NATO faces a major crisis over Greenland. Europe seems powerless to stop it

For Europe, Donald Trump’s return to the White House has been a bonfire of certainties. His administration’s threat to annex Greenland, an autonomous part of Denmark, has plunged NATO into an unprecedented situation: An alliance based on collective defense – where an attack on one is an attack on all – now faces the prospect that one member might attack another.

The White House said Tuesday that the president is “discussing a range of options” to acquire Greenland, making clear that using the US military is not off the table. Proclaiming the return to a world in which the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, told CNN: “We’re a superpower, and … we’re going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.”

Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to downplay concerns about a military intervention, saying instead that the Trump administration is considering buying Greenland, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has sounded the alarm: “If the US chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War.”

But other European leaders have held their tongues, at least in public, for an uncomfortable reason: The US may no longer be a reliable ally of Europe, but for now it remains a necessary one. With Europe needing US military and diplomatic support to rebuff Russia, Trump’s renewed threats against Greenland have put it in a bind: how to keep the US out of Greenland, but invested in Ukraine?

This tension was on display in Paris this week, when representatives from 35 countries, including the US, discussed how to guarantee Ukraine’s post-war security in the event of a peace deal with Russia. Although the meeting went smoothly and led to concrete commitments, the bonhomie was strained by uncomfortable questions at a news conference about the issue hanging over the day’s diplomacy.