José Ignacio Torreblanca
The US president is hell-bent on owning Greenland. Annexation could destroy not only NATO but the EU, if European leaders do not resolutely act.
The US president’s obsession with Greenland shows no signs of relenting, declaring earlier this month that “we need it for national security”. Then, on January 17th, he announced new tariffs on European countries that sent troops to the Danish territory. The previously unimaginable—an American annexation of Greenland—is veering dangerously close to reality, threatening the very foundations of NATO, and of the EU.
For NATO, its raison d’être—the collective security of its members—would collapse the moment the US turned its power on its allies. NATO is also a political organisation. The day after annexation, the North Atlantic Council would be meaningless. NATO would no longer be an alliance of democracies, but a 21st century replica of the Warsaw Pact, complete with its own version of Brezhnev’s doctrine of limited sovereignty. By pursuing annexation, Trump would hand Russia and China the strategic victory they have sought for decades—without either firing a single shot.
NATO would not be the only casualty. Annexation of Greenland would shatter the EU’s core value of solidarity. Worse still, member state division over how to respond could deal a potentially fatal blow to the union: one group seeking to turn the page and move on, another pushing for sanctions against the US but unable to find enough consensus to act. European Council and Council of the EU meetings would become mired in bitterness and recrimination, all but halting EU political and policy processes. Even if NATO and the EU survived the initial institutional shock, political life in Europe would become bleak and further polarised. After all these blows, the bloc would be weaker than ever and slowly collapsing.
Across Europe, anti-NATO and anti-American forces on the far left would prevail in an argument they have been losing for nearly 80 years, successfully portraying NATO as an instrument of US imperialism aimed at keeping Europe down and divided. Any reference to Russian imperialism in Ukraine or to the need to invest heavily in defence, could be met with whataboutism or, worse, calls to negotiate a peace settlement with Moscow.
On the far right, European sovereigntists would be emboldened by this humiliation. It would validate their claim that international law and globalist institutions cannot guarantee sovereignty. It would reinforce their call to abandon them in favour of nation-states, which they regard as the only legitimate and effective political units in a world solely governed by power.
Over in Britain, acquiescence to Greenland’s annexation would likely prove fatal for the current Labour government, further opening the way to a Reform victory and accelerating the country’s disengagement from European politics and defence.
More damaging still, Europe’s safeguard against the rise of political extremes—a united centre of mainstream parties and their voters—would be demoralised. This would follow from watching NATO and the EU fail either to unite around a credible deterrent and later on, around a meaningful response—or worse, agree collectively to do nothing. In this scenario, the EU after annexation would resemble a modern, multinational Vichy regime—accepting weakness and irrelevance to avoid confrontation with its occupying power.
Avoiding disaster
Given both the consequences of annexation and the limited prospects for reversal once it occurs, Europeans must act decisively to deter the US. The five measures outlined below rest on the assumption that Donald Trump seeks ownership of Greenland and that Arctic security arguments are merely pretexts—an ambition the president has openly expressed.
European offers to increase security in the Arctic can help weaken support for annexation within the US and should be considered, together with the other measures ECFR colleagues have put on the table. What the EU must do, however, is make the consequences of annexation explicit in order to alter the cost-benefit calculus of the US administration. European leaders should therefore state clearly that annexation would trigger the following measures:
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The EU should tell Washington that annexation of Greenland would result in a major diplomatic crisis and, eventually, a fatal blow to the transatlantic alliance and the continuation of US military presence in Europe. While this presence is vital to European security, it is also key for the US military to project force globally. As a first response, ambassadors from EU countries should be recalled from Washington, and US ambassadors should be threatened with an invitation to leave if annexation is not reversed.
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Next, the EU should activate article 42.7, its mutual assistance clause in case of armed aggression, which requires all member states to provide assistance to any member in trouble. EU members of NATO should ask the North Atlantic Council to convene immediately to demand reversal of annexation. If the US refuses, EU NATO members should expel US military attachés from their countries and invite other NATO members to follow suit. If annexation persists, US civilian and military personnel in Europe should be confined to their bases. Negotiations on the future of US military presence in Europe should begin with the aim of Europeans fully owning NATO and using it to build a meaningful European defence.
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The EU should activate the anti-coercion instrument as soon as possible and make public the actions it would take. US firms operating in annexed Greenland, including those in the energy, transport, financial and digital services sectors, should be fined half of their revenue in Europe for as long as annexation persists. In addition, all defence and technology contract negotiations with the US should be suspended. Finally, the EU should change its procurement rules for digital services to give a preference to European firms. This “Buy European Act” would help the EU achieve technological sovereignty and reduce America’s options to coerce the bloc.
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Personal sanctions must follow. Along the sanctions adopted in the context of Russian invasion of Ukraine, American officials involved in the annexation—including senior political leadership and members of Congress who support it—should face travel bans and asset seizures, including Trump’s golf courses and other holdings.
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Finally, EU governments should internationalise the conflict by referring the annexation to the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the UN General Assembly, with the explicit aim of establishing legal responsibility on the US and its officials.
These measures are intended to make annexation prohibitively costly for the US. They would be costly for the EU too, but they would demonstrate a willingness to incur significant costs to uphold the principle that borders cannot be changed by force, whether by Russia to annex Crimea or other Ukrainian territory or by the US to annex Greenland.Not all NATO or EU members would be willing to follow this path, with some trying to veto or water down these measures. These divisions, however, should not paralyse Europe. A smaller group of states willing to resist aggression—something that would require leadership from France and Germany—could form the nucleus of a more coherent European political and security project aimed at building a safer and more sovereign continent.
https://ecfr.eu/article/five-steps-to-stop-greenlands-annexation-destroying-the-eu/