Eu nations, and Denmark particularly, are scrambling to answer threats from US officers over the way forward for Greenland.
Having effectively taken out the management of Venezuela in a raid on January 3, an emboldened US executive is speaking about merely taking Greenland for itself.
More than a few Eu leaders have expressed their worry however haven’t been in a position to formulate a coherent reaction to the betrayal through a intended best friend.
Because the Sept. 11 assaults in 2001, Danish governments have willingly participated in US-led invasions of Afghanistan (2001-2021) and Iraq (2003-2007). The rightward motion around the Danish political spectrum had ended in Denmark rejecting some Nordic and EU cooperation in favour of pro-US transatlanticism.
Then again, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine ended in a reconsider of Danish international coverage. The rustic joined the EU’s not unusual safety and defence coverage and tightened cooperation with contemporary Nato individuals Finland and Sweden.
And when Trump got here to energy for the second one time, the chaotic rightward swing of US international coverage left Denmark achieving out for strengthen from its EU colleagues over the problem to Greenland.
Whilst a member of the Eu Union, Denmark has positioned itself on the bloc’s outer edge since copying the United Kingdom in opting out of the euro and from cooperation in justice and residential affairs. However any US invasion of Greenland is more likely to smash Denmark’s fastened alternate price coverage with the euro (and prior to that the deutschmark) that has been in position since 1982. So there are financial implications in addition to territorial.
The fallout from the United States’s threats, and without a doubt any US intervention in Greenland, move a lot additional than Denmark. Whilst the EU attempted to stick in line with the United States in its strengthen of Ukraine right through Joe Biden’s presidency, because the re-election of Trump, EU member states have very a lot fallen out with the United States. All through 2025, the United States and EU clashed over industry and price lists, social media law, setting and agriculture insurance policies.
However the most recent traits exhibit that Trump’s US can not be relied on as a long-term best friend – to Greenland and Denmark, the EU and Europe.
It is a disaster engulfing many nations and brought on through many drivers. As a way to perceive this advanced scenario, we will be able to use 4 other analytical approaches from instructional pondering. Those can lend a hand us contextualise no longer simply the Greenland case, but additionally the rising multipolar international of “might makes right”.
1. Realism
Recently the preferred way comes from inside the conservative custom of “realism”. This predicts each and every state will act in their very own nationwide pastime.
On this framing, Trump’s movements are a part of the emergence of a multipolar international, during which the good powers are the United States, China, India and Russia. On this international, it is smart for Russia to invade Ukraine to counter the United States, for the United States to snatch belongings in Venezuela and Greenland to counter China, and for China to invade Taiwan to counter the United States.
2. The brand new elites
Many suppose that to know the occasions of the previous few years, together with Trump’s go back and Vladimir Putin’s international insurance policies, you wish to have to seem past conservative or liberal explanations to hunt out who holds energy and affect within the international superpowers. That suggests the rich households, firms and oligarchs who exert keep an eye on over the politics of the ruling elite via media and marketing campaign energy and finance.
3. The decline of the liberal order
Many instructional explanations see those contemporary occasions within the context of the decline of a “liberal order” ruled through the United States, Europe, the “developed world” and the UN. On this view, the movements of Putin and Trump are noticed because the remaining days of world legislation, the significance of the UN, and what western countries see as a gadget in accordance with multilateralism.
Then again, this way has a tendency to disregard the ongoing dominance of the worldwide north in those programs. The loss of strengthen for the United States and EU’s defence of Ukraine has been time and again demonstrated within the unwillingness of many international south nations, together with China and India, to sentence the Russian invasion within the UN normal meeting. It might be fascinating to peer how such balloting would play out if it associated with a US invasion of Greenland.
4. The planetary way
The overall – and maximum necessary – view is located within the planetary politics way. This way is in accordance with the easy statement that such a lot of planetary crises, reminiscent of international heating, mass extinctions of flora and fauna, local weather refugees, emerging autocracy and the go back of world warfare are deeply interrelated and so can simplest be understood when regarded as in combination.
Danish top minister Mette Frederiksen in Paris on January 6 2026.
Alamy/Yoan Valat
From this point of view it’s Greenland’s sustainability and Greenlanders’ lives that will have to form the working out of Denmark’s and different Eu responses to Trump’s claims. It’s via acknowledging the deep dating that indigenous folks must their ecology that answers will also be discovered.
And Greenlanders have already expressed their imaginative and prescient for the long run. Dwelling at the frontline of the local weather disaster, they would like an financial system constructed on resilience – no longer on ego-driven political drama.
There’s, alternatively, a last statement to emphasize. Simplest this kind of views is more likely to deliver any frame of mind ourselves out of our planetary political disaster.
