Donald Trump is issuing increasingly worrying threats about taking control of Greenland – something which many fear could mean the end of Nato.
The President has never been shy about his desire to claim Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, as his own.
But in the years since the president first offered to buy the island nation in 2019, his campaign has escalated dramatically in recent months.
As Trump’s ‘negotiation’ tactics surrounding Greenland grow in intensity, two experts weighed in to Metro about what a potential invasion of the country could mean for NATO.
Jason Pack, host of the Disorder Podcast and Senior Analyst for Emerging Challenges at the NATO Defence College Foundation, told Metro: ‘Trump is a bully who wants a media win to distract from things like the Epstein files or the economy—similar to his tactics with Venezuela or Iran.
‘You cannot make threats against a core NATO ally and a pillar of international law like Denmark. I take the threat seriously because Trump usually tells us what he wants to do, and he wants Greenland.’
Could Trump take Greenland by force?
Pack said he doesn’t see how Trump could take Greenland by force: ‘Would they risk killing Danish service members or running an allied blockade? What would they do then, have a hostile occupation of the local population?
‘I think it’s sabre-rattling. He uses ships and tariffs to extort the Europeans. It’s a manipulation tactic. If you seem like a complete sociopath, you might succeed in manipulating the other person. He is threatening to ruin the international order to get what he wants.’
Chatham House Russia expert Keir Giles told Metro that recent developments have put the world in the same position as it was in December 2021, where diplomats said it made no sense for Putin to consider invading Ukraine.
‘They said Putin could get everything that he wants from Ukraine without risking a stupid and obviously catastrophic military intervention—which, surely, his generals must be telling him would be a disaster,’ Giles explained.
‘And yet, none of that mattered because, in the end, it was not a rational objective assessment of the costs and consequences against the benefits of invading Ukraine. Instead, it was the ideology that drove it. In this case, with Trump, we have the same situation.’
‘We’re in the same boat as we were December 2021’
Giles says that the threats being directed at Trump if he is to invade Greenland are as inconsequential as those Putin faced in December 2021.
‘Today, the appeals to Trump are all about the disruption of the transatlantic alliance, the damage to NATO, and the breaches of international law—all things which are of demonstrably no significance to the current US leadership. In fact, the leadership seems to delight in leaving Europeans aghast at their demands.’
Former US lawmakers have said there is no way the US could make a military move against Greenland – not just because there would be opposition from Congress, but because US service personnel would not follow a blatantly illegal order.
Giles argues: ‘The trouble is, all of these perfectly rational explanations do not stack up against recent US behaviour, where Americans with guns have shown themselves perfectly willing to commit murder on behalf of the regime. And Congress has shown itself to be no obstacle to Trump’s most outrageous demands.’
But NATO wouldn’t simply collapse overnight – the ripples of whatever may happen would become clear to those in the alliance before they’re forced to make a choice.
Giles questioned: ‘Do they make a stand? And does that mean that the NATO alliance as a meaningful entity is finished?’
‘Europeans should stand up’
Pack also said he’s worried about leaders like Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, who he says have been poor at providing alternative points of leadership.
‘The real opportunity here is for Europeans to stand up and say, “This is unacceptable.” If all NATO countries stood together to defend the territorial integrity of a member state, it would force a backtrack.
‘That would be the “win” that reasserts international rules and order. But with Starmer dealing with domestic defections and other things in Britain, I’m not sure he is cut out for that kind of leadership right now.’
Security challenges facing European nations may mean that NATO members won’t oppose the US militarily – to protect themselves, even if it means ‘compromising all of the ideals they are seeking to defend’, Giles argues.
The real winner of a US disruption to NATO would be Russia, with Giles saying that the current disruption and potential destruction of NATO is the ‘greatest gift that the Trump White House has yet offered to Moscow.’
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