What can small nations do to prevent being gobbled up by bigger, more powerful ones?
This is no abstract question for Greenland right now. It’s very real. And it has no easy answers. Greenland’s autonomy, its future, hangs in the balance.
Greenland is a territory of Denmark. Since 2009, it’s been largely self-governing, and has the right to pursue independence at a time of its choosing. Independence is the wish of all its political parties. But with economic self-sufficiency some way off, it’s sticking with Denmark for now.
Not if United States President Donald Trump has his way. He wants Greenland for the US. Since the bombing of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro, realisation has dawned that he is deadly serious about this. The White House has pointedly refused to take military force off the table, although the real estate mogul-turned-president would likely prefer a simple cash deal.
Europe is in diplomatic crisis mode. Denmark is a NATO member. The idea of NATO’s chief guarantor – the US – annexing territory from a member state seemed preposterous until recently. No longer.
So what can Denmark’s friends do to stop it?
The uncomfortable truth is that if Donald Trump sends in troops, Greenland would likely fall in days, perhaps hours. Trump has mocked Denmark’s forces there as “two dogsleds”. And though this doesn’t meet any truth test, his point holds. Greenland is sparsely defended. Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command in Greenland consists of a handful of warships and search and rescue teams.
The US, meanwhile, already has a major base in northwestern Greenland, under a 1951 pact that also allows Washington to set up more bases on the island. Nearly 650 personnel are stationed at the base, including US Air Force and Space Force members.
Copenhagen is tooling up. It has announced $4.2bn in extra defence spending for the Arctic. And it is buying 16 more F-35 fighter jets (from, of course, the US). But even so, Denmark would have little chance against the full might of the US military.
So a diplomatic united front has been launched. As with other Trump-created crises, Europe’s leaders are adopting an approach that could be called transatlantic judo. Like judo wrestlers, they’re trying to redirect Trump’s energy – his strident, America First unilateralism – and persuade him that the best expression of this is collegiate, transatlantic multilaterism.
Essentially, they’re saying, “Yes, Donald. You’re absolutely right to raise Arctic security as a big problem. We totally agree. While we’re not sure that invading Greenland is the answer, NATO is the solution.”
We’ve heard this message from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in recent days. And the British and German governments have both suggested NATO forces be deployed to Greenland to boost Arctic security. A German delegation was in Washington, DC, before Wednesday’s meeting between State Secretary Marco Rubio and the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers.
While the Europeans try their judo, Donald Trump’s approach is more sumo. Wielding the great geopolitical heft of the US, the president is unyielding. To all entreaties from bewildered Europeans, he remains unmoved.
When they say he can have all the US military presence on Greenland that he wants under the 1951 treaty with Denmark, he says he wants more. When they say a unilateral annexation of Greenland would be the end of NATO, he shrugs as if that might be a price worth paying. When they question his claims that Russia and China are poised to take over Greenland themselves, he just repeats them.
Appeasement or capitulation is possible. If the Europeans were panicked enough, they could lean on Denmark to give Greenlanders the independence referendum that’s been talked about for years. If Greenlanders chose full sovereignty – as a majority ultimately want – Europe could claim Greenland’s fate wasn’t their problem any more. But we’re not in that place yet.
For now, European leaders are united behind Copenhagen and Nuuk. Denmark’s sovereignty is inviolable, they say. And Greenland is not for sale.
What we could be inching towards is a fudge. Something that everyone can take as satisfactory-ish. Maybe a resource deal for US access to Greenland’s abundant deposits of metals and rare earth elements. And maybe a beefed-up US military presence. Enough for Trump to claim a win. And for Europe to breathe a sigh of relief that NATO still has a heartbeat.