Trump and Greenland: why Europe will cave

Europe’s current leaders long ago ceased to think in terms of national or “European” interests, and have instead become beholden to a single objective: the preservation of trasatlanticism at all costs

I’ve written for UnHerd about Trump’s threat to annex Greenland — and why European leaders are likely to cave:

Just hours after kidnapping Maduro in a murderous attack on Venezuela, Trump once again reiterated his long-standing ambition to take control of Greenland, the self-governing territory of Denmark, an EU and NATO member. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security”, Trump declared, without elaboration, as if the claim were self-evident.

European reactions were scattered, confused and deeply revealing. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, predictably responded by rebutting Trump’s claims and warning that US aggression against Greenland would effectively mark the end of NATO. In a joint statement, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK and Greenland itself reaffirmed their commitment to NATO while stating that Greenland belongs to its people and that decisions regarding the island are for Denmark and Greenland alone. But these statements ring hollow.

Conspicuously absent was any response from the EU’s institutional leadership. The same Brussels officials who routinely issue dire warnings about the alleged Russian threat to Europe declined to comment on an explicit US threat against European territory. And only hours earlier, most European leaders had offered either tepid or implicitly supportive responses to Trump’s unambiguous aggression against Venezuela. If there was a logic, it was to avoid confrontation with Washington at all costs. And yet ironically those same leaders quickly found themselves facing the prospect of similar US action directed against a European country.

A direct US military seizure of Greenland remains unlikely, though not unthinkable. A more probable scenario is an “association agreement” modelled on Washington’s arrangements with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Under these agreements, the US exercises sweeping authority over defence and security in exchange for financial assistance. The states involved remain formally sovereign, but in practice are tightly bound to US strategic priorities. An analogous arrangement with Greenland would offer Washington the advantage of consolidating control while formally respecting Greenlandic self-rule, all while weakening Denmark’s position. A 1951 agreement already allows the US to station unlimited numbers of troops on the island; today, only one active base remains, but the legal framework for expansion is firmly in place.

The ambiguity is intentional. Earlier this week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that the use of the US military was “always an option” as Trump and his advisers reviewed different annexation scenarios. Whatever path the administration chooses, it is determined to resolve the matter swiftly. And European leaders, judging by their response so far, are likely to acquiesce. How can one account for the seemingly irrational, and indeed outright suicidal, posture of Europe’s political leadership? By acknowledging a simple fact: European elites are deeply embedded in the transatlantic system from which they derive their power and legitimacy. They perceive that system as under threat and are prepared to defend it at almost any cost, even if that cost includes European sovereignty or territory.

After all, Europe has already sacrificed its core economic and security interests to US imperial diktats. It has joined a proxy war against Russia that has devastated Ukraine and hollowed out European industrial competitiveness. It has imposed sanctions that inflicted far greater damage on European economies than on Russia. It has remained conspicuously silent following the destruction of Nord Stream, a critical piece of European energy infrastructure — an act probably carried out with at least indirect US involvement and likely foreknowledge by some European governments themselves. If European leaders were willing to accept all of this, acquiescing to US control over Greenland — whether through military pressure or pseudo-legal arrangements — would not represent a radical departure.

So much for Europe’s much-vaunted “strategic autonomy”. The reality is that beneath the rhetoric of independence, European governments have systematically appeased Trump — from increased NATO military spending, much of which will flow directly into US defence contractors, to punitive trade conditions to accepting financial responsibility for sustaining the war in Ukraine.

From the perspective of Europe’s governing classes, NATO and the proxy war in Ukraine are less about security or prosperity than about preserving an imperial architecture in which they can play a subordinate but privileged role. This is why NATO would likely survive even a US move against Greenland, albeit stripped of any remaining illusions of sovereign equality among its members.

This dynamic also helps explain a seeming paradox. Globalist European leaders openly despised by Trump — figures such as Emmanuel Macron or Friedrich Merz — have been more supportive of US aggression against Venezuela than right-populist forces openly favoured by Trump, such as Marine Le Pen or Viktor Orbán, who have adopted more cautious or critical positions. EU institutions, in particular, have been notably supportive of Washington’s actions, which is easily ecplained: the bloc is not a counterweight to US power, rather one of its central pillars.

It is therefore plausible that elements of the EU establishment are coordinating closely with factions of the US national security apparatus — or even with the Trump administration itself. After all, while it is true that Trump has abandoned any pretence of transatlantic unity and increasingly treats Europe in openly transactional, even neo-colonial terms, Europe’s political class has demonstrated its willingness to comply. Once one understands that Europe’s current leaders long ago ceased to think in terms of national or even “European” interests, and have instead become beholden to a single objective — the preservation of a dying system of Western hegemony, or the so-called “rules-based order”, and the benefits they derive from it in their sub-imperial role — their seemingly irrational behaviour begins to make sense.

What should alarm Europeans is not the prospect of US “abandonment” or NATO’s collapse — developments that could, in principle, create space for genuine autonomy. In fact, it’s the opposite: the likelihood that Europe remains locked into a subordinate role precisely as Washington adopts an increasingly aggressive and lawless posture.

Read the full article here. If you’re a paid subscriber and you can’t access the article write to me at thomasfazi82@gmail.com.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

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