The prevailing sense of quiet alarm lingering in European capitals over the Trump administration’s menacing behaviour toward Greenland has suddenly metastasized into a full-blown emergency.
On Tuesday, European leaders hurriedly drew new red lines and warned the White House that NATO, the 76-year-old transatlantic military alliance, will collapse if U.S. President Donald Trump crosses them.
But the White House appeared undaunted and instead made new threats of coercion, even going so far as to suggest that the use of military force against longtime allies remains an option.
Facing an unprecedented challenge from the superpower that has backstopped European security for almost eight decades is unlike any internal alliance crisis Europe’s leadership has had to deal with in the past.
But coming on the heels of the American military operation that led to the capture or kidnapping — depending on how you see it — of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, NATO’s European leaders appear to have collectively decided that Trump’s penchant for taking unilateral action can no longer be ignored or tolerated.
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In an unprecedented statement released Tuesday, seven European leaders essentially told the U.S. president to back off.
“Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” it read.
The leaders went on to challenge Trump to work with NATO to achieve American security goals for the Arctic region and to stop trying to intimidate Denmark, which has had jurisdiction over the massive ice-covered but mineral-rich island for more than 300 years.
Greenland, with a population of roughly 56,000, is semi-autonomous, managing most of its own domestic affairs, while Denmark has control over the territory’s foreign policy and defence.
‘Ring around the kingdom’
“We’re seeing this kind of ‘ring around the kingdom of Denmark and Greenland’ from some of the biggest European states at the moment,” said Lin Mortensgaard, a researcher and PhD canadidate with the Copenhagen-based Danish Institute for International Studies.
But just hours later, the White House issued its own terse response.
It said that not only would the Trump administration not back down in its desire to acquire Greenland, but it also underscored that “the U.S. military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal.”
The United States has the most powerful military on Earth, with an annual budget of almost $1 trillion US.
Combined, Europe’s NATO members can barely muster half that amount — and no country can compete with the U.S.’s unparalleled ability to project its military might anywhere it wants around the globe.
European leaders, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friederich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have been trying to emphasize diplomacy, in an effort to convince Trump that he can achieve all his political goals without physically taking over Greenland and destroying the NATO alliance.
But Mortensgaard said American actions over the past 48 hours raise doubts about the European strategy.
“I think we’re starting to see that this is not really about either national security, international security or resources,” she told CBC News.
“I think it’s about Trump’s legacy. I think it’s about him wanting to expand American territory.”
If that’s the case, many analysts, diplomats and politicians believe not only will European diplomacy fail, but the entire post-Second World War system of alliances will come crashing down alongside it, should the U.S. move unilaterally.
“It would mean the end of NATO,” said Kerry Buck, a former Canadian ambassador to NATO between 2015 and 2019.
“It could be a quick death or a slow death but it would be the death of NATO.”
‘Everything would stop’
Speaking on Danish television Monday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen issued a similarly dire warning.
“If the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop — that includes NATO and therefore post-Second World War security,” Frederiksen told Danish television network TV2.
Notably, the European leaders’ statement contained no clear statement of consequences should Trump continue.
During a meeting with Frederiksen in Paris Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney struck a similar tone to the statement by the European leaders.
“The future of Greenland and Denmark are decided solely by the people of Denmark,” he said.
While Trump’s designs on the island are not new — he spoke repeatedly about needing to “have” Greenland during his first term as president — his administration’s current aggressive approach dovetails with a broader effort to sever longstanding political and economic ties with Europe.
Key figures in his administration, especially Vice-President JD Vance, have repeatedly portrayed European politics, institutions and leaders as weak.
His administration has indicated it no longer intends to foot the lion’s share of the continent’s security bill.
Countries such as France, Germany and Britain have just started announcing major new investments in military infrastructure but even so, Europe will need to rely heavily on American anti-missile defence, intelligence and logistics for years to come, say military analysts.
The Trump administration has made it clear it wants to take control of Greenland and it isn’t ruling out using military force. For The National, CBC’s Eli Glasner breaks down why the U.S. has labelled annexing the sparsely-populated island a ‘national security priority.’
The United States also remains the European Union’s largest external trading partner, with the EU swallowing a 15 per cent U.S. tariff imposed by Trump — an indication of how dependent Europe’s economies are on American goods and services.
American rules
Several international news outlets, including The Economist, have reported that Trump plans to offer Greenland a similar arrangement to several Pacific Islands, whereby Greenland would become independent but allow the free movement of the U.S. military and obtain duty free access to the U.S. market.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told congressional leaders that another option would be for the United States to simply buy the immense but sparsely populated island.
Mortensgaard, the Danish analyst, says much will depend on how the United States presents any proposal — and whether Greenlanders feel they are getting a real choice in the matter.
“I think the big thing for Greenland is to be able to choose how independence looks and when to really go for it,” she said.
“If it’s an ‘or else’ situation, it will not be taken down as a choice within Greenland.”
WATCH | Military ‘always an option’ to acquire Greenland, says White House:
European leaders have repeatedly told Trump that the current arrangement with Denmark gives the U.S. military freedom to use the island more or less as it wishes.
After the Cold War, the United States reduced the number of soldiers stationed in Greenland from approximately 10,000 to just a few hundred, almost all of whom work at the Pituffik Space Base.
Their primary task is to operate early warning radar systems that detect the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Trump has responded by accusing the Danes — one of NATO’s smallest yet most reliable members — of failing to handle Arctic security issues properly and falsely accusing them of letting adversaries run rampant.
“Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place,” he said, without offering any evidence.
While NATO’s leaders have focused their diplomacy on trying to convince Trump that anything he wants can be accomplished without actually taking over the island, other European politicians have been urging a more aggressive approach.
“If you take it, we will take every single base of the Americans, from Aviano from Ramstein, from Romania to all the other military bases — [they] will be confiscated, you will lose it — if you take Greenland,” Gunther Fehlinger, chairman of the Austrian Committee for NATO Enlargement, said in a podcast.
Buck, the former Canadian diplomat, said signalling the obvious downside of unilateral American action is essential.
“They [the Americans] don’t need the extra firepower, but they want the extra [political] legitimacy, the extra risk sharing, that kind of thing, so they lose that,” she said on CBC’s Power and Politics.
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