President Trump has again begun threatening Denmark with a potential US annexation of Greenland, an overseas possession of the Danish state. The administration has refused to rule out military action, and in the wake of the US bombing of Venezuela, it is clear that anything is possible.
Yet, there is one important factor at work in the Greenland case that was not relevant to the bombing of Venezuela: Denmark is a NATO member.
Both the United States and Denmark are NATO members, and were the United States to launch military action against Denmark—or extract concessions under threat of military action—this would call into question the foundational purpose of NATO itself. After all, for small countries, one of the primary purposes of NATO membership is to insure against the loss of territory to foreign aggressors. If membership in NATO can’t even protect one NATO member from another then what good is it?
Nor surprisingly, the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that an American takeover of Greenland would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance. PBS reports:
If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops,” Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2 on Monday. “That is, including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War.
Moreover, if one NATO member attacks another, how are the other members to respond? The foundational principle of the alliance is that if one NATO member is attacked then all the other NATO members will act to defend the member who has been attacked. Obviously, this does not work terribly well if one member is attacked by another. This would put other members in the position of siding with one member or another, or to remain neutral and refuse to enter the conflict.
Even if this does not immediately lead to a death stroke for the alliance, it would clearly expose a grim reality that most Europeans ignore, but which many observers suspect: that NATO members are not really equal partners at all, and European states are but junior members at the mercy of the United States.
At the very least it would force a debate among Europeans that virtually none of the European foreign policy elites are willing to have. Moreover, it’s easy to see how a rift would develop between the reliable patsies to the US regime —i.e., the UK, Germany, and Poland—and more independent states like France. The Germans, for example, have been plunged into a cost-of-living crisis thanks in part to the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline and the resulting rise of energy. Higher energy prices have also led to an ongoing trend of deindustrialization in the country. US sanctions on Russia have destroyed what had been thriving bilateral trade between Russia and Germany. German exports to Russia were cut by 72 percent from 2021 to 2024. Russian imports into Germany were cut by 95 percent over the same period.
Berlin’s only response has been to obediently accept whatever the United States demands. As John Mearsheimer notes, this is because “Europeans do what we [i.e., US policymakers] tell them” and no one in Washington (or Moscow for that matter) cares about “the response from [former NATO Secretary General] Jens Stoltenberg.”
Mearsheimer’s point is brutal and simple: the US is the only actor that actually matters.
Europe is just noise.
Washington bankrolls NATO, dictates strategy, and treats European capitals like subordinate offices, not sovereign powers. Lacking real military muscle, Europe has… pic.twitter.com/7KS8SIGefL— Richard (@ricwe123) January 7, 2026
The United Kingdom is even more complacent, and in recent years, the UK has even made its nuclear arsenal—composed of US-manufactured weapons—on US maintenance and operations. Many now believe that the UK’s arsenal is under the de facto control of the Americans, and with Trump-era threats mounting against NATO members like Denmark, a handful of British policymakers are finally beginning to admit that total dependence of Washington may not be the wisest decision.
The French, on the other hand are considerably less spineless than the British and the Germans. The French state has long maintained its own nuclear arsenal, outside NATO control, and with both maritime and air capability.
In other words, one could easily imagine a post-Greenland situation in which the French look to a future military alliance without the US while the British and the Germans double down on being US lapdogs.
Retired French General Michel Yakovleff says that if NATO collapses over Trump’s Greenland push, Europe would force U.S. troops out of Europe.
We won’t go to war with the United States… we don’t have the means.
We kick them out of Ramstein, out of Naples… You don’t have a… pic.twitter.com/j5IaX3pIUS— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 7, 2026
Meanwhile, the so-called Russian “threat” will play very little into this as a real consideration. Certainly, imagined Russian aggression against NATO members will be employed in official state propaganda extensively throughout Europe as a means of promoting the existence of NATO, no matter what. It is clear, however, that Russia is simply incapable of challenging Europe, even without a US-centered alliance. In three years of fighting, Moscow has not managed to get west of the Dneiper River in Europe’s third-poorest country. And that’s with no American boots on the ground. The idea that Russian troops would roll through Berlin or Budapest without a US-centered NATO is simply not a serious position. After all, the combined GDP of just France and Italy is larger than that of Russia. Europe’s military situation is a choice, not a necessity.
In any case, if the US annexes Greenland, NATO will have failed in one of its core de facto purposes: to maintain the territorial status quo in Europe while providing European member states with an excuse to outsource their military spending to the US taxpayer.
How this will play out remains unclear, but as any serious observer of geopolitics knows: the future is uncertain.
