Analysis: Europe draws a line in the Arctic as Trump presses bid to take Greenland
The image raced across social media: Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, stepping out of the White House and wordlessly fishing a cigarette from a pack. He lit up, then offered both pack and lighter to his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt. The optics matched the moment. Inside, a meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had gone sideways, and a thin diplomatic accord collapsed almost as soon as it was announced.
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Rasmussen conceded bluntly afterward that Denmark had “not managed to change the American position.” Copenhagen left believing it had secured a working group to explore U.S. security concerns around Greenland. Hours later, the White House described that same group as a forum on how the United States could acquire the island. The gap was not a nuance; it was a chasm, and it widened a crisis that has moved much faster than European capitals are built to respond.
Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, has heard American interest before. But the current push by President Donald Trump is different in velocity and in tone. Trump has publicly said the United States will take Greenland “one way or the other,” refused to rule out military action and threatened tariffs on countries that do not support the plan. He has described the need to “own” Greenland as “psychologically needed for success,” and once fixated on a map’s visual scale—“Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States.”
That posture has put Europe in the unfamiliar position of contemplating deterrence measures against an American land grab. It has also produced a scramble to show Washington that legitimate security concerns in the Arctic can be met without changing Greenland’s sovereignty.
At the start of the week, the prevailing European idea was to float a NATO mission to the High North—both to signal seriousness about maritime defense and to establish a multinational tripwire that would complicate any U.S. bid to annex Greenland. But the NATO path, with its 32-member unanimity requirement, proved too slow for the moment.
By midweek, Denmark had moved ahead on its own, launching Operation Arctic Endurance and putting allied boots on Greenlandic soil. France and Germany each sent roughly a dozen troops; Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands contributed small planning teams; the United Kingdom’s single officer became instant online shorthand for European understatement. The numbers are modest, but the intent is not. These are not token flag-raisings; they are military planners tasked with preparing the ground for larger deployments if needed.
Publicly, European diplomats maintained that the effort addresses the very security worries Trump has raised, including his unsubstantiated claims of Russian and Chinese vessels prowling Greenland’s waters. Privately, French officials were more candid, describing the deployment as a bid to jolt American opinion, especially inside the Pentagon, by making clear that any forced change in Greenland’s status would face immediate allied presence. French President Emmanuel Macron all but said the quiet part out loud, declaring in a New Year’s address that France’s “correct role” is to stand “at the side of a sovereign state to protect its territory,” and warning that Europe is being “shaken in some of its certainties.”
Washington’s strategic rationale remains thin. A 1951 defense agreement with Denmark already gives the United States sweeping military access to Greenland, home to critical basing and radar assets. If mineral and energy resources are the draw, most lie locked beneath ice or in inhospitable terrain, and Copenhagen has signaled openness to commercial arrangements anyway. That’s why a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers in Copenhagen, intent on “lowering the temperature,” sounded perplexed. Sen. Chris Coons summed up the disconnect: plenty of rhetoric, not much reality.
The momentum, then, appears to come not from strategy but from psychology. Trump’s own words point to a belief that ownership—on a map, in rhetoric, in the sweep of U.S. territory—is essential to success. That is a problem immune to ordinary diplomatic fixes. No working group can reconcile cartography and ego with sovereignty and law.
For Denmark and Greenland, the stakes are immediate and concrete. Copenhagen’s military leadership has acknowledged a legal and moral obligation to resist any invasion of its territory. Peter Boysen, head of the Danish army, cited a 1952 royal decree that compels soldiers to fight back if Denmark is attacked. “You have to,” he said. “It’s an obligation.” Asked whether that duty would extend to confronting American forces, Boysen demurred: “This is highly political. And I’m just a soldier.”
That hedging underscores the extraordinary nature of the current scenario: a U.S. president raising the possibility of annexation; Europe improvising deterrence on the fly; and Greenlanders taking measure of who will stand with them in a crisis they did not invite. The presence of allied planners in Nuuk and beyond is, at minimum, a visible line in the snow—one that signals European readiness to absorb political costs now rather than face uncontested facts later.
The risk in this approach is escalation. Denmark’s top military officer in Greenland, Maj. Gen. Soren Andersen, sought to dial down tensions, emphasizing that his focus is on Russia, “not the U.S.” But that statement, and the choreography around it, cannot fully disguise the core purpose of Operation Arctic Endurance: to deter unilateral American action without directly naming the United States as the problem.
For Washington, the path out is clear even if it is politically unpalatable: revert to the status quo ante. The United States has what it needs militarily under the existing U.S.-Denmark agreement. If further Arctic security coordination is warranted, expand joint exercises and maritime patrols under Danish lead, with Greenlandic authorities at the table. If economic development is the concern, invest through transparent, mutually beneficial ventures that respect Greenland’s autonomy and Denmark’s sovereignty.
What Europe cannot do is satisfy a demand rooted in the aesthetics of a map. The more the debate centers on annexation, the more it forces allies into defensive crouches that complicate transatlantic relations far beyond the Arctic. In that sense, the small detachments stepping onto Greenland this week are performing a geopolitical balancing act: showing resolve without inviting confrontation, and asserting that sovereignty in the Arctic will not be bartered or bullied.
The White House’s insistence on framing even a modest working group as a vehicle for acquisition suggests this crisis will not recede on its own. It will require, instead, the patient, public articulation of limits—by Denmark, by Europe and, critically, by voices in Washington who see the difference between access and ownership, between partnership and possession.
For now, the most telling scene remains Rasmussen’s smoke break outside the White House: a moment of unguarded realism after an encounter with an American demand that diplomacy was never designed to meet. Europe has chosen to answer with planning cells, airlift manifests and a quiet buildup of resolve. Whether that is enough to deter a policy driven by cartography is the question that hangs over the ice.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
