Brussels: The crazy brawl over control of Greenland has come to a sudden halt while all sides claim victory and return to their corners. Donald Trump flew home from his meetings in Europe after declaring that he had everything he wanted at no cost. European leaders talked of their relief that Trump had backed down on his threat to punish them with tariffs.
The bizarre prospect of an American strike to take Greenland by force, an idea kept alive by White House aides, has now been ruled out by Trump himself. The confrontation with NATO allies has been paused – and there is the vague chance of a “framework” that might settle the argument.
But there are no winners after this week of dangerous games with European security and the NATO alliance. Trump has not made America any greater by threatening allies with economic pain in his obsessive quest to take ownership of the Arctic territory. European leaders cannot feel safe when Trump can resume his threats at any time.
The alliance is weaker. Trust in America is being torched in every nation where Trump turns on his friends. European capitals are engaged in an urgent rethink about how they use hard power to counter the American president. After being hit, they are choosing to fight back.
The lesson is that Europe will have to stand firm, says Kristina Spohr, a professor of international history at the London School of Economics and an expert on security strategy and the Arctic.
“Trump fails to understand one fundamental thing: that America’s strength since the Second World War came from its soft as much as hard power – as an empire by invitation, not an empire by coercion or imposition,” she says.
“Europeans have to hold on to the principles of sovereignty, territory, integrity and self-determination – for the Greenlanders, the Danes and themselves altogether. Because only that ensures an international order where small and middle-sized powers are respected.”
Go on the warpath
The fight about Greenland dates back to Trump’s first term as president, when he declared his wish to add the island to the US and complained about Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen when she stared him down. It is a much bigger dispute in his second term because it is now about the terms of the alliance.
Trump claims to have a “framework” to gain full access to Greenland at no cost allowing America to use the territory for its Golden Dome, the missile defence system that is being developed in the hope it can destroy enemy missiles if they approach the US. The plan is not public and is not endorsed by Greenland or Denmark, so it is too soon to know if the argument will end with a rational settlement.
European leaders are not waiting for that outcome. Some of them have already reached the logical conclusion: when Trump goes after them, they have to go on the warpath. The European Union responded to Trump’s tariff threat, for instance, by airing the idea of sanctions on US exports worth €93 billion – about $160 billion.
“We have to remain vigilant,” French President Emmanuel Macron said when he arrived at a meeting of EU leaders on Friday morning (AEDT). Macron expressed satisfaction that Europe had stopped Trump by reacting swiftly to his threats.
“The conclusion to be drawn is that when Europe reacts in a united manner, using the instruments at its disposal, when it is threatened, it can make itself respected,” he said. “We expect France to be respected, Europe to be respected, and every time they are not, we will speak out and act with clarity.”
Trump may still get what he wants, of course. His approach to negotiation is to make outlandish claims, take the other side to the brink and see how much he can extract. Just because he does not get the invasion of Greenland does not mean he retires hurt. If the framework gives the US guaranteed control over further bases in Greenland, he has more building blocks for the Golden Dome.
Denmark and Greenland, and the rest of NATO, appear to be comfortable if that is the outcome.
The trouble is they cannot be sure what Trump will demand. His address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, highlighted the risk in the way he threatened leaders who disagreed with him – such as Macron as well as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Even as he dropped the tariff threat, he hinted at future penalties for European leaders if they did not give him what he wanted. That is, Greenland.
“So they have a choice,” he said of the NATO allies. “You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no, and we will remember.”
Property developer in attack mode
In this dynamic, how much Trump gets depends on how hard Europe pushes back.
Spohr, who edited The Arctic and the World Order and is writing a global history of the Arctic, tells this masthead that Trump’s approach has been like a bullying property developer in attack mode. She points to history showing that the US could have kept more bases on Greenland, or expanded its operations there under its 1951 treaty with Denmark.
“After 1991, America cashed in on the post-Cold War peace dividend,” she says.
“The US withdrew from Greenland of its own volition, only retaining the northernmost Thule base, now Pituffik, manned by a mere 150 to 200 military personnel. This was in stark contrast to its 17 military installations and 10,000 troops stationed in the country during the Cold War.
“Given this context, we must wonder about Trump’s obsession with Greenland and inability to calmly deliberate and negotiate with NATO allies as equals.
“Europeans should stay firm, all the while trying to de-escalate and find solutions face-to-face, working through diplomatic channels, as is the norm.
“Trump only understands clear red lines and therefore Europeans, as part of the EU and NATO, cannot allow themselves to be bullied.
“For Arctic security at large, from Alaska and Greenland to northern Norway and Finland, it is imperative that allies cooperate and collectively build up their deterrence and defence capabilities vis-à-vis their imperialist and belligerent Russian neighbour and an increasingly assertive China.”
The past week highlighted that sort of cooperation. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has handled Trump with royal generosity in the past, arranging a state visit last year and a lavish dinner at Windsor Castle with King Charles as host. On Greenland, however, Starmer was blunt.
“I will not yield, Britain will not yield, on our principles and values about the future of Greenland under threats of tariffs,” he told parliament.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has spoken in the past about an “independence moment” for the European Union. With Trump threatening tariffs, she added urgency to that message.
“In this increasingly lawless world, Europe needs its own levers of power,” she told the European Parliament, a few hours before Trump’s address in Davos. She admitted that Europe was not changing fast enough.
“We will need a departure from Europe’s traditional caution – just like we did on energy or on recovering from the pandemic,” she said. “Or like we are doing now on defence. The world is changing faster than our mindset.”
All of this showed a willingness to act more forcefully together – which was exactly the message from Canada’s Carney in his address this week. He made the case for middle powers to work together to defend themselves against big powers, without naming Trump and the US as the big power. His message could apply just as much to China or Russia.
Carney’s address may be remembered most for one sharp line: “Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The nuance in his message, however, was his assessment that smaller nations were often complicit in their own subordination to great powers. He advocated more strategic and economic independence.
The United Kingdom and the EU are so deeply integrated with the US that they become vulnerable. In threatening tariffs, Trump was exploiting the fact that European countries are interconnected with the US, their exporters reliant on American consumers. In complaining about NATO, he played on the fact that European nations within the alliance are so entwined with the US on defence.
The logical response was to use the same sort of leverage. The threat from the European Union against Trump, known in Brussels as the “trade bazooka” because the sanctions are so powerful, would have brought pain to the US economy. The Europeans spoke to Trump in his language.
In defence, however, Europe appears to have no such leverage. Trump is an unreliable president. Depending on who comes after him, the US may turn on its allies more often. The message from von der Leyen and others in the EU is that the old order is gone. At the same time, Europe has real challenges in trying to set its own course.
Bernhard Blumenau, senior lecturer in international history and politics at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, argues that European allies must stop appeasing Trump and prepare for the end of NATO.
“The US security assurance is disappearing. So Europeans have no choice but to defend themselves,” he says.
Can Europe defend itself?
This goes to the heart of Trump’s complaints about NATO and the European concerns about Trump. He says European nations would not come to America’s aid if it was attacked. They worry that he treats allies as enemies – and that the US prefers isolation to alliance.
Blumenau, who has written extensively on the Cold War and German foreign policy, says Europe could manage – with a united defence strategy – to fend off threats from Russia without an intervention by the US. Given forecasts of a more serious risk of this confrontation from 2029 onwards, this highlights the urgency of the investment in European defences.
“This gives European states a window of opportunity that they must now seize to prepare to defend themselves without the United States –especially given the possibility that there may not be a more sympathetic US president in the White House by then,” he says.
“The bigger challenge is nuclear defence. Here, the question is how to use British and French deterrents in a way that makes the threat credible, even if these arsenals are not on par with those of the US or Russia.
They could still provide a meaningful deterrent if structured properly and more integrated with, and funded and supported by, European allies.”
“Europe might not be fully capable today, but it has no choice but to use the time available to ensure it becomes so as quickly as possible. “The risk of relying exclusively on the US for security – as Europeans have done for decades – has become a serious gamble,” says Blumenau
“As Trump demonstrates, no agreement with him is worth the paper it is written on; his position can change from one day to the next. It is firmly in Europe’s self‑interest to strengthen its own defence architecture, systems, infrastructure, policies, and defence industry.”
NATO military chiefs gave the appearance of total calm at their Brussels headquarters on Wednesday and Thursday, where hundreds of personnel gathered for annual meetings at the very time political leaders were at odds about the alliance.
Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the Italian who chairs the NATO military committee, described the strategic outlook as one of unprecedented threats. General Alexus Grynkewich, the American who serves as the supreme allied commander for Europe, said the military forces were ready to do more in the Arctic when there was political guidance. Appearing at a joint press conference, they projected total cohesion.
The fractures are in the political leadership of the alliance, and that comes down to Trump.
Amid the doubt about European strength, Finnish President Alexander Stubb slapped down the idea that NATO was being weakened and would struggle to match Russia. He pointed to the way Russian President Vladimir Putin had galvanised Ukraine to seek membership of the European Union, forced NATO members to increase defence spending and prompted two nations – Finland and Sweden – to join the alliance.
“This war has been an utter strategic failure of President Putin,” he said at Davos.
“He increased the size of NATO, he made Ukraine European, he increased the defence budgets of European states. And here we are asking ourselves, shaking, are we able to defend ourselves? My answer is: yes, we are.”
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