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

On Tuesday, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, largely made up of European leaders, met in Paris with envoys of US President Donald Trump, to try to make further progress on a sustainable peace deal for Ukraine.

With Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky insisting a plan to end the war with Russia is “90% of the way there”, no-one in that room wanted to jeopardise keeping the Americans onboard.

But there was an immense Greenland-shaped elephant in that grand and glittering Paris meeting.

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

And Donald Trump insists he wants it; needs it for US national security.

Denmark’s prime minister Mette Federiksen was at the Paris meeting. She’s a key EU ally of many of the leaders attending; a key Nato ally of the United Kingdom.

None of those countries want to risk antagonising Donald Trump but with the political temperature rising in Washington and in Copenhagen, six big European powers, including the UK, France and Germany, issued a joint statement on the sidelines of the Ukraine talks.

They said that security in the Arctic should be achieved collectively, together with Nato allies including the United States, and that it was for Denmark and Greenland alone to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.

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

The answer came within hours: No.

The White House released its own statement that it is “discussing a range of options” to acquire Greenland – all of them unilateral, including buying the island.

Chillingly for Europe’s leaders, the White House communique, delivered by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, said that “utilising the US military is always an option at the Commander-in-Chief’s disposal”.

Now, this is far from the first time that Trump has expressed his intention to take Greenland but, especially in his first term as president, many in Europe – behind closed doors – made fun of the idea.

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

Denmark’s prime minister said Trump’s intentions over Greenland should be taken seriously and leaders left the Ukraine meeting very worried indeed.

Consider the irony at play here. Multiple European national and other leaders, including of Nato and the EU, are trying to engage the Trump administration in safeguarding the future sovereignty of a European country (Ukraine) against the aggressive territorial ambitions of an outside force (Russia), just after the US has swooped into sovereign Venezuela militarily, taking its president into custody, while also continuing to actively threaten the sovereignty of another European nation (Denmark).

To make matters even more stark – Denmark and the US are both members of the transatlantic alliance Nato.

They are, according to Copenhagen, extremely close allies. Or were.

Denmark says that if the Trump administration takes Greenland unilaterally, that will be the end of the transatlantic defence alliance that Europe has relied on for its security since the end of World War Two.

Some might note that Trump has never been a big Nato fan. To say the least.

Copenhagen has tried to engage the Trump administration over Greenland.

Under a bilateral agreement, the US has a military base already on Greenland – established at the beginning of the Cold War. It has reduced the number of personnel there from around 10,000 during peak Cold War operations to around 200 and the US has long been accused of taking its eye off Arctic Security, until now.

For its part, Denmark recently pledged to invest $4 billion in Greenland defence including boats, drones and aircraft.

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

On Sunday President Trump insisted that Greenland was: “so strategic right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”

Denmark refutes that last statement.

Speaking to me on condition of anonymity one EU official told me “This whole situation has just underlined – once again – Europe’s fundamental weakness vis-a-vis Trump.”

While Denmark’s Nordic neighbours immediately rushed verbally to its defence after Trump’s weekend comments on Greenland, initially there was deafening silence from Europe’s so-called Big Three – London, Paris and Berlin.

Eventually, UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday that Denmark and Greenland alone could decide the island’s future. Germany’s Chancellor, Friedrich Merz has said similar in the past.

Emmanuel Macron visited Greenland in December in a gesture of solidarity with Copenhagen. And today came the joint statement.

But direct criticism of the US was notably absent from the communique.

“Had there been a common statement from all 27 EU partners, plus NATO ally the UK, in support of Danish sovereignty, that would have sent a powerful message to Washington,” Camille Grande of the European Council on Foreign Relations told me. He was Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment at Nato from 2016 to 2022.

But only six of Denmark’s European allies issued that statement together.

And this is the crux of the matter. Trump’s forthright manner, some call them his bullying tactics, have made European leaders extremely nervous.

They’ve generally chosen to try to manage the US president, often in an attempt to safeguard bilateral relations, rather than stand up individually or together, and risk confronting the US president and facing potential consequences.

In the new world of Big Power Politics we now inhabit, where the US and China, along with others like Russia and India, dominate, Europe at best looks like it’s standing on the sidelines, and risks being trampled underfoot.

Every year I have covered EU politics, the bloc pledges to play a greater role on the global stage, but when it comes to Trump, it has looked decidedly weak.

At the end of last year, the EU failed to fulfil a pledge to financially support Ukraine using Russian state assets frozen in the EU. They found the money by other means, but critics say the bloc very publicly missed sending a potentially strong message both to Moscow and to the Trump administration, that has repeatedly dismissed the bloc as feeble.

And in the one area where the EU has long strutted internationally – as a huge trading power, it has chosen once again to defer to Trump.

When he slapped 15% tariffs on EU goods last year, the bloc swallowed its pride and promised not to retaliate, insiders say because it feared losing US support this continent relies on for its security and defence.

And now there’s Greenland and Denmark – where EU countries are deeply divided in their attitudes towards the Trump administration and therefore to what extent they might stick their neck out for Copenhagen.

As a result, Juliane Smith, the US ambassador to Nato until Trump’s re-election as president, told me this situation “risks breaking the EU” as well as being an existential dilemma for Nato.

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

“That means doing more than urging restraint. The leading powers in Europe may want to begin contingency planning; consider how they can make best use [of international meetings, such as] the upcoming Munich Security Conference and Davos where US senior officials will be present; and also consider bold and innovative ideas like new defence pacts.”

Nato treaties do not make a distinction between an attack on an ally from outside countries or from another Nato ally but there is an understanding that the alliance’s Article 5 – nicknamed its all for one and one for all clause – isn’t applicable to one Nato country attacking another.

Take, for example, strife between member states Turkey and Greece over Cyprus. The worst violence was in 1974 when Turkey invaded. Nato did not intervene but its most powerful member the US was able to help mediate.

If we come back to geography, Denmark is one of Nato’s smaller allies, though a very active one. The US is Nato’s biggest, most powerful member. By far.

The deep-seated nervousness in Europe right now is palpable.

Big European powers may have issued their joint statement underlining Nato as a forum to discuss Arctic security and insisting that only Denmark and Greenland can decide the islands future, but how far would the UK , France, Germany and others actually go to guarantee that sovereignty?

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” said the confident sounding White House deputy chief of staff in an interview with CNN on Monday.

ECFR’s Camille Grande told me tensions over Greenland point – once again, he says – “at the need for the Europeans to reduce security dependencies on the US and to speak with one voice.”

Trump got all Nato allies – bar Spain – last summer to commit to massively increase spending on their own defence.

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

Nato insiders say, right now, even in meeting behind closed doors European member states of the alliance can hardly bring themselves to contemplate what could happen if Washington were to move in on Greenland militarily.

They may have to.

Top picture credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images

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