So often in diplomacy, answers are caveated, nuanced and meaningless – word salads of careful language designed not to stir the pot.
So Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s response that the future of Greenland was for people there, and Denmark, was refreshingly definitive.
It shouldn’t be a controversial sentence in 2026, and yet here we are: a rambling President making a play for the territory of a NATO ally, emboldened by the audacity of his Venezuela operation, and Starmer, for once, showing a willingness to criticise him.
Greenland is a place you’ve almost certainly never visited, and might not realise is a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, is 80% covered by ice and home to just 57,000 people.
You might assume that means you shouldn’t care – but given the territory is the latest target of Trump’s smash-and-grab obsession, it is important to us all.
Trump has said the US ‘absolutely’ needs Greenland, and the White House has admitted that using military force is ‘always an option’. And one Trump adviser went full gangster, declaring that ‘nobody’s going to fight the United States over the future of Greenland’.
That combination, unsurprisingly, has kick-started a wave of panic across Westminster and Europe.
When a superpower, especially one as erratic and unpredictable as the US president, says it might use force against a NATO ally, you cannot shrug and say it’s just Trump being Trump.
His latest performance in front of cameras and reporters last night seemed more unleashed than usual, veering from Greenland’s ‘strategic’ value to wild claims about Russian and Chinese ships, all delivered with the swagger of a man who thinks rules are for everyone else. But this is different – this is a direct threat to a NATO ally.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance of 32 member states, founded in the aftermath of the Second World War, serves as a system of collective defence – built on the principle that an attack on one is an attack on all.
The whole deal is that friends do not threaten friends, and when one ally is being leaned on by an external – or internal – threat, the rest close ranks.
To Europe’s credit, leaders quickly rallied behind Denmark and Greenland with a joint line so obvious that even Trump couldn’t miss it.
Led by Britain, leaders were clear: ‘hands off‘.
For us, it’s Britain back on the world stage, acting like a serious country again, standing up to friends as well as enemies. Starmer may yet talk up the importance of realpolitik and his personal relationship with Trump, but he deserves credit for making this a red (or green) line.
The UK’s newfound foreign policy strength isn’t about chest-thumping or carping from the sidelines.
It’s about stepping up in the only way that actually matters: showing up alongside neighbours and leading from the front when the rules are being tested.
In a post-Brexit era, we have become used to ‘global Britain’ meaning immature swagger, petulant slogans, and megaphone diplomacy of the kind that is clearly in fashion in the USA.
But with two of our allies threatened, the Britain I’m proud to be a citizen of is back.
Now we’ve got calm solidarity, a clear message that borders and territories are not bargaining chips, and the confidence to say it even when the threat is coming from the same Oval Office where we work so hard for favourable trade deals.
Greenland is not a theory. It is home. It is a self-governing territory with its own politics and identity, and part of the NATO family.
It is also strategically important, which is why this is so dangerous.
The Arctic is becoming a bigger geopolitical arena. Greenland has mineral resources, and the US already has a major military presence there.
But, of course, none of this is about security. The US can protect its interests through alliances and agreements, as it has for decades.
Far be it from Trump to care, but it’s also one of the last great, undisturbed natural habitats on earth with glaciers stretching hundreds of miles, and a fragile, often endangered wildlife of polar bears, whales and seabirds. Greenland’s future clearly matters.
This is an attempted acquisition, backed by the casual mention of lethal force, and it isn’t the first time Trump has floated the contagious idea that might is right.
Europe cannot afford to be selective about when it cares. Last night, the UK and France signed a deal to deploy troops to Ukraine as part of a ceasefire.
This is where Ukraine matters, even if Greenland is grabbing headlines today. The principle is simple: you do not get to redraw maps by force, and you do not get to pause a war, reload, and try again later.
Europe has shown genuine unity on Ukraine. It is not always fast enough, but it is there.
The test now is whether we mean what we say. The argument for standing by Denmark and Greenland is not separate from the argument for standing by Ukraine.
Solidarity doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
If we believe sovereign nations should not be coerced by bigger powers, we have to believe it consistently, especially when the pressure comes from someone we used to count as ‘one of us’.
That consistency is also the only way to handle Trump without being either naive or hysterical.
The uncomfortable truth is that we will need to work with Trump to make any security architecture stick in Ukraine, but on Greenland, we must be willing to stand up to him.
That only works if we stop kidding ourselves that he’s not serious. If we keep treating him like the ranting uncle at the wedding, he’ll keep going until the threats turn into reality – and then the joke will be on us.
Europe must find its spine of steel, and Britain must lead it. We cannot be on the sidelines sniping; we must be in the room, with allies, defending the basic rulebook.
From Hitler’s invasion of Poland to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Britain’s best moments are when we draw a line and stop the world sliding into lawlessness.
Greenland is not America’s, and Ukraine is not Russia’s. If that sentence is now worth saying, then it is exactly what Britain must make true.
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