The New American Imperialism: How Europe Can Deal With Trump’s Threat to Greenland

Editor’s Note: Trump’s demands that Denmark surrender control of Greenland to the United States is one of his more surprising moves, even by the standards of the new administration. The Carnegie Endowment’s Sophia Besch and European Council on Foreign Relations’s Jeremy Shapiro argue that Denmark, and Europe as a whole, need to push back more forcefully against such demands or else risk being forced to make concession after concession.

Daniel Byman

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The first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second term have made it clear to most U.S. allies that the next four years will be a distinct and more difficult challenge than his already chaotic first term. Trump’s declaration that he wants to take over Greenland, and his refusal to rule out using military force or economic coercion to “get it,” is the first test of European resolve, creativity, and unity.

Most European policymakers’ instincts, resting on the perceived lessons of the first term, are to appease, delay, and distract. In fact, this strategy rarely worked in Trump 1.0 and is even less likely to fly in Trump 2.0. If Europeans cannot flip the script, they will find themselves doomed to American vassalage and geopolitical irrelevance.

Looking in Vain for an Off-Ramp

After Trump’s declaration that U.S. control of Greenland was necessary “for the protection of the free world,” it did not take long for the national security commentariat to jump into the breach and argue valiantly that Trump did in fact have a point. With Russia and China expanding their influence in the Arctic, they argued, Greenland’s role and location are vital for U.S. security.

Great news for all sides, then: The United States does not actually need to own Greenland, a semiautonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, to increase its military footprint there. It already maintains Pituffik Space Force Base in Northwest Greenland, and Denmark would be happy for the Americans to expand their presence on the island—Copenhagen is staunchly transatlanticist. Denmark and the United States also have a good track record of keeping U.S. strategic rivals off the island, successfully lobbying a Greenlandic rare earths developer not to sell to China. And what if, under Trump, the United States no longer wants to bear so much of the Arctic security burden alone? No problem here, either. After Trump’s demand, Copenhagen was quick to acknowledge that it had in fact neglected Greenland’s defense and vowed to do better, pledging to spend $2.1 billion on Arctic defense. NATO further offered to station alliance troops in Greenland to secure Arctic territory.

The message from Europe was clear: Thank you, President Trump, for helping us recognize this vulnerability, no need for you to take over, problem solved—or at least, problem delegated to defense officials who don’t publicly threaten their closest allies. Unfortunately, while policymakers and experts may try to rationalize Trump’s instincts and coat the president’s demands in the veneer of national security legitimacy, addressing legitimate Arctic defense and transatlantic burden-sharing concerns is unlikely to satisfy him. His recent call with Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredricksen made clear in no uncertain terms that Trump’s demands went beyond such prosaic economic and security issues.

It’s the Imperialism, Stupid

Instead, as those familiar with Trump’s thinking note, owning Greenland is about securing his legacy and following an expansionist instinct to dominate the immediate U.S. neighborhood. He first floated the prospect of buying the territory during his first term in 2019. In “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” Peter Baker and Susan Glasser write that “Greenland had grabbed his attention as ‘essentially, a big real estate deal’ that might give him a place in American history like William Seward’s purchase of Alaska from Russia.”

What options does this leave for Europe? Denmark could refuse to sell, and Greenland could refuse to be bought—both have made clear statements to this effect. But, of course, the United States has a variety of options to coerce Denmark. The president has not excluded military intervention. And while he is unlikely to stage a Normandy-style invasion, he might simply choose to increase the existing U.S. troop presence in Greenland. Or, closer to his usual style, he could threaten Denmark and Greenland with tariffs, sanctions, and a steady stream of promises on social media to abandon Denmark to the tender mercies of Vladimir Putin.

Trump may also choose to rely on the deep pockets of those around him to change minds and influence the people of Greenland. The island has rare earth elements, graphite and lithium. Many of the billionaires who are influential in Trump circles have ties to mining investments in Greenland. The Greenlandic government has rushed to make clear that it is keen to strengthen its mining ties with the United States. But the island follows high standards for working conditions and legal protections. Its inhabitants are quick to clarify that it is no Wild West for American gold diggers. Some in the president’s orbit may be interested in changing that. Greenland just this week strengthened its laws against election interference. But the people around Trump have unlimited funds and are able to make offers that would be hard to refuse.

Not Your Father’s Trump Administration

If Denmark and Europe really want to counter Trump’s threat to Greenland, they will need to understand this imperial motivation and, more broadly, recognize that Trump 2.0 presents some very distinct challenges from Trump’s first administration.

In just his first few weeks back in office, Trump’s various imperialistic threats toward Greenland—as well as toward Canada, Panama, and Gaza—and the administration’s shock-and-awe attack on the U.S. federal government have already demonstrated the differences. The guardrails are gone, and the adults have left the room. The world will see a much purer version of Trump in the next four years, less filtered by traditional advisers and the institutions of U.S. governance.

Accordingly, we should expect the script for dealing with Trump in his first term will no longer work. In 2019, when Trump’s Greenland obsession first emerged, the Danish government used a by then well-established strategy to deal with it: appease, delay, and distract. First, they sought to give Trump what they think he wants—security enhancements in the Arctic, mining concessions in Greenland, maybe a parade. The point of appeasement is to cool the flames of Trumpian anger and delay any decisions by pushing the issue into the boring bureaucracy in the hope that Trump will lose track of it and the adults can take it over. In the meantime, maybe Trump will get distracted by a novel pandemic or a shiny new canal and so forget about their issue.

This script had some merit in the first term, but even then, it worked only fitfully. The Europeans used it, for example, to try to get Trump to stay in the Iran nuclear deal in 2017. They accepted his view that the deal was flawed and initiated a U.S.-European bureaucratic process to “fix the deal,” led by Brian Hook in the U.S. State Department. Over several months, that process made impressive progress and by the time French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Washington for a state visit in April 2018, they had addressed basically all the problems with the deal that the Trump administration had identified. When Macron met Trump, he praised the progress made by Hook’s team. Trump looked puzzled and responded, “Who is Brian Hook?” He pulled out of the nuclear deal a few days later. As with Iran, if Trump’s obsession over Greenland persists, the strategy of appease, delay, and distract will at best just kick the can down the road a little.

Worse, there is considerable reason to believe that it will not do even that in Trump 2.0. Trump may be the same man as in the first term, but his administration is very different. He has largely solved his personnel problems. He is installing loyalists throughout the bureaucracy and purging those who might attempt delays. Soon, there will be no one left to pursue a clandestine agenda of alliance management, nor even anyone willing to redirect the president’s attention away from his more dangerous obsessions. The focus for those that remain will be on delivering for the president on his monomania of the day, no matter how weird it appears to outside observers.

And all the signs since the election point to the idea that Greenland will remain a preoccupation. Experience indicates that he is unlikely to respond to reason or change his mind. In fact, appeasement will only convey weakness and whet his appetite for more. (NATO, for example, is now finding that meeting the 2 percent of GDP defense spending threshold has only increased Trump’s demands to 3 percent and even 5 percent.) Worse, Greenland offers some intriguing business opportunities for Trump supporters and even his family. As their business interests get wrapped up in the idea of American ownership of Greenland, Trump’s intransigence will only increase.

A New Script for Europe

All of this is a potential disaster for Europeans. The issue is far greater than whether Denmark will lose control over a gigantic, frozen island with fewer than 60,000 people on it. Trump is in effect making a Putin-esque argument that borders are inconveniences, sovereignty is a fiction, and popular will matters not at all in the face of superior might. If he succeeds, NATO will become what amounts to a protection racket in which members pay the mafia don in the White House not to trash one of their provinces. Just listen to newly installed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who many Europeans hoped would be a moderating influence on Trump, insisting that “this is not a joke …. [I]f we’re already on the hook [for defending Greenland], then we might as well have more control over what happens there.”

Europeans may wake up one morning soon to find out that they are now more like members of the Warsaw Pact than members of a democratic alliance. The idea that under those circumstances, they will be able to effectively negotiate with the United States on any issue, from digital services regulation to tariffs to corporate social responsibility seems almost quaint.

Denmark and the European Union as a whole desperately need a new script for Trump 2.0. They should take a page from (supposed) Russian nuclear doctrine and escalate to de-escalate. Trump, after all, is a classic bully: quick to assert his power and threaten force, but quite afraid of strength and violence. The key to dealing with bullies is to stand up to them and respond with pressure of your own. Beneath the bully’s braggadocio, he is always more scared than he appears. Once they see your strength and determination, you can generally negotiate a deal.

This script is clearly hard for U.S. allies to follow. It is not their habit to deal with the United States on the basis of power. It goes against every norm of the Atlantic alliance and the habit of 80 years. But those norms of behavior may in fact be the reason that Trump reserves his most aggressive rhetoric for U.S. allies. U.S. adversaries are used to standing up to the United States and counter-threatening it in explicit terms. Trump, after all, has evinced little interest in annexing provinces that belong to China or making Russia the 51st state. Arguably, Trump has more fun bullying America’s friends than its enemies specifically because the allies lack the habit of standing up to U.S. bullying.

But, despite their dependence on the United States, Denmark and the European Union have many options to stand up to and threaten Trump in return over Greenland. They could, for example, announce an international conference on climate technology and mineral resources in Copenhagen and invite the Chinese at a very high level. (The visuals of that should be enough; no need to sell out the island to Beijing.) They could threaten to revoke U.S. mining licenses in Greenland and refuse to consider new ones. (There is only one currently, but they don’t need to mention that.) They could expel U.S. forces from their military base in Greenland. And, with sufficient unity, they could declare their intention to link the Greenland issue to any U.S.-EU negotiation over trade, tariffs, and digital service regulation.

Of course, neither Denmark nor the European Union is likely to take any of these steps. In the first instance, this is because they lack sufficient unity. Denmark has shored up basic support within the European Union, but more forceful measures would quickly test that commitment. Some EU member states want to be Trump’s best friend, and many more are just happy he is focused on Denmark and not them.

But more fundamentally, Europeans are still not ready to engage the United States, their traditional ally and protector, in such a hard-nosed fashion. As long as they are not, the bully will always have the advantage. But if experience is any guide, such weakness will only encourage more bullying. So watch out, Iceland, you may be next.