Invasion of Greenland Would End NATO
So says Denmark's prime minister.
NPR (“Danish prime minister says a US takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO“):
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Monday an American takeover of Greenland would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance. Her comments came in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed call for the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island to come under U.S. control in the aftermath of the weekend military operation in Venezuela.
The dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas to capture leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife early Saturday left the world stunned, and heightened concerns in Denmark and Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of the Danish kingdom and thus part of NATO.
Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens Frederik Nielsen, blasted the president’s comments and warned of catastrophic consequences. Numerous European leaders expressed solidarity with them.
“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.”
Trump called repeatedly during his presidential transition and the early months of his second term for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has not ruled out military force to take control of the island. His comments Sunday, including telling reporters “let’s talk about Greenland in 20 days,” further deepened fears that the U.S. was planning an intervention in Greenland in the near future.
Frederiksen also said Trump “should be taken seriously” when he says he wants Greenland. “We will not accept a situation where we and Greenland are threatened in this way,” she added.
Nielsen, in a news conference Monday, said Greenland cannot be compared to Venezuela. He urged his constituents to stay calm and united.
“We are not in a situation where we think that there might be a takeover of the country overnight and that is why we are insisting that we want good cooperation,” he said.
Nielsen added: “The situation is not such that the United States can simply conquer Greenland.”
Frederiksen is likely right. While Denmark has a population slightly smaller than Missouri’s and a military only slightly larger than the Missouri Guard, it is a founding member of the alliance. The mere threat of it being invaded by the United States threatens NATO; an actual invasion would shatter the core principle for which it stands, that the security of one is the security of all.
The notion of the United States taking over Greenland, much less by force, would have been unthinkable a year ago. It seems to have come from nowhere. While I suspect that it’s just a fantasy rather than something that’s going to happen, I’m less sure of that than I’d like.
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Probably end NORAD also. As well as ending the longest, unmilitarized border in the world.
In fact, I’m surprised that Denmark and Canada have not made some kind of mutual arrangement WRT to Greenland.
@Scott:
NORAD falls under a bilateral agreement between Canada and the US, separate from NATO. See also the Ogdensburg Agreement. Pre-WWII, Canada operated on the principle that the UK could provide for its broader defense needs. By 1940 it was clear that the UK couldn’t — in fact, the British had plans to evacuate the royals and other groups to Canada if it looked like Germany could mount a serious invasion of the UK.
I know it sounds silly to say this, but sometime in the next three years Trump could force Canada to choose between North America and Europe.
Sometime back in the Stone Age, the Daily Show ran a bit featuring a debate between President Bush and Candidate Bush, which included contrasting the candidate’s anti-interventionist rhetoric with the president’s, well…
We are so, so far from a time when anyone expects the POTUS to maintain a consistent position from one breath to the next, let alone between the campaign and the actual office. The old sketch was predicated on an assumption that shame was still possible. When policy is not only being dictated by the president’s daily deluge of verbal diarrhea, but he happily embraces it because he enjoys seeing everyone flinch, there’s not much the comedians can do anymore except get down in the mud. I mean, JFC, if tomorrow Trump declares that every Congressperson who doesn’t vote the way he likes shall be kicked in the ass then be forced to write “I WILL BE NICER TO TRUMP” 50 times on the chalkboard, then be made to wear a red rubber clown nose for the rest of the day, you can bet good money there will be columns speculating on how he might try to make this a reality.
This is insane that we are even talking about this. Denmark. DENMARK.
That’s who we are picking a fight with, over rare earth minerals. JFC x1000.
How do we stop this insanity? HOW??
@JamesJoyner
After all this… REALLY?
You sound like some of the commenters here in 2024, “Oh, don’t worry. You’re overreacting. It won’t be that bad. We survived the first term”.
I fully expect them to go after Greenland, consequences be damned.
“Invasion of Greenland Would End NATO”
I suspect this is a feature, not a bug.
First, Trump may well see ending NATO as a secondary goal.
Second, Trump seems to feel we can’t just buy stuff, we must control resources in order to obtain resources. Isn’t this the same classic mistake, along with fighting a land war in Asia, Japan made? Leading to Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima?
Third, what @Jen: said. Trump made war on Venezuela to benefit his oil company donors, who may not even want it. What’s the constituency for making war on Denmark FFS? I don’t recall there being any Danish exile community in Minneapolis pining for the fjords.
@gVOR10:
LOL!!! Nicely done. I almost decorated my screen with a mouthful of water at this…
@EddieInCA: Agreed, 100%. We all need to take this seriously and assume that the administration is serious about this. Reasonable people need to stop assuming that logic, diplomacy, or anything nearing propriety will prevail.
@Moosebreath: @gVOR10: Yes, I meant to mention in the OP that Trump is not a fan of NATO.
@EddieInCA: I think Rubio, Cain, and others with influence will work hard to prevent this.
Trump is old, sick, his mind – what there ever was of it – is fading, he can’t get a hard-on, he’s being laughed at, defied by MTG, aware that death is coming soon, his ankles are swollen, they’re giving him something by IV, his ballroom is a mess, his Kennedy Center takeover is being boycotted, he’s so desperate for legacy he practically cries over the ridiculous FIFA peace prize. . . I don’t know which of his goons is pushing this (Hegseth? Vance? Miller?) but if someone on staff doesn’t step in, yes, he’ll do it. Will the Republicans in Congress finally man up?
I watched an interesting YouTube piece by a Finnish defense guy pointing out that the US military is not equipped or trained for the conditions on Greenland. The Finns, Swedes and Norwegians are. Will they fight? Will Denmark shoot down American troop transports?
@James Joyner:
What on earth gives you confidence that they will stop Trump with anything?
@Michael Cain: @Michael Cain:
“NORAD falls under a bilateral agreement between Canada and the US, separate from NATO.”
‘When I murdered our neighbor, that was under a separate dispute. I promise you that I won’t murder you.’
“I know it sounds silly to say this, but sometime in the next three years Trump could force Canada to choose between North America and Europe.”
It’s not silly, except for the ‘three years’. That time is now.
@Michael Reynolds:
This I very much doubt. His dementia is pretty advanced, and one of the symptoms of bvFTD (behaviour variant frontotemporal dementia) is that any part of reality that upsets him is simply rejected from his awareness.
Besides which, I suspect he gives not a shit what people think after he passes, he puts his name on buildings and coinage now and builds a ballroom now because he cares what people think now while he is alive.
@James Joyner: “I think Rubio, Cain, and others with influence will work hard to prevent this.”
Rubio is a the most bootlicking, slimy POS Secretary of State I’ve ever seen.
He’ll support it.
Who’s Cain? Or rather, who has influence with Trump who might even try to oppose this?
@Moosebreath:
Exactly. This is the primary purpose, not an unintended consequence or side benefit. He’s convinced that any mutual obligation with Europe is for chumps.
Rubio is going to have his hands full with Venezuela and Cuba. It is supremely wishful thinking at this point to believe anyone is going to lift a finger to stop this ridiculous push for Greenland.
There’s a weird “we own the Western hemisphere” messaging that is coming out of the administration in the talking points on Venezuela. It very much feels like the administration has ceded Ukraine to Russia, while the US takes on this adventure with Maduro.
@charontwo:
We will have to agree to disagree on this.
@Michael Reynolds:
I figure EL Taco thinks he can peacefully land troops from planes and ships, and they’ll just march in parade order down the street and tell the government of Greenland to clear out, take down the flag, and run up the Stars and Bars (what?), and no local, Danish or NATO troops will even be there.
If I were Denmark, I’d be stationing troops in Greenland, along with all the heavy equipment I could get. I’d also ask other countries for help. It would be nice to have some surface ships and submarines on patrol around the arctic, plus lots of surface-to-air missiles.
@Kathy: @Kathy:
Denmark trains special forces in Greenland and I gather they have some there most of the time. How many? Not enough to fight a Marine Expeditionary Unit. There’s essentially no infrastructure to support either European or US forces. But the US has a vastly more powerful Navy and we can keep forces off-shore. OTOH, Canada could fly supplies into Nuuk.
I’d like to see a joint NATO force established, a force with at least a little sting, basically dare Trump to do it. Weakness is not a good idea.
Okay, who thought it was a good idea to put a guy who ran many (allegedly but clearly) crooked businesses in charge of the most powerful military in the world? Of course he’s going to feel excited about the idea of just taking things from other countries with no one to stop him.
What I’ve been wondering and not seeing a lot about is all the US troops that are sitting in bases all over Europe and Asia, what happens with them?
Trump (and by that I mean all of those idiots) seem to think that everyone is just going to roll over and play dead and let him do this. I doubt the Germans or Koreans are going to want US soldiers in their country and have to worry about unstable US presidents using them for, well, whatever. I mean, if I was a German citizen I’d probably be getting hot to get them out pretty soon.
I haven’t really heard much noise in the UK other than Starmer’s regular uselessness. He’d probably love to get taken over by Trump. I can tell you though, as a duel citizen, I’d much rather have US soldiers in the US.
@Michael Reynolds:
My money’s on Stephen Miller. He was on CNN yesterday saying things like this:
We all know that rhetoric like that runs a thrill up Trump’s leg.
@Kathy:
@Michael Reynolds:
Back in September Denmark and some other NATO members conducted their annual exercise off Greenland, involving 550 personnel. No US units were invited to participate this year. In addition to personnel, Danish assets for the exercise were a frigate, two helicopters, and two F-16s. French assets were a smaller ship and a tanker aircraft. Numerically, a single US Wasp-class amphibious assault ship — there are seven active — dwarfs that, particularly in air power.
As a global conventional superpower, the US has invested heavily in force projection in distant places. The rest of NATO, not so much. Meaning barely at all. And Greenland counts as distant.
Whether Denmark will opt for military resistance is open to question.
Absent a full scale committment of all European-NATO arctic warfare forces and navies, it would be pointless, except as matter of honour.
Which is not to say it’s to be ruled out.
What is not is that there would be irresistible political pressure in Europe to terminate the transatlantic alliance.
@Beth:
I’ve wondered the same. There are 80,000+ US personnel in Europe, with full kit. Including ~100 nuclear warheads. If I were the European NATO members, I wouldn’t challenge the US in Greenland or anywhere else until I had an answer to your question.
@Beth: Interesting question. Revoking the leases on the military bases (US military leases the properties on which their bases reside) would be one move, but given the size of US military presence abroad, local communities would take a huge economic hit.
I can’t emphasize how destabilizing I find this entire conversation. It’s insane that we’re even thinking along these lines.
ETA: I am wondering at what point Denmark expels our ambassador.
I think that Trump may well take over Greenland and run Venezuela the way he does other things. He tore down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom. There were no architectural plans nor a financial mechanism in place. Some people might think that architecture and financial budgeting should be well formulated prior to starting a project especially one involving a building sacred to our nation. We’ll run Venezuela…will we put a police force into the country? How do we convert the petroleum under the ground into a salable product? Do we give the petroleum companies the same tax advantages that they get for domestic production? How do get neodymium out of the ground in Greenland, and who do you sell it to? China is the producer of 80% of it. How do we compete?
I predict that the Trump ballroom will not be finished by January 2029 and the price will exceed $999,999,999.
@Beth:
When Reagan bombed Gaddafi’s compound and other targets in Libya, the Air Force sent F-111s from bases in the UK. the shortest route went over France and Spain, but these countries denied overflight permission for this venture. So they rounded the Iberian peninsula.
If El Taco wants to surge troops from Germany or other European bases to invade Greenland, he won’t even ask. He’ll just violate airspace as he likes.
I want to think various European governments will expel US troops and their equipment from the continent. And close their ports and naval bases to US ships.
Some might. One won’t, Hungary. Good thing it has so many land locked deep water ports.
@Michael Cain:
Most of those US military personnel are non-combat.
iirc there are now about 30,000 combat troops.
The nuclear weapons concerned are deployed at non-US airbases (Kleine Brogel in Belgium; Büchel in Germany; Aviano and Ghedi in Italy; Volkel in the Netherlands; Incirlik in Turkey; also Lakenheath in the UK may have some US-only ones)
I assume they are under joint USAF/host guard at those munitions bunkers.
One important factor: US bases in Europe are very important for supporting US operations in the Middle East, including transit to Diego Garcia of aircraft not capable of non-stop flight.
And to support US Navy operations in the Med, whch might well be condiderably more difficult absent port facilities for resupply and minor repairs.
@Jen: The USA Ambassador to Denmark (and Ambassador to Sweden under Trump 1) “is Kenneth A. Howery, a former PayPal co-founder and tech entrepreneur, who assumed office in November 2025” So buds with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
I say Denmark demands the return of the Virgin Islands, bad deal.
@Slugger:
And how do you keep the price up if you open up a second major source of it?*
That little?
It will be paid with tax payer money, and El Taco will keep the “donations” in his pocket.
* One way is to promote demand by finding more uses for it. Maybe hard drives should all be magnetic instead of solid state, and no bigger than 400 MB each. You’ll need over a dozen in a common laptop.
@Richard Gardner:
Do not lead me into temptation with regard to a bad Virgin Islands joke. 😉
@Slugger:
Greenland, for fairly obvious reasons, is a high cost mining site.
And the issue with “rare earths” is not their rarity; it’s the current Chinese dominace of processing and refining operations.
If the Trump adminsitration wants to do something sensible, just build some refineries, and arrange supply contracts from current and potential producers.
@JohnSF: That would be sensible, yes. But that’s not how his real estate developer’s brain works. He can’t see past owning land.
@Jen:
Yes, that, and probably a naive perception of military operations (perhaps fed by one of “hemispherists” in is team).
It was mentioned in his first term.
(Prompted by Ron Lauder and Tom Cotton, iirc)
And once Trump gets an idea lodged in his silly fat head, it tends to periodically resurface no matter how often it may get demonstrated to be daft.
And the problem in this term is there are now damn few “adults in the room” prepared to contradict his whims.
The whole security issue is nonsense.
Russia is incapable of mounting an sustainable invasion in the face of NATO naval/air power in the North Atlantic.
Still less China.
@JohnSF: The only hope Demark has, militarily, is to convince Trump they WILL fight, and Trump will have to kill white people to take Greenland. Trump might balk at that.
Kalshi prediction markets:
Will the US take control of any part of Greenland?
Will Trump buy at least part of Greenland?
“End of NATO” seems to assume the US has to be part of NATO. IMO the US becoming a rogue-pirate nation is far more likely to draw the remaining members tighter together than to cause them to split apart. Am I missing something??
And the backpedaling has begun. Rubio is now claiming El Taco wants to buy Greenland. Lindsay Graham says the threats to use force “is all about negotiations.”
Very well. Let’s negotiate:
How about France announces it will re-target some SLBMs to hit undisclosed spots in America should it attack Greenland or any other European or NATO country.
Of course, they won’t nuke Mar a Lardo (whoops!). It’s all about negotiations!
The thing is neither Rubio nor Graham nor Miller have a clue what El taco will or would do, because the man-child doesn’t know himself.
Trump regards all US alliances including NATO as terrible deals agreed to by his incompetent predecessors. He thinks they are basically arrangements that let other countries free-ride on poor exploited America. It would not be a surprise if he ends up giving the EU an ultimatum: if you want to keep the US in NATO, give me Greenland.
@Mimai:
I think there is a lawsuit against Kalshi for allegedly obscuring that users were sometimes betting against firms with significant financial connections to Kalshi.
They have a lot of ongoing court cases, so gotta find the right one.
@Michael Cain:
Canada is already choosing Europe. It has been seeking closer military and trade ties with Europe and pivoting away from U.S. military manufacturers. In June Canada signed a strategic defense pact with the EU. It is buying a bunch of new submarines from either Germany or South Korea. Carney is saying directly that the close relationship between Canada and the U.S. is over.
Canada is choosing wisely not to rely on the country run by an aging mad king and his out of control, power mad courtiers
@Kathy:
Probably good to remember that it’s hardly the first time the US has acted against another nation’s head of state. Cuba’s military is undoubtedly on alert and while not a match for US forces long term could probably inflict severe casualties on an insertion team.. would that motivate Trump and lil Marco to flatten the Cuban presidential palace? Precedent has been set, after all, and I doubt the Cubans could stop what the US could throw at them from the air.