USA Shows Its True Colours: Greenland And The Logic Of Power

The geopolitical situation is no longer merely confusing. It is openly contradictory and increasingly irrational. With Donald Trump’s statements on Greenland, a line has been crossed which had until now been regarded as untouchable, even in periods of the most severe transatlantic tensions. The threat to bring Greenland under American control, if necessary by force, is neither a diplomatic slip nor a failed negotiating style. It is a taboo breach. This approach exposes the true logic of Trump’s foreign policy and, by extension, the real interests of his administration. It exposes less “the West” than the United States itself.

The political context is particularly perfidious. While Europe has for years been urged to defend a “rules-based order”, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders, Washington has now effectively declared that these rules apply only so long as they do not obstruct American interests. For Europe, this is a political confession of bankruptcy. Anyone who, after Greenland, still speaks of “values”, “partnership on equal terms” or “shared security” makes a fool of himself.

Even more serious is the strategic dimension. NATO is not a loose alliance of convenience, but is formally based on collective defence and mutual loyalty. If one member state openly considers territorial violence against another member state, then NATO as a community of values and security is, in effect, dead. What remains is an alliance that functions only so long as it serves the interests of the strongest. This is precisely the image Russia has always ascribed to NATO. With the Greenland threat, Washington now delivers the proof on a silver platter.

It is obvious: rules apply to the United States only so long as they do not conflict with its own interests. That European states reject this approach has been expressed unambiguously in the recent reactions from Copenhagen and Nuuk. Greenland “chooses Denmark”; a takeover by the United States will be accepted “under no circumstances”. At least here, after all the contentious issues of recent years, there is a rare clarity in Europe.

For Europe, this episode marks a historical turning point. By now at the latest, it should be clear that the transatlantic partnership no longer represents a security guarantee, but a relationship of dependency with built-in blackmail potential. Yesterday Scotland, today Greenland, tomorrow security-policy dictates and “protection rackets”, all always under the guise of “shared interests” that in truth are exclusively American interests.

This raises a central question: what do the interests of the United States officially look like, and what does Trump’s deal-making foreign policy mean in practice? Officially, a possible incorporation of Greenland is justified in the name of “national security” in the Arctic. This is not strategically fabricated. Greenland lies on a key axis between North America and Eurasia, is relevant for early-warning and defence systems, for surveillance, maritime control, and is gaining further importance through new Arctic routes and resource issues. This is openly acknowledged in Western analyses.

Trump’s operational logic, however, is different. It is transactional, resource-oriented and designed for maximum leverage. In this logic, foreign territory is not viewed as a partner space from a geopolitical perspective, but as bargaining material. The pattern is clear: build pressure, erect a threat backdrop, declare resources and strategic positions as a “deal”, and then offer security as a counter-service. That Trump simultaneously speaks openly about control over land and oil reserves in Venezuela is not a side note in this context, but a vivid example of this mindset.

From this methodology arises a politically explosive question that must at least be examined as a hypothesis: has the United States already held discussions with Russia on the Greenland issue, or sounded out which positions Moscow would accept? There is no public evidence for this, and one should not make a factual claim out of it. As an analytical assumption, however, it is plausible that Washington would probe expectations, red lines and possible concessions in an Arctic matter. That Denmark and Greenland were forced at all into so-called “crunch talks” in order to de-escalate shows how serious the situation already is.

From this follows another supposition: Washington’s unusually accommodating course on Ukraine could serve the purpose of softening Russia elsewhere, for instance in the Arctic. That would be classic package diplomacy. One buys room for manoeuvre by offsetting pressure and concessions across different dossiers. This logic fits Trump’s transactional policy. For Europe, such an approach would be strategically disastrous, as it would definitively become an object whose security and prosperity are negotiated in American package deals without its having any say in the matter.

This leads to yet another unavoidable conclusion. It is delusional to assume that Russia could accept an annexation of Greenland by the United States. For Moscow, Greenland would not be just any old territory but a massive gain in American forward control in the North Atlantic and the Arctic, with direct effects on reconnaissance, early warning, freedom of movement and deterrence logic. Even if Russia pursues hard interests in Ukraine, such a precedent would represent an unmistakable risk. Precisely for this reason, Trump’s threat is geopolitically explosive. It generates not only outrage but also structural insecurity.

Here the moral imbalance lies plainly on the table. In the Ukraine conflict, Russia invokes security arguments, NATO eastward expansion and years of deficient strategic communication. These points have been documented areas of dispute for a long time, without deriving from them a free pass for war. In Greenland, by contrast, the issue is a claim to foreign sovereignty against the declared will of those concerned. Reports which are critical of Trump refer to self-determination and the lack of any basis for his threat narrative. It is therefore analytically understandable to say that what Russia puts forward in terms of security-policy demands appears, in comparison with the Greenland logic, more legitimate in the sense of classic security dilemmas, while Trump’s Greenland approach directly attacks the core of sovereignty.

Anyone who believes Europe can rely on Washington to use power only against adversaries ignores the empirical evidence. Trade coercion has long been a reality. Trump’s meeting with Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland resulted in a trade framework that made asymmetric pressure the norm and was perceived in Europe as capitulation. Venezuela shows the next variant of this policy. Resources first, sovereignty second.

At this point, an inevitably wry but necessary question arises: who, in fact, is the actor with the God complex here, Donald Trump or the United States itself? The answer is uncomfortable but clear. Trump’s behaviour is not the cause of this thinking, but its uninhibited manifestation. The assumption that rules are to be accepted only when they do not conflict with one’s own interests, the self-ascription of a global ordering power beyond international law, and the notion that foreign sovereignty becomes negotiable as soon as it is strategically or economically relevant are not the personal quirk of one president. They are a structural component of American, and particularly neoconservative, power politics. Trump merely dispenses with the usual rhetorical disguise. Where previous US administrations spoke of “responsibility”, “leadership” or “values”, he speaks openly of control, ownership and deals. The supposed God complex is therefore not individual misconduct, but the expression of a hegemonic self-conception that regards itself as an exception to the rules it imposes on others. It is precisely in this that the real danger lies: not that an unpredictable president undermines the order, but that a power openly declares itself above that order.

The conclusion is uncomfortable but unavoidable. The United States will pursue its interests, if necessary, even against Europe. Greenland is the litmus test. If a NATO state threatens another NATO state with violence, this is not a strategy, but the renunciation of any self-restraint on which Europe’s security has rested for decades. It calls the North Atlantic Alliance into question as a model approaching obsolescence.

Europe must now take a clear position. An unequivocal rejection of any threat of violence, legal and political consolidation of the Danish-Greenlandic order, expansion of its own Arctic capabilities, and above all a clear statement that European territories are not negotiable in any American package deal. Otherwise, the exception will become the method. It is time for the United States to adhere again to its own doctrine and to keep out of European affairs accordingly.

Those who ignore this development engage in political self-disempowerment. Those who relativise it make themselves complicit. And those who morally justify it bid farewell once and for all to any credible criticism of imperial, monopolistic power behaviour worldwide.

The threat against Greenland is not a slip-up. It is a symptom -  a symptom of the erosion of Western self-restraint, of the transition from a rules-based order to open power politics, and of Europe’s dramatic inability to respond to it sovereignly. If a NATO state threatens another NATO state with violence and Europe remains silent, then it is not only the alliance logic that is damaged. Then the entire Western narrative of law, order and partnership is definitively obsolete.