Can Russia save Greenland and Europe |
Are we approaching a moment in which Russia could emerge as a guarantor of stability for Greenland and Europe as a whole? Until recently, even posing the question would have sounded “absurd”. Today, things are different.
The transatlantic order is cracking under the weight of its own contradictions. Donald Trump’s renewed threats toward Greenland have exposed not only a legal and diplomatic minefield, but also a strategic vacuum at NATO’s core. Alliances rarely collapse through formal declarations; they decay through paradoxes, and Greenland may yet prove to be one of them.
Trump’s language, as usual, is blunt. Greenland, he insists, is vital to US security and must be “owned” or otherwise brought firmly under Washington’s control, “one way or another.” Greenland’s Prime Minister has responded just as clearly: “We choose Denmark over the US.” Backed by several European capitals, Copenhagen now appears to treat the matter not as provocation, but as an existential threat. European commissioner Andrius Kubilius has gone further, warning that a US military takeover of Greenland would spell “the end of NATO.”
As I’ve noted, this is not just overheated rhetoric. NATO’s Article 5, if invoked by Denmark against another NATO member, would indeed create an alliance-ending absurdity. Allies would be asked to defend one member against another, thereby rendering the collective defense clause meaningless.
I have argued that the Arctic, not Ukraine, could become the theater where the next confrontation between Russia and the West takes place. Now, amazingly enough, we might be........