europe’s four main options.
Which is more important to European Nato allies: the US security umbrella or the Danish sovereignty of an Arctic island with around 57,000 inhabitants?
No European leader has so far been willing to answer that painful question.
Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, said Europe was too weak to counter Russian and Chinese threats in the Arctic region.
He said: “Europeans project weakness, the US projects strength. The President believes enhanced security is not possible without Greenland being part of the US.”
Europe desperately needs Trump, not only for its own security but for Ukraine’s sake. Continental leaders have stomached trade tariffs in deals they believed were necessary to keep the US President on side.
They have also told Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s President, to consider territorial concessions to Russia as part of Trump’s efforts to end the long-running war.
The surrender of Greenland would not come as a shock to those who have been calling for Europe – including the UK – to show some guts and stand up to Trump.
But without Washington’s security umbrella, there is the frightening possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin using the breakdown of US-Europe relations to stage an incursion into a Nato member country.
Would Trump, who revealed more about his motives in a letter to Jonas Gahr Storeon today, come to the aid of whatever territory was unfortunate enough to suffer the brunt of a Russian attack?
Most would suggest not, with the President opting to sit on the sidelines, opting to play the role of mediator between Moscow and Europe.
The European Union is drawing up a list of US products, such as Kentucky bourbon, to hit with retaliatory tariffs worth about €93 billion ($187b).
However, Brussels has threatened this before, then not actually imposed the taxes, preferring to de-escalate tensions rather than risk a costly trade war with the US.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer does not want to hit the US with UK tit-for-tat tariffs.
Last year, Trump imposed a higher 15% tax on EU goods and 10% on UK products. European attitudes are hardening after Trump took the failure to retaliate last year for weakness.
The EU lacks hard power but it does have a single market of some 460 million consumers, and a new and untested trade defence tool.
The EU’s Anti-coercion Instrument – the bloc’s “trade bazooka” – was designed primarily as a counter to Chinese economic blackmail against EU members.
Now Emmanuel Macron, the French President, with support from Germany, wants Brussels to use it to shut American firms out of the lucrative single market.
Denmark has also said that Europe would not be “blackmailed” by the US. But there is a risk that deploying the bazooka could trigger an all-out trade war the West can ill afford.
Opposition to the bazooka is led by Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s Prime Minister and the bloc’s “Trump whisperer”.
Meloni has criticised Trump over Greenland, but sees the bazooka as a provocation too far, and blames the current crisis on a misunderstanding over the military mission.
The “bazooka” could be used if a population-weighted majority of the EU’s 27 member states were in favour. But using it would require as much political support and public unity as possible.
EU divisions are likely to delay or water down decisive action before bloc leaders meet on Friday, and favour attempts to negotiate with Trump at this week’s Davos summit.
When the Argentinians occupied the Falkland Islands in 1982, they did so with an invasion force 10 times larger than the contingent of Royal Marines stationed there, who were soon on a flight home.
Intelligence gathered by Buenos Aires led them to believe the UK would not try to reclaim the territory, but that proved to be a major miscalculation.
A US invasion of Greenland could play out in a similar fashion, but with one key difference: Denmark and its European Nato allies do not have the stomach for a fight with America.
The US military could comfortably land 10,000 troops on the Arctic island in an hour-long window.
Perhaps a symbolic shot or two would be fired in anger, but Danish troops would soon be on their way back to Copenhagen after a fight lasting a matter of minutes.
Greenland would soon be recognised as a US territory and the Europeans would have to suck up their pride and continue any day-to-day business with Washington.
Autocratic leaders such as Putin and Xi Jinping would feel emboldened in their own neo-imperial land grabs.
Dependence on US security makes Britain and the rest of Europe hopelessly vulnerable to Trump’s “escalation dominance”.
Europe, including the UK, have neglected defence spending since the end of the Cold War while ignoring the warnings of the first Trump presidency and Putin’s seizure of Crimea.
Now, they must play catch-up, and try to hit Nato defence spending targets despite very tight public budgets.
Optimists point to how the bloc recovered from a shaky start in the Coronavirus pandemic to become a major vaccine manufacturer and exporter.
Germany has vowed to overhaul its long-neglected army; France and Poland have increased defence spending, and Britain is looking to take part in EU loans-for-weapons programmes.
Experts say Europe could build up a credible deterrence against Russia in five years, but many believe true military self-sufficiency would take decades.
There are big gaps, such as in long-range strike capabilities, logistics, ammunition, and air and missile defence, which would take a long time to fill.
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