Greenland Shows Why Europe's Trump Strategy Failed
First Trump wanted tariffs. Now he wants territory.
Following the July announcement of the EU accepting an across-the-board 15 percent tariff on the vast majority of its exports going to the U.S., a Realpolitik defense emerged. The thinking went that it was better to focus on Europe’s main enemy, Russia, than to try to pick a fight with its wavering ally in Washington. Besides, Europeans needed to keep the U.S. on the side of defending Ukraine with intelligence and arms sales -- despite the fact that the Trump Administration had nearly zeroed out military funding for Kyiv -- and Europeans needed time to build up their own defense-industrial capacity.
However, nearly six months later, it’s clear that this strategy has not worked. The Trump Administration has run its foreign policy like a mafia operating a protection racket, and now the price is higher: Trump wants Greenland. Following a January 14 meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Denmark’s foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said there remained a “fundamental disagreement” between Copenhagen and Washington on the ownership of the Danish autonomous territory. Rasmussen added, “It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland.” Trump’s claim that the U.S. needs full control of the island for its national security doesn’t hold water: under a 1951 agreement updated to include Greenland in 2004, the U.S. may station as many troops on the island as it likes. Europeans have offered a working group and a naval surveillance mission called the “Arctic Sentry” -- but these initiatives have not mollified Trump.
It’s possible that Trump will become distracted by something else or that he will become concerned about public blowback, considering that just 17 percent of Americans support using force to take Greenland. But for Europeans, the only real option left is deterrence.
On January 14, Denmark announced that it would increase its military presence on the island, which France and Germany followed with announcements that they too would send troops. But it was a symbolic gesture, as the Bundeswehr only sent 13 troops. Nevertheless, increasing the European military presence further might change Trump’s calculus for taking the island.
Ultimately, the standoff over Greenland is a symptom, rather than a cause of Europe outsourcing its security to Washington. It’s true that starting in 2023 -- a belated response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine -- and again after Trump got into office in 2025, European countries have increased their defense spending. However, Europe is still far from spending enough -- and in the right way -- to actually defend itself without the U.S.
The Brussels-based economic think-tank Breugel estimated that European defense spending would have to rise from its current level of around 2 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent of GDP, or an additional €250 billion annually, to credibly deter Russia without the U.S. But this spending would have to be coupled with reforms like joint procurement and joint EU borrowing, as the increase would be initially funded by debt. Countries would also have to spend more on military recruitment and training, as well as increase their military coordination between each other, as European militaries are fragmented because they are organized at the national level.
It’s hard to imagine all of this happening for two reasons. First, Europeans have little trust in each other: a recent Bloomberg article quoting French officials who are nervous about Germany’s military buildup speaks volumes about antiquated strategic thinking in Paris. Second, it would require cuts to generous social welfare programs, which were possible because the continent cheaply outsourced its defense to Washington after World War II.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously said her favorite statistic was that the EU has 7 percent of the world’s population, 25 percent of its GDP, and 50 percent of its social welfare spending.
