NATO and EU face painful questions if Trump seizes Greenland

A so-called “coalition of the willing” composed mainly of European leaders met with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy in Paris on Tuesday to try to make further progress on a sustainable peace deal in Ukraine.

With Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisting that plans to end the war with Russia are “90 percent complete,” no one in the room wanted to risk keeping Americans on board.

But in that grand and majestic building, there is a huge elephant in the shape of Greenland. The glittering Paris conference.

Greenland is the world’s largest island – six times the size of Germany. It is located in the Arctic, but it is an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Donald Trump insists he wants it; America’s national security requires it.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Federiksen attended the Paris meeting. She is a key EU ally to many of the leaders present. An important NATO ally of the UK.

None of these countries want to risk confronting Donald Trump, but as politics heats up in Washington and Copenhagen, six European powers, including Britain, France and Germany, issued a joint statement on the issue. On the sidelines of Ukraine talks.

They said Arctic security should be achieved jointly with NATO allies, including the United States, and that matters concerning Denmark and Greenland should be decided independently by Denmark and Greenland.

But is this really enough to curb Trump’s ambitions?

The answer came within a few hours: no.

The White House issued its own statement saying it was “discussing a range of options to acquire Greenland” – all of which are unilateral and include purchasing the island.

In a move that chilled European leaders, a White House communiqué issued by press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said “the use of U.S. military forces is always an option available to the commander in chief.”

Now, this is far from the first time Trump has expressed his intention to occupy Greenland, but especially during his first term as president, many Europeans privately teased the idea.

But after the Trump administration’s controversial military intervention in Venezuela over the weekend, no one was smiling anymore.

Denmark’s prime minister said Trump’s intentions regarding Greenland should be taken seriously and that the leaders were indeed very worried at the end of their meeting in Ukraine.

Consider the irony here. Just after the United States military attacked sovereign Venezuela and detained its president, several European countries and other leaders, including NATO and the European Union, are trying to work with the Trump administration to defend the future sovereignty of one European country (Ukraine) against the aggressive territorial ambitions of an outside power (Russia), while also continuing to actively threaten the sovereignty of another European country (Denmark).

Even more tellingly, both Denmark and the United States are members of the transatlantic alliance NATO.

According to Copenhagen, they are extremely close allies. Or so.

Denmark says a unilateral occupation of Greenland by the Trump administration would be the end of the transatlantic defense alliance on which Europe has relied for security since the end of World War II.

Some may note that Trump has never been a big fan of NATO. To say the least.

Copenhagen attempts to engage with the Trump administration over Greenland.

The United States already has a military base in Greenland, which was established early in the Cold War, under a bilateral agreement. It has reduced the number of personnel there from about 10,000 at the height of Cold War operations to about 200, and the United States has long been accused of neglecting Arctic security until now.

Denmark recently committed $4 billion to Greenland’s defense, including ships, drones and aircraft.

But the Trump administration has shown no interest in dialogue with the Danes.

On Sunday, President Trump insisted that Greenland is: “It’s strategically important right now, and Greenland is full of Russian and Chinese ships. From a national security perspective, we need Greenland, and Denmark can’t do that.”

Denmark disputed that last statement.

An EU official told me on condition of anonymity that “the whole situation once again highlights Europe’s fundamental weakness vis-à-vis Trump.”

While Denmark’s Nordic neighbors immediately verbally defended Trump following his weekend comments about Greenland, Europe’s so-called Big Three – London, Paris and Berlin – initially maintained a deafening silence.

Ultimately, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday that Denmark and Greenland could individually decide the island’s future. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said similar things in the past.

Emmanuel Macron visited Greenland in December to express solidarity with Copenhagen. A joint statement was issued today.

But there was a conspicuous absence of direct criticism of the United States in the communiqué.

“If all 27 EU partners plus NATO ally Britain issued a joint statement supporting Danish sovereignty, it would send a strong message to Washington,” Camille Grande of the European Council on Foreign Relations, who served as NATO assistant secretary-general for defense investment from 2016 to 2022, told me.

But only six of Denmark’s European allies jointly issued the statement.

This is the crux of the matter. Trump’s forthright attitude, what some call his bullying tactics, has European leaders on edge.

They often choose to try to manage the President of the United States, often to preserve bilateral relations, rather than stand up individually or together and risk confronting the President of the United States and facing potential consequences.

In the new world of great power politics we now find ourselves in, dominated by the United States and China and others such as Russia and India, Europe looks at best on the sidelines and risks being stepped on.

Every year I cover EU politics, the bloc promises a greater role on the global stage but looks decidedly weak when it comes to Trump.

Late 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 funding through other means, but critics say the EU very publicly missed sending a potentially strong message to Moscow and the Trump administration, which has repeatedly viewed the bloc as weak.

The EU has once again chosen to defer to Trump in an area where it has long flexed its muscles internationally – as a giant trading power.

When he imposed 15% tariffs on EU goods last year, the EU swallowed its pride and promised not to retaliate because it feared losing U.S. support for the continent’s security and defense, insiders said.

And now there are Greenland and Denmark – EU countries deeply divided over their approach to the Trump administration, so how far they might go to risk Copenhagen.

As a result, Julianne Smith, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO before Trump was re-elected as president, told me that this situation “risks undermining the EU” and would become an existential dilemma for NATO.

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

“That means doing more than just urging restraint. Europe’s major powers may want to start contingency planning; consider how to make the most of (international conferences such as) the upcoming Munich Security Conference and Davos, where senior U.S. officials will attend; and consider bold and innovative ideas, such as a new defense treaty.”

The NATO treaty does not distinguish between an attack on an ally from an outside country or another NATO ally, but there is an understanding that the alliance’s Article 5 (nicknamed the “one size fits all” and “one size fits all” provisions) does not apply to one NATO country attacking another NATO country.

Take the conflict over Cyprus between member states Türkiye and Greece. The worst violence was the Turkish invasion in 1974. NATO is not involved, but its most powerful member, the United States, is able to help mediate.

If we go back to geography, Denmark is one of NATO’s smaller allies, albeit a very active one. The United States is the largest and most powerful member of NATO. so far.

The current deep-seated tensions in Europe are palpable.

European powers may have issued a joint statement emphasizing NATO as the forum for discussing Arctic security and insisting that only Denmark and Greenland can determine the future of the archipelago, but how far will Britain, France, Germany and others actually go to guarantee that sovereignty?

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

ECFR’s Camille Grande told me of the tensions over Greenland that – again – “Europeans need to rely less on the United States for security and speak with one voice.”

Last summer, Trump got all NATO allies except Spain to commit to significant increases in defense spending.

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

NATO insiders say that currently, even behind closed doors, NATO’s European members are having a hard time thinking about what would happen if Washington intervened militarily in Greenland.

They may have to.

Top image credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images

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