Greenland: What I’m Watching For

Trump wild threats are already wreaking havoc even before an actual military attack on an ally

Photo courtesy of ABC News

NOTE: Since publication of this piece this morning, Trump has backed off of his threats to impose new tariffs on European nations who came to the defense of Greenland, apparently marking another instance of “TACO Trump.” The President claimed there now is a “framework” in place with NATO over a Greenland deal, but as the Washington Post drily noted, “Trump’s announcement was short on details, but the deal was likely to fall far short of the full sovereign possession that he indicated as recently as earlier Wednesday that he was seeking, given that [NATO General Secretary] Rutte is not empowered to negotiate the transfer of territory from one NATO member to another.”

The analysis of the first scenario described below still applies, while we should be prepared for a reemergence of second scenario should Trump change his mind or one of his advisors talk him into renewed bellicosity.

Tensions are escalating with our own allies over Trump’s continued threats on Greenland. That makes for some insane headlines as things stand, but in all candor things could still really spiral from here.

We don’t have much say over what’s coming next—only the GOP in Congress could impose meaningful constraints—but we can walk through some scenarios.

In a first scenario, Trump’s saber rattling is just that: all bluster and threats, not actual military aggression. At Davos today, Trump seemed to deescalate a bit, telling reporters (for now at least) that he “won’t use force” to take Greenland. That sounds like good news, but what have his actions already meant for the NATO alliance and our relationship with the rest of the world?

In a second scenario, Trump changes his mind and orders U.S. troops in, catching the world off guard. Remember, the White House told Congress that he wouldn’t escalate and seek regime change with Venezuela, but that was a lie. The U.S. military has drawn up plans for a military attack on Greenland, so we must still take this possibility very seriously. But even if it happens, it may not play out the way most people envision it.

In a third scenario, which isn’t exclusive of the other two, Trump’s continued aggression leads to serious economic consequences, including a major sell-off in U.S. Treasuries and equities and a trade war with Europe.

Let’s game some of this out.

A new international geometry for “middle powers”

Let’s be clear about what damage the U.S. threats against our own allies have already done to the existing rules-based international system. America has not only abdicated its role as protector and left Europe to fend for itself, it is behaving as an aggressive superpower bent on territorial expansion. That likely means the end of NATO and a highly unstable world based on “might makes right.”

In Trump’s mind, and that of some of his key advisors, the world is now once again divided into spheres of influence, with Russia exerting power over Europe, China over Asia, and the U.S. over the Americas. Trump has deliberately reduced the United States from a world power to a regional one in a self-own for the ages. And he has forced us to turn our backs on the very alliances and agreements that have kept world wars from breaking out again.

Smaller nations are now vulnerable to attack by the three military superpowers. All three of the latter are nuclear-armed, so we will likely see a mad scramble from Japan to Germany to acquire and stockpile such weapons of their own. As a consequence, the chance for catastrophic miscalculation will increase manyfold.

But what will replace the U.S.-led rules-based system? A powerful, if somewhat unexpected, voice here is Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who laid out what its rupture and the end of American protection mean in real terms. His speech drew a standing ovation at Davos.

“Every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great-power rivalry,” Carney told attendees. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.” He warned, “The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

Carney criticized world leaders for failing to stand up for their own interests. “There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along,” he said. “To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety. It won’t.”

Carney spoke of the reality faced by “middle power” countries in this new superpower-driven world. As The Guardian reported,

Canada’s prime minister warned that the “great powers,” a thinly veiled reference to the US, have started using economic integration as “weapons,” with “tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” he said. In recent days, Trump has threatened to place levies on European nations that oppose his bid to seize control of Greenland.

But Carney also warned against diplomatic and economic retreats, telling attendees that a world of “fortresses” will be poorer and less sustainable.

“The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls – or whether we can do something more ambitious,” he said.

You can watch the speech in its entirety here:

Trump could succeed by barely acting

If Trump changes his mind and moves to seize and control Greenland, as he did with Venezuela, he may not have to do much to achieve his goals. As Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall observed, Trump might be able to win by “barely lifting a finger.”

For example, Trump could order marines onto the island and then plant a U.S. flag. From there, he could simply proclaim on Truth Social that the territory now belongs to the U.S. He even hinted at this in a recent social media post intended to troll our own allies:

That move, of course, might not be taken very seriously. But if we see new invading U.S. marines on the island, and they assert control beyond the U.S. bases already there, does anyone really expect NATO nations to use force to dislodge them?

As a second and more aggressive example, Trump could also order U.S. forces to take control of key strategic assets, such as the main airport in Nuuk. Then he could dare Denmark or NATO to attack U.S. forces to take it back. If they so much as try, then Trump can claim “they” attacked “us”—even if they were clearly justified to do so in self-defense of territory.

A third option would be similar to Venezuela, where the U.S. moves naval forces into the area in a show of force and begins to exert control over who and what goes into and out from the island. This feels less likely. It is more provocative than needed for Trump to achieve his ends, and it risks the loss of life among civilians in Europe, whom he can’t racistly label “narco-terrorists” or “drug traffickers.” Any attacks and civilian deaths would quickly become a PR nightmare for the White House, as well as give the opposition within the U.S. both time and an ongoing, visible crisis to protest.

“Sell America” as a threat

Global markets reacted badly to Trump’s new tariff threats on European nations, with a two percent sell-off in equities on Tuesday.

But the real shoe has not yet dropped. The “Sell America” sentiment over U.S. imperial ambitions and aggression could grow if Trump’s threats return. If our allies begin to unload their U.S. Treasuries in protest, this could push rates up and the dollar down. The equities bubble that has been building over AI could burst, and U.S. investors could see a blood bath in losses.

Trump doesn’t listen to much of anything these days, but historically speaking, he does take sell-offs in the markets seriously. And if a U.S. Treasury auction actually fails due to lack of interested buyers, that could be a seismic change to our collective economic outlook.

Denmark itself is not without significant economic cards to play. Chief among them are its popular pharmaceutical products, including GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic/Wegovy owned by Danish company Novo Nordisk. Higher tariffs upon European countries, including Denmark, would push the cost of such drugs higher. And if an actual trade war or open hostilities erupted, restrictions on sales of these drugs to the U.S. could cause a revolt by American consumers. Some one in eight in the U.S. have used or are using these drugs, including nearly half of those with diabetes and a quarter of those with heart disease.

Evergreenland

It admittedly feels surreal to plot out what a trade war, or even an open war, with NATO over Greenland could look like. But Trump is increasingly unstable and unpredictable, and our system is so broken that there are no effective checks on his power, especially over the use of the military. So we, along with our once friendly allies, are left to imagine the unimaginable, to think the unthinkable, and to plan for the worst.

One day, we can perhaps fix what Trump and the GOP have broken within our domestic politics. The DOJ, DHS and HHS in theory can be remade and depoliticized, their leaders held to account. That alone is a daunting proposition, but it is doable over time and with persistence.

But we cannot so easily repair the trust we have lost internationally by openly threatening war with our own allies, even if Trump walks the threat back days later. In their eyes, and understandably so, we are now unreliable partners. The U.S. is forever one election and 40,000 voters in three swing states away from electing another madman, and our friends simply cannot place their trust in us, likely ever again.

And no one could fairly blame them for that.