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Believe it or not, we’re just a week into 2026 now. It already feels – to me, at least – like it’s lasted about four years.
It doesn’t feel great to be digging into matters of war, life and death this early in January. Some of that was foreseeable: for example, the mega Ukraine summit in Paris on Tuesday which ended with the UK and France committing to send troops over in the event of a peace deal with Russia.
Other bits were… less foreseeable.
Donald Trump’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and subsequent rhetoric about seizing control of Greenland has forced Europeans to consider questions they really, really didn’t want to consider.
Questions like, would the US President actually send his armed forces over to wrest control of the world’s biggest island from a Nato ally? And, what does Nato even look like if the US was to forfeit its membership of the alliance so flamboyantly?
Yesterday, Reuters reported that Germany and France were making plans for how to respond if Trump did indeed send his Chinooks to Nuuk. After PMQs, a government spokesperson wouldn’t say if the UK was doing the same.
There’s an awful lot at stake for Keir Starmer. He’s spent the last 18 months insisting there’s no need to take a side between Europe and the US – but such an eventuality would mean he would, in a chillingly literal sense.
I called up a couple of international security experts to ask what they think will happen next, and how the UK would react if the unthinkable came to pass.
Benjamin Martill, an associate director at Edinburgh University’s Europa Institute, told me European leaders have been left in the lurch by the events of the past few days.
‘I think nobody quite saw this happening,’ he said. ‘And I think there’s lots of reasons why the Europeans haven’t stepped up [to avoid becoming so dependent].
‘Firstly, that they didn’t want to, secondly, that they didn’t really believe the US would ever really pull the plug.’
He continued: ‘The best that Europe can do at the moment, and the UK is probably going to be sympathetic towards this, is start very quickly to try to build those structures and build that kind of level of activeness in cooperation with European allies. But to do so very visibly, in a way that says to the US administration, “The price of this is you lose us.”’
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But while leaders might be contemplating a ‘European version of Nato’ without the US, Martill still thinks ‘it wouldn’t be too surprising […] to see actual proposals for what would amount to very generous concessions in terms of US control’ of Greenland.
When it comes to the much-vaunted ‘special relationship’, the Politics and International Relations lecturer believes Starmer will acknowledge it’s too important in the long term to blow up now.
‘Trump won’t be there forever, and this is a broader relationship, and we don’t know what the next administration would do. But the UK is going to know that these relations have to outlast Trump.’
However, Martill warned this reluctance to give up hope on the bond between the US and UK may be ‘just wishful thinking in the Foreign Office’: ‘Because this is a relationship that we built our identity and assumed power and practices around, and now it seems to be crumbling all around us.’
If you were Sir Keir Starmer what would you do about Greenland?
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Threaten Donald Trump with a co-ordinated European response if he attempts to seize the territory
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Use your good working relationship to attempt to convince him to back off
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Wait and see what happens next before taking action
Dr Patrick Bury, a former Nato analyst and British Army captain who now lectures at the University of Bath, was more phlegmatic about Trump’s Arctic threats.
He said: ‘Of course, the European powers have freaked out a little bit by the statement, and it’s unpredictable. It’s unclear. I get all that, but I think what [the US is] signalling is, there needs to be a resolution here that accommodates our interests.’
What are those interests? Well, take a look at a globe. Any intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from western Russia aimed at the US would pass over Greenland, so it’s important the air defences are up to snuff.
Washington has concerns that Denmark’s boost in defence spending for the region might be too little, too late – and that Greenland’s population may vote for independence one day, as polls suggest.
Trump, Dr Bury suggested, was in a moment of maximum leverage after his Maduro showpiece and decided to push for something else he wants. That may be as simple as a ‘power-sharing agreement, something where they have a say’ over the island.
As for the UK, our help in seizing a Venezuelan tanker in the north Atlantic suggests we’re not quite willing to split up with the US yet.
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