IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK
A NEW FRONT has opened in America’s trade wars. On January 17th Donald Trump announced tariffs of 10% on imports from eight European countries, including several of America’s oldest allies, beginning on February 1st for sending troops to Greenland two days earlier. The duties, he declared, would rise to 25% in June unless those nations agreed to support the “complete and total purchase of Greenland” by the United States. This is an attempt to use economic coercion to force the transfer of sovereign territory between NATO allies. The protesters on the streets of Nuuk and Copenhagen are right to sense that something fundamental is breaking.
The strategic logic, from Mr Trump’s vantage point, is coldly transactional. Greenland is an autonomous Danish territory with strategic value. As Arctic ice recedes, new sea lanes and resource wealth are emerging. The island offers missile-defence positioning and proximity to Russia as well as China, which has been steadily expanding its polar research efforts. America maintains a vital air base at Thule, but for Mr Trump, leasing rights are insufficient: he wants ownership. His argument is that existing alliances are too weak a guarantee for the containment era he envisions. Only sovereign control will do.
Europe’s unified outrage was fast and instinctive. Emmanuel Macron of France called it blackmail. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, declared the bloc would not negotiate “with a gun to our head”. The response is about more than defending a sparsely populated island. It is about a principle that has underpinned Western security for 75 years: that borders within the alliance are not subject to coercion. If America can threaten Denmark with ruinous tariffs to force a territorial concession, what remains of the mutual trust that NATO’s Article Five pledge is built upon? “If the United States can dismember one NATO country,” notes a senior European diplomat, “then the alliance is already a corpse. We are just arguing over the funeral arrangements.”
Mr Trump’s move weaponises America’s market size against Europe’s export dependence. The targeted countries sent over $500bn in goods to the United States last year. The threat seeks to translate fear of recession and job losses into political pressure on European capitals to abandon Copenhagen. Yet that crude logic creates a paralyzing bind for Europe. Public anger demands a forceful retaliation. Strategic reality, however, means caution. Europe still relies on American weapons, intelligence sharing and the security umbrella for its eastern flank. Striking back with counter-tariffs or by scuttling trade talks might satisfy a need for dignity, but it would also risk destroying the very security structures Europe needs, especially with a revanchist Russia next door.
A hidden tripwire may yet snap. The legal authority for these tariffs derives from emergency powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. America’s supreme court is currently deliberating a case that could sharply curb a president’s ability to declare such emergencies for tariff purposes. A ruling against the administration, expected within weeks, would pull the legal rug from under Mr Trump’s campaign. Many in European chanceries are praying for just such a judicial reprieve. It would be welcome if the guardrails of American democracy succeeded in halting this crisis where traditional diplomacy could not.
The proximate scenarios range from grim to catastrophic. A full-scale trade war would wobble markets and fuel inflation. A judicial block would stall the pressure campaign but leave trust incinerated. The more probable outcome is a strategic rupture within NATO itself. This will accelerate European discussions about strategic autonomy; increased defence spending; and lessening reliance on American bases. The alliance may persist in name, but its spirit—the belief in unconditional collective defence—will have leaked away. America would forfeit its role as the alliance’s unquestioned leader, becoming merely its largest and most unpredictable member.
The nightmare, of course, is that economic pressure escalates further. Mr Trump has previously mused about the applicability of a “Madman theory” to foreign policy. The explicit linking of trade punishment to territorial demands invites a question: what other tools might be deemed acceptable if tariffs do not suffice? The spectre of political destabilisation, or even some form of low-level military coercion, introduces a chill that has not been felt between Western allies in modern history. It would mean the end of the post-1945 order.
Greenland is not for sale. Denmark lacks the constitutional authority to sell it, and its people have no desire to be bought. Mr Trump is testing if alliances are real or just protection rackets. The cost of that will be paid in the dissolved glue of a world that once believed its own borders were safe. ■
