To Protect Greenland, Europe Kicks Into High Gear
The continent is finally showing some strategic resolve. Will it last?
Former U.S. NATO Ambassador Kurt Volker often jokes that, in response to geopolitical threats, “the European default setting is to wait, worry, and complain.”
But that quip doesn’t seem fair when it comes to Europe’s latest tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump over Greenland. Two weeks of turmoil sparked by Trump’s push to take control of the island “one way or the other” have forced the continent to accept that its most powerful ally can no longer be counted as one. It remains to be seen whether Europe’s fresh sense of urgency will endure—and translate into real strategic autonomy.
For several weeks this month, Trump refused to rule out a military intervention to seize Greenland—although he said that he would not use force to acquire the territory during an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday. Trump, who has been obsessed with the autonomous Danish territory since his first term, insists the United States needs to own it in order to prevent it from falling into Russian or Chinese hands. Most experts agree that there is currently no such risk.
“At first Europeans were astonished, a NATO member wanting to seize the territory of another NATO member seemed unimaginable. But once the astonishment wore down, they reacted well,” said Nathalie Loiseau, a French member of the European Parliament from the centrist Renew group who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
With land controlled by a European Union and NATO member suddenly on the line, major European powers rallied behind Greenland, repeatedly affirming that the territory belongs only to its people. For once, the continent’s leaders didn’t just provide empty words.
First, an intense, Denmark-led diplomatic effort on both sides of the pond sought to defuse the crisis. While a Jan. 14 meeting at the White House ended with a “fundamental disagreement,” according to Denmark’s foreign minister, the two sides did commit to holding future talks about Greenland. (They later sparred about what exactly those negotiations would entail.)
Top Danish officials also held meetings with U.S. legislators, aiming to play a role in the conversation on Capitol Hill about how to make the best use of war powers legislation to prevent a land grab in Greenland. Both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly oppose the idea of the United States taking over the Danish territory. A bipartisan proposal to stop Trump from threatening NATO unity has already been introduced in the Senate, and other bills focusing specifically on Greenland are in the congressional pipeline.
Meanwhile, starting last week, countries including France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom deployed a small number of troops to Greenland for a “reconnaissance mission.” The operation, while largely symbolic, was decided and launched within days, a swift reaction by European standards. “Europeans have realized that they need to increase the cost of a potential American intervention,” said Florent Parmentier, secretary-general of Sciences Po’s Center for Political Research.
Exactly how many troops will be stationed there in the future remains unclear. Germany has already withdrawn its contingent, while French President Emmanuel Macron said the initial team of French soldiers “will be reinforced in the coming days with land, air, and sea assets.”
Trump announced over the weekend that, starting on Feb. 1, he intends to impose a 10 percent tariff on the countries participating in the mission. That sparked fresh outrage across the continent, with EU leaders due to discuss retaliation options at an emergency meeting later this week. In the meantime, the European Parliament has put on hold the ratification of a U.S.-EU trade deal clinched last year. The agreement was widely seen as an attempt to appease Trump with conditions favorable to the United States. A majority of Europeans considered the compact a “humiliation,” according to polling.
But while European leaders appear resolute, the Greenland crisis is also once again laying bare how hard it is for the continent to act as a united power on the world stage.
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In response to Trump’s tariff threats, some momentum is building among EU members to trigger the bloc’s Anti-Coercion Instrument, which allows for a series of punitive measures against rivals, including trade investment restrictions and sanctions on intellectual property rights. Yet the so-called trade bazooka can only be adopted after a lengthy process involving both the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. It also
requires the backing of a qualified majority of member states, which is hardly a given at the moment.
European governments have already taken divergent stances on how confrontational Europe should be toward the United States. France, with its long-standing obsession for European strategic autonomy, is on the hawkish side. In his annual address to the French Armed Forces last week, Macron condemned “the new colonialism in action among some”; he was also the first leader to invoke the trade bazooka over the weekend. A French minister explicitly said that the troop deployment to Greenland was meant to signal to the United States that “Europeans are determined to defend their sovereignty.”
But with Europeans also keen to preserve a glimmer of hope about U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine, most capitals are striking a less bellicose tone.
The European Commission said on Monday that its priority remains “to engage, not escalate.” German officials have been cautious, too. “We, as NATO, are able and willing to do something alongside the U.S. to deter any aggression on Greenland by Russia or China,” said Jürgen Hardt, the foreign-policy spokesperson of the ruling Christian Democratic Union in the German parliament. “NATO is in the process of planning what to do and how to do it, and Germany will contribute to that,” he added.
Italy, which didn’t send any troops, even slammed the fragmented national deployments without NATO coordination. “Fifteen Italians, 15 French, 15 Germans—it sounds like the beginning of a joke to me,” quipped Italy’s defense minister on Friday.
Joke or not, many analysts question Europeans’ resolve in case of actual U.S. armed aggression. “Are they willing to lose soldiers defending Greenland against American troops? Most likely not,” said Andreas Osthagen, a research director at Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
The role of EU institutions in the crisis has been limited so far. The European Commission, which had already doubled funding for Greenland’s development in a draft for its 2028-2034 budget, has now pledged unwavering support for the island—including with extra cash and investments. The European response to Trump’s tariffs is also being coordinated at the EU level. However, individual states—particularly Denmark, France, and Germany—have largely led diplomatic efforts at reining in Washington.
When it comes to military means, the EU disposes of a “Rapid Deployment Capacity” of up to 5,000 troops. But its use for deterrence purposes in Greenland would require unanimity of all 27 members, a scenario so unlikely that EU officials have hardly mentioned it. Any serious military buildup would have to be done at the national level, ideally with NATO coordination, although in case of U.S. aggression against Greenland, the alliance would find itself in uncharted waters—stuck, at the very least, if not completely dead.
Meanwhile, despite growing talk about the need for European strategic autonomy, Europe’s long-standing weaknesses still exist. EU military spending has gone up significantly since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with the bloc’s combined defense budgets ballooning from €218 billion in 2021 (about $248 billion) to an estimated €392 billion (roughly $459 billion) in 2025. But much of the extra cash has gone into purchases of American weapons systems, with European dependency on the United States increasing over the last few years instead of declining.
European armaments programs continue to be woefully fragmented and poorly integrated. And Brussels often risks mistaking grandiose announcements for actual progress: Last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared it was time for “a new European security strategy” but gave virtually zero details on what that new strategy would entail.
For Europe, the Greenland crisis is the loudest wake-up call yet about the hostile new posture of the United States, its onetime ally and protector. Despite the continent’s limits, the way its leaders have reacted to Trump’s threats over the past weeks demonstrates that this harsh new reality is sinking in. “Our internal differences shouldn’t be exaggerated,” said Loiseau, the French member of the European Parliament. “The general consensus is that the U.S. move [on Greenland] needs to be stopped.”
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration. Follow along here.
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