This is how NATO ends, not with retreat but Greenland intervention |
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy has stated that “it would be the end of NATO” if the US were to annex Greenland, a remark prompted by President Donald Trump’s declaration that Washington would “do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not”.
Such alarmist-sounding warning has now suddenly become part of mainstream debate across Europe, as Germany pledges a larger Arctic role and senior officials in France, Poland and Denmark openly discuss contingency plans against a threat coming not from Moscow, but from within the Atlantic Alliance itself.
Trump’s renewed fixation on Greenland cannot be dismissed as yet another rhetorical excess. Jeremy Shapiro (Research Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations) has outlined how US pressure could win Greenland, by exploiting economic vulnerabilities, manipulating security arrangements, and even resorting to outright military intimidation. The scenario is no longer purely theoretical. Media outlets such as The Guardian, CNN, Al Jazeera, CNBC and the Financial Times have all reported, in recent days, on emergency consultations within NATO and the EU about how to respond if a NATO member were to threaten another with invasion.
For years, analysts across the ideological spectrum predicted that Trump, sometimes wrongly portrayed as a “pro-Russian” isolationist, would “kill” NATO by withdrawing from it. Both Atlanticists and some anti-imperialist commentators converged on the same conclusion, albeit with opposite moral judgments. Ironically enough, Trump is not threatening the future of NATO through retreat, but is risking its collapse through escalation so aggressively........