European leaders express dismay at Donald Trump’s threat to seize Greenland, a move that would expand by almost a quarter the land area of the United States. “We do need Greenland,” the US President said on Sunday, doubling down on his previously expressed intention to take over the vast Arctic island, which is a semi-autonomous part of Denmark.
Sir Keir Starmer and his European counterparts meeting in Paris said in a statement that “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.” They pledged to defend its territorial integrity, but did not spell out how this was to be done.
The once fantastical possibility of a shock redrawing of the global map, with the incorporation of Greenland into the US, became a real-world option with the US kidnap of Nicolás Maduro and claim to have effective control of Venezuela and its huge oil reserves.
The US naval blockade is a spectacular demonstration of its military power and its stranglehold over Venezuelan oil exports. This undisguised neo-imperialist venture, highly successful so far and facing no effective resistance, has opened up the possibility that the US might undertake similar ventures against Cuba, Colombia, Mexico – or even Greenland. The takeover of the latter, with a population of only 56,000 and with US troops already based there, would not be operationally difficult.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” said Stephen Miller, the powerful White House deputy chief of staff, in an interview with CNN over the weekend. His wife, Katie, had earlier posted a map of Greenland with the American flag superimposed on it and with the caption: “SOON”.
Miller justified US actions against Venezuela – and potentially against Greenland – as simply the inevitable consequence of a state with superior power getting what it wanted from a weaker one. As regards Greenland, he said that it had always been Trump administration policy that “Greenland should be part of the United States. The President has been very clear about that.”
On the contrary, however, the gap between what Trump threatens to do and what he actually does, is invariably unclear. His opponents deride this as a sign that he makes up policy shambolically and unpredictably as he goes along. But this dangerously underestimates his skills as a political chess player, who masks his real intentions with bombast and outlandish claims.
In the long term, his declared wish to take over Greenland is probably all too real, but more immediately it gives him an additional pressure point on European leaders, who have something new to worry about and diverts their focus away from Venezuela.
The feebleness of the European response to Trump shattering the post 1945 international order may have emboldened him to see what else he can get away with. The US National Security Strategy 2025 released at the end of last year was highly critical of Europe’s political direction and near contemptuous of its concerns over Ukraine and Russia.
Critics of Trump point to ominous parallels between US military action in Venezuela and the US-led overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Similarities are certainly there: in Afghanistan in 2001, president George W Bush and his chief lieutenants believed too much of their own boosterism and propaganda once the Taliban had proved easier to defeat than many predicted. Predatory warlords and an exiled political opposition, far less popular than it claimed, were installed in power but could not hold it, even with strong US military support.
Something of the same happened in Iraq in 2003. The US and its allies now claim that their great mistake was trying to introduce democracy too swiftly in a fractured society. But this self-serving argument is misleading, because what the US and its allies really did was to establish an Iraq government entirely compliant to its wishes. Politicians, often deeply corrupt, gained office when their sole strength was as close collaborators with the Americans.
The Trump administration appears to be aware of at least some of these pitfalls and how regime change in reality becomes regime destruction. Exiled oppositions cannot just return home and replace the old order without risking a civil war.
This explains Trump’s surprise decision to co-opt, in so far as possible, senior members of Maduro’s government, especially interim president Delcy Rodríguez, and persuade or coerce them to do US bidding. Trump had decided – a conclusion backed by the CIA according to a leaked analysis – that giving control to opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado would invite disaster, alienating large parts of the population. Far better, from Trump’s point of view, to stay somewhat on the sidelines yet in control of the main levers of power in the country.
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This strategy is more sophisticated than that one pursued by Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump will want to avoid putting American boots on the ground, while refusing to rule this out. But even though the US may try to operate at arm’s length, it will still be difficult to avoid being sucked into the violent and divisive politics of Venezuela.
Imperial ambitions feed on their own perceived success. An apparent easy – though in fact delusory – success in Afghanistan encouraged the US to invade Iraq. Seamless military success in capturing Maduro in Caracas will likewise encourage imperial hubris making action against Greenland more likely. The very fact of the US threatening to attack another Nato member is already provoking a radical political mood swing in Europe.
No wonder the European leaders in Paris are nervous as they read Miller’s questioning of Denmark’s right to Greenland. After the abduction of Maduro, no action by the Trump White House can be ruled out or considered far-fetched. Following success in Venezuela, though it is far too early to take this for granted, Trump might just decide that Greenland is a piece of low hanging territorial fruit that he can gobble up without serious resistance.
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