Canada must stand with Europe in its defence of Greenland if we know what’s good for us |
A man stands on a street on the day of the meeting between top U.S. officials and the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, in Nuuk, Greenland, Jan. 14, 2026.Marko Djurica/Reuters
Fen Osler Hampson is a professor of international affairs at Carleton University and the co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations.
NATO is facing one of its gravest internal crises since its founding, and Canada is facing its own moment of truth.
President Donald Trump’s demand that Denmark hand over Greenland to the United States goes far beyond his late-night posts on Truth Social. It is a deadly serious attempt by the alliance’s dominant power to carve up the territory of a fellow NATO member.
This is not the first time NATO has been shaken by internal division. But unlike past crises, this one strikes at the very rule that has underpinned Western security for 80 years: that borders are not revised by coercion.
After Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, Britain and France secretly conspired with Israel to take it back with force of arms without informing Washington. Furious at being blindsided, U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower threatened to block British access to International Monetary Fund loans and sink the British pound if London did not back down.