Wind peels off the Greenland icecap in a way that feels less like weather and more like a warning—nature’s blunt reminder that this place is not a prize you simply stroll into and claim. And yet, in Washington, President Donald Trump is again talking about Greenland as if it’s a real-estate listing with strategic upside: oil, minerals, a front-row seat to the Arctic’s future.
Europe is hearing something else entirely. Not ambition. Threat.
RadarOnline reports that European leaders are weighing what one official described as “last-ditch” options to stop Donald Trump from “seizing” Greenland, after the administration framed its posture in “national security” terms and issued a warning that the U.S. will “do something” about the island “whether they like it or not.”
Those aren’t the words of a patient negotiator; they’re the words of a man daring other governments to blink first. And Donald Trump has always loved a dare.
Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has cast the stakes in apocalyptic alliance terms, warning that any U.S. attack on or invasion of Greenland would mean “the end of Nato.”
trump on Greenland: “whether they like it or not… If we don’t do it the easy way, we’ll do it the hard way.”
Again, forcing himself on someone who has already said no. He’s not beating those rape allegations.pic.twitter.com/9agM6al4NF
— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) January 11, 2026
That’s not diplomatic overstatement. That’s a flare shot into the night, the kind that says: we are running out of polite vocabulary for what Donald Trump is hinting at.
To understand why Europe is bristling, you have to understand the legal architecture already in place—because it’s substantial, and it’s the whole point of the European counterargument. The United States and Denmark signed a defense agreement on April 27, 1951, laying out U.S. rights to operate defense facilities in Greenland under a NATO framework while affirming Danish sovereignty.
That arrangement was later amended and supplemented in an agreement signed at Igaliku on August 6, 2004—explicitly including Greenland’s Home Rule Government and clarifying that Thule Air Base is the only defense area, while setting consultation expectations around “significant changes” to U.S. military operations or facilities.
In other words: the U.S. already has a durable, treaty-backed foothold. If Washington wants to expand capabilities, Denmark’s argument is that it can be done through existing channels rather than through coercion, threats, or some chest-thumping exercise in territorial muscle. Which makes Donald Trump’s posture feel less like necessity and more like appetite—the desire to turn an existing advantage into a headline-grabbing act of ownership.
People protest against President Donald Trump’s policy towards Greenland in front of the U.S. consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, Jan. 17. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) pic.twitter.com/QxJzS3PADf
— Edward Elderman (@edwereddie) February 13, 2026
European officials, per RadarOnline’s reporting, say Denmark’s ambassador in Washington, Jesper Møller Sørensen, and Greenland’s envoy, Jacob Isbosethsen, have been lobbying U.S. lawmakers, pointing to that 1951 treaty—updated in 2004—as proof that America can deepen its presence without detonating alliances. The deeper fear, though, is less about base footprints and more about precedent: if one NATO country can strong-arm territory linked to another, the alliance’s mutual-defense promise starts to look like a slogan instead of a contract.
That’s why Frederiksen’s “end of Nato” warning lands so hard. She’s not merely defending an island; she’s defending the idea that NATO members don’t menace each other.
Europe’s options, as sketched in RadarOnline’s piece, range from the quietly procedural to the openly muscular. NATO ambassadors have reportedly discussed boosting Arctic military spending, expanding exercises, and deploying additional equipment—moves that signal seriousness without firing a shot.
Then there’s the economic lever: the European Union’s anti-coercion instrument, a mechanism designed to respond when an outside power tries to force policy changes through economic pressure. France24 describes it as enabling the EU to impose import/export restrictions and to restrict access for targeted firms to public procurement contracts inside the bloc’s market. Activation isn’t instant—France24 notes it can take months and requires a qualifying majority of member states (55 percent of countries representing 65 percent of the EU population).
Donald Trump has resumed talking about annexing Greenland.
It never ends with this guy. He must be impeached!pic.twitter.com/hLPFjV39CL
— Mark Slapinski (@mark_slapinski) February 13, 2026
This is where the story gets darkly ironic. Donald Trump’s worldview treats leverage as the only language anyone respects. Europe is signalling it can speak that language too, even if it would rather not.
The most dramatic idea floating around is troop deployment. RadarOnline cites a Bruegel-linked paper arguing EU governments should “proactively protect Greenland from U.S. expansionism” by using the bloc’s rapid deployment capacity of up to 5,000 troops—explicitly as a “signal” of Europe’s commitment to Greenland’s territorial integrity.
Al Jazeera, meanwhile, has reported European allies reiterating support for Greenland amid U.S. threats, noting comments from France’s foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot about preferring a coordinated European approach.
None of this sounds like a continent eager for a showdown. It sounds like a continent trying to prevent one—by making the costs of unilateralism unmistakable.
And here’s the part that should worry Americans who like alliances even when they’re messy: this isn’t only about Greenland. It’s about whether the United States can remain both the anchor of the Western security order and the country that threatens to bend that order when it’s inconvenient. Europe is essentially saying: pick one.
