I found myself posting a note yesterday saying that the US seizing Greenland militarily and claiming it as a colonial territory of the US would give European countries a big new push to unite to defend against the US as well as against Russia.
Despite the various controversies within NATO like that around the Iraq War, the perceived threat from the USSR and then Russia held the alliance together. Given the arsenals of nuclear missiles especially in the US and the USSR/Russia, there was an objectively real threat there – and there still is. And the 1989-2014 period looks more than ever like a period of major missed opportunities.
But how NATO could survive its most powerful member invading and seizing territory from Denmark is really hard to imagine. And the European powers aren’t as feckless as the Trumps and the JD Vances of the world imagine them to be. The closest we’ve come before to a war between two NATO member states were the clashes in Cyprus in the 1970s between forces backed by Greece and Türkiye, respectively, including the establishment of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus. Discussions mediated by the UN over the division of Cyprus continue to this day, with no immediate resolution in sight. (1)
It’s hard to see how European countries can simply tiptoe diplomatically around the US threat to Denmark, which Trump renewed after the seizure of Venezuela’s head of government, Maduro. (2) And the Trump 2.0 regime continues its reality-TV approach to threatening Denmark:
Just hours after the US military operation in Venezuela, the rightwing podcaster Katie Miller – the wife of Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s powerful deputy chief of staff for policy – posted on X a map of Greenland draped in the stars and stripes with the caption: “SOON.”
Trump himself told the Atlantic magazine on Sunday: “We do need Greenland, absolutely.”
Miller’s threat to annex the mineral-rich territory, which is part of the Nato alliance, drew outrage from Denmark and Greenland.
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, called the post “disrespectful”. “Relations between nations and peoples are built on mutual respect and international law – not on symbolic gestures that disregard our status and our rights,” he wrote on X. (3)
Despite the caution that European leaders are understandably trying to practice in regard to the US, issued a statement that focused on Denmark’s sovereignty, Denmark’s government posted this joint statement on X
Statement by President Macron of France, Chancellor Merz of Germany, Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, Prime Minister Tusk of Poland, Prime Minister Sánchez of Spain, Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Frederiksen of Denmark on Greenland. [my emphasis]That includes Europe’s two nuclear powers (Britain and France) and the country with its six biggest conventional armies: Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland. I’m just sayin’. It is what it is.
Arctic security remains a key priority for Europe and it is critical for international and transatlantic security.Denmark in October announced their intent to buy more US fighter jets. It also announced their intent to purchase “two new Arctic ships, maritime patrol planes, drones and early warning radar” and that “a new Arctic command headquarters will be set up in the Greenlandic capital, Nuuk, alongside a new military unit under Joint Arctic Command in Greenland.” (5)
NATO has made clear that the Arctic region is a priority and European Allies are stepping up. Wc and many other Allies have increased our presence, activities and investments, to keep the Arctic safe and to deter adversaries. The Kingdom of Denmark – including Greenland - is part of NATO.
Security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United Stales, by upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders. These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them. [my emphasis] (4)
Trump’s personal volatility and the evident deterioration in his mental condition certainly don’t help in this situation. He obviously looks for reality-TV moments, like declaring mission accomplished in Venezuela at the very beginning of the current intervention by the US there, which the Orange Anomaly describes as the US now running the country. To use an old Southern expression, “That ole boy just ain’t right.” This means in practice that working out complicated international arrangements over hotly contested issues just isn’t something he seems to be capable of doing.
As I’m writing this, we’re only in Day 4 of the Peace President’s perfect intervention in Venezuela. It’s exceptionally unlikely to be as smooth a process as the Trumpista Administration expects it to be. We’re in something like the pulling-down-Saddam’s-statue-in-Baghdad stage of this intervention. To recall, the day after that glorious event was went major looting broke out in Baghdad, the first major signal that the Iraq-will-be-a-cakewalk claims on the neocons began to quickly disintegrate.
And, thinking back for a moment on the Wilsonian view of cynical Old World politics, I’m sure that every foreign ministry in Europe is thinking that the more of a mess Venezuela becomes for the US, the less likely it is that Trump would be fool enough to invade Denmark/Greenland. I’m not sure any of them can do much to make it more of a problem for the US than the Venezuelans themselves will make it. But for all their problems, the European powers have never been quite the bumbling nincompoops that US neocons and MAGA isolationists like to imagine them to be.
For The Guardian’s editorial board, the initial European responses to Trump invading Venezuela and kidnapping its President along with his wife was pretty weak tea:
The initial reaction of European leaders to Donald Trump’s illegal military intervention in Venezuela was not only weak, it also had the briefest of shelf lives. Refusing on Sunday to condemn the attack as a breach of international law, European Union member states called hopefully for “a negotiated, democratic, inclusive and peaceful solution to the crisis, led by Venezuelans”. The delusional nature of that response was laid bare as Mr Trump told reporters the same day: “We’re in charge.”The editorial goes on to observe that the restrained official comments were understandable because European democracies are trying to keep Trump “on side” as much as possible on the Russia-Ukraine War. “But unchecked and unchallenged, “America first” expansionism is becoming a geopolitical menace in its own right.”
So much for the restoration of democracy. The US president also repeated threats of further military action, should the repressive regime left behind when Nicolás Maduro was seized fail to do Washington’s bidding. As Mr Trump’s marginalising of the Nobel prize-winning opposition figurehead María Corina Machado illustrated early on, the will of Venezuelans is not on his list of priorities. Operation Absolute Resolve was about exercising raw power to dominate a sovereign nation, and controlling Venezuela’s future oil production. [my emphasis] (6)
And it ends on the ominous note:
Regime change in Caracas came weeks after the publication of a bellicose national security strategy that pledged to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”. Colombia and Cuba have now been put on notice, and in Denmark, so has a Nato ally. With Washington in the vanguard, a dangerous new world order is forming at pace [i.e., quickly]. Within it, Europe urgently needs to speak up for its values, while building the capacity to defend its own interests. [my emphasis]
Notes:
(1) Reuters 12/16/2025. UN envoy hopeful on Cyprus, says multi-party summit premature. <https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-envoy-hopeful-cyprus-says-multi-party-summit-premature-2025-12-16/> (Accessed: 2026-04-01).
(2) Hayden, Jones (2026): Denmark PM bristles at Trump’s ‘need’ for Greenland after US strikes on Venezuela. Politico EU 01/04/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-maga-post-greenland-donald-trump-us-politics-venezuela/> (Accessed: 2026-05-01).
(3) Cole, Deborah (2026): US attack on Venezuela raises fears of future Greenland takeover. Guardian 06/04/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/04/greenland-denmark-us-venezuela-nicolas-maduro-donald-trump> (Accessed: 2026-04-01).
(4) https://x.com/Statsmin/status/2008498610263257368
(5) Lau, S. & Aeberhard, D. (2025): Denmark to boost Arctic defence with new ships, jets and HQ. BBC News 10/11/2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9n790j878o> (Accessed: 2026-04-01).
(6) The Guardian view on Europe’s response to ‘America first’ imperialism: too weak, too timid. Guardian 01/05/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/05/the-guardian-view-on-europes-response-to-america-first-imperialism-too-weak-too-timid> (Accessed: 2026-06-01).
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