Donald Trump is issuing increasingly worrying threats about taking control of Greenland – something which many fear could mean the tip of Nato.
The President has never been shy about his desire to say Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, as his own.
But within the years because the president first offered to purchase 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 possible invasion of the country could mean for NATO.
Jason Pack, host of the Disorder Podcast and Senior Analyst for Emerging Challenges on the NATO Defence College Foundation, told Metro: ‘Trump is a bully who wants a media win to distract from things just like the Epstein files or the economy—much like his tactics with Venezuela or Iran.
‘You can not make threats against a core NATO ally and a pillar of international law like Denmark. I take the threat seriously because Trump normally tells us what he desires 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 believe it’s sabre-rattling. He uses ships and tariffs to extort the Europeans. It’s a manipulation tactic. Should you look like an entire sociopath, you would possibly reach manipulating the opposite person. He’s threatening to break 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 identical position because it was in December 2021, where diplomats said it made no sense for Putin to think about invading Ukraine.
‘They said Putin could get every thing that he wants from Ukraine without risking a silly and clearly catastrophic military intervention—which, surely, his generals have to be telling him could be a disaster,’ Giles explained.
‘And yet, none of that mattered because, in the long run, it was not a rational objective assessment of the prices and consequences against the advantages of invading Ukraine. As an alternative, it was the ideology that drove it. On this case, with Trump, we’ve the identical situation.’
‘We’re in the identical boat as we were December 2021’
Giles says that the threats being directed at Trump if he’s to invade Greenland are as inconsequential as those Putin faced in December 2021.
‘Today, the appeals to Trump are all in regards to the disruption of the transatlantic alliance, the damage to NATO, and the breaches of international law—all things that are of demonstrably no significance to the present US leadership. In truth, the leadership seems to please in leaving Europeans aghast at their demands.’
Former US lawmakers have said there isn’t a way the US could make a military move against Greenland – not simply because there could be opposition from Congress, but because US service personnel wouldn’t follow a blatantly illegal order.
Giles argues: ‘The difficulty is, all of those perfectly rational explanations don’t 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 occur would turn out to be clear to those within the alliance before they’re forced to choose.
Giles questioned: ‘Do they make a stand? And does that mean that the NATO alliance as a meaningful entity is finished?’
‘Europeans should arise’
Pack also said he’s fearful about leaders like Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, who he says have been poor at providing alternative points of leadership.
‘The actual opportunity here is for Europeans to arise and say, “That is unacceptable.” If all NATO countries stood together to defend the territorial integrity of a member state, it could force a backtrack.
‘That may be the “win” that reasserts international rules and order. But with Starmer coping with domestic defections and other things in Britain, I’m unsure he’s cut out for that sort of leadership straight away.’
Security challenges facing European nations may mean that NATO members won’t oppose the US militarily – to guard themselves, even when it means ‘compromising all the ideals they’re searching for to defend’, Giles argues.
The actual winner of a US disruption to NATO could be Russia, with Giles saying that the present disruption and potential destruction of NATO is the ‘best gift that the Trump White House has yet offered to Moscow.’
Get in contact with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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