Donald Trump is serious about overtaking Greenland, and European disapproval is unlikely to change his mind. He has already made clear to heads of state that resistance will carry a cost. What cannot be achieved through consent will be forced through economics.
Trump has announced a 10 percent tariff on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland, set to take effect February 1, with the rate scheduled to rise to 25 percent on June 1. The tariffs, he said, will remain in place until the United States reaches a deal to buy Greenland. “It is time for Denmark to give back,” Trump declared, framing the demand not as negotiation but as restitution.
In Denmark, protests erupted on January 17. They are unlikely to matter. Trump has shown little interest in dissent at home, the foreign outrage carries even less weight.
No statement on X invoking sovereignty or territorial integrity will restrain a president who no longer feels bound by checks and balances at home or by international law abroad.
In Trump’s mind, the precedent is already established. If Vladimir Putin was able to seize Crimea and large parts of Ukraine, what, exactly, is meant to stop him? Norms did not prevail in Putin’s case. Condemnations piled up. Resolutions were passed. And territory changed hands. The war against Putin was possible only because Joe Biden was prepared to pull the levers of American military power and anchor Europe’s defense.
If Trump proceeds against Greenland, the European Union will not be able to stop him. Trump understands this. He has already accused countries that have deployed troops to Greenland of playing a “very dangerous game.”
Trump often argues that he merely seeks what earlier American presidents attempted but failed to secure. Harry Truman in 1946 offered Denmark $100 million for Greenland but the offer was rejected. Other acquisition efforts stretch back as far as Andrew Jackson. The idea of purchasing Greenland is not novel. What is new is the my way or the highway approach—the assumption that refusal is illegitimate and resistance punishable.
The American founders built a system of checks and balances precisely because they distrusted concentrated power. That system is now being tested, not only domestically but internationally, as American authority is wielded without the moderating force of law or alliance consensus.
European leaders have responded with forceful language. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called Trump’s tariff threats “completely wrong,” reaffirming that Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and that its future belongs to the Greenlanders and the Danes. Arctic security, Starmer added, is a NATO concern requiring collective action.
But the central question is not what Europe thinks. It is whether Trump cares. The evidence suggests that he does not.
Toothless NATO
At the heart of this crisis lies NATO itself—an alliance Macron declared “brain-dead” in Trump’s first term. Today, NATO faces potential dismemberment. Alliances constrain unilateral power, and Trump has never shown patience for constraint.
Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, rejected Trump’s tariff threats, declaring that Sweden would not submit to blackmail. Only Denmark and Greenland, he said, have the right to decide Greenland’s future. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, echoed the sentiment, insisting that “no intimidation nor threat will influence us” and promising a unified European response.
It is stirring rhetoric. It is also toothless. The European Union does not have an army, and it is not going to war with the United States.
As Trump’s confrontation with Europe unfolds publicly—breaking diplomatic norms and turning negotiations into social-media spectacle—the NATO question becomes unavoidable. Denmark is a founding member of the alliance.
Any American move to annex Greenland would force NATO states into an impossible choice: between the United States and the principles the alliance claims to defend—territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Those principles have not always been applied consistently. Kosovo remains an obvious example. But this case would involve an EU member state, not a peripheral exception. That distinction matters.
There is also a deeper structural problem. NATO members do not attack one another. A U.S. move against Danish sovereignty would shatter that foundational assumption, creating a crisis the alliance was never designed to resolve.
The likely outcome would be fragmentation. European nations would accelerate independent defense arrangements, hedge against American unpredictability, and begin openly questioning whether U.S. security guarantees still mean anything. Once that doubt takes hold, NATO ceases to function as a collective defense system and becomes a set of overlapping, unreliable promises.
One can safely imagine Putin watching this unfold with interest. A weakened Europe and a divided alliance would read as a green light to revisit the map. Once NATO becomes a dead letter on paper, the borders become negotiable by force and the international system begins to unravel.
Annexation of Greenland would cascade and make every single territorial dispute up for grabs.
Joe Biden’s return to power in 2020 temporarily arrested decline of NATO. Under Biden, the United States reassumed its traditional role as guarantor of the alliance and defender of democratic solidarity. Biden warned on numerous occasions that Trump would fracture alliances and push America toward a form of elective authoritarianism.
The real story of 2026 is unlikely to be Greenland itself. It is the steady corrosion of checks and balances under a presidency that treats law as negotiable, alliances as disposable, and power as its own justification. Empires rarely announce themselves. They normalize themselves. And a significant portion of the MAGA movement openly embraces this vision of America as an empire. Trump knows there is a momentum opening up for the type of expansionist agenda that was not possible in decades. He wants to try his hand and from where he sits, he sees what is possible.
Trump’s approach to Greenland is best understood not as diplomacy but property development conducted with a megaphone and, if necessary, a fleet. First comes the offer. Then the pressure. Then—when the check is politely declined—the unmistakable sound of boots being measured.
If Trump follows through, such an action would raise the prospect of impeachment and removal in a way that was not possible in his earlier term. It would also mark a decisive break with the order the United States once claimed to lead.