Greenland Crisis: NATO at the Brink?

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President Trump’s bold bid to acquire Greenland has sent shockwaves through Europe and raised dire questions about NATO’s future. Danish PM Mette Frederiksen warned that a U.S. attack on a fellow NATO member “would be the end of everything – that includes NATO”. Even EU defence chief Andrius Kubilius agreed: a US military takeover of Greenland “would be the end of NATO”. Some sort of agreement on Greenland was found at the Davos 2026 conference.

Allied capitals have scrambled to reaffirm their vows to NATO. At a mid-January 2026 meeting, EU leaders from countries like France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Poland, Spain, Denmark, and the Netherlands issued a joint statement: “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland…to decide” their future. They stressed Arctic security “must be achieved collectively with NATO allies, including the United States”. Polish PM Donald Tusk put it bluntly: “No member should attack or threaten another member…otherwise NATO would lose its meaning”. Europe insisted: Article 5 covers Greenland, and the alliance must stand firm. In Davos, similar announcements were made by various heads of state.

The Greenlandic flag flies over Copenhagen’s Tivoli Castle, symbolising allied unity: decisions about Greenland belong to Copenhagen and Nuuk, not Washington. Canada’s PM Mark Carney emphasised this by reiterating Canada’s NATO obligations: “we are NATO partners with Denmark…our obligations on Article 5…stand, and we stand fully squared behind those”. Across NATO, politicians and diplomats have stressed the unity of Western defence: the US thrust has been met with a pledge of solidarity and joint action.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte met with Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark, in Copenhagen, October 2nd, 2025. (Image: NATO)

Allies are also putting muscle into the Arctic. Within days, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland announced that small troop contingents would deploy to Greenland for joint exercises. Denmark dubbed this Operation Arctic Endurance, signalling collective defence. Canada, too, reportedly weighed sending soldiers for Greenland drills, though Ottawa later stressed it had no new operations there. Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said Copenhagen would host a “larger and more permanent” NATO force in Greenland to protect the island, stressing that “security in the Arctic is…for all of NATO”. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte likewise emphasised that with polar sea lanes opening, “the Russians and the Chinese will be more active” in the Arctic.

Trump in Davos: US Will Not Take Greenland by Force

“We won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive force, we’d be unstoppable, but we won’t do that. I don’t have to use force, I don’t want to use force, I won’t use force,” said President Trump in Davos.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever took a strong stand on Europe’s stance towards U.S. pressure over Greenland and transatlantic ties: “Being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else. If you back down now you’re going to lose your dignity.”

“There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along… compliance will not buy safety,” remarked Canadian PM Mark Carney on the fading rules-based international order and the need for middle powers to collaborate.

"Any threat to acquire European territory by force would be unacceptable.”
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Davos 2026
“We do not have to accept this new reality as fate. We are not at the mercy of this new world order. We do have a choice. We can shape the future,” said the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in his special address at the World Economic Forum, Davos, 22 Jan 2026.

“Denmark and the people of Greenland can count on our solidarity. We will protect Greenland from the threat posed by Russia,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz emphasised at the World Economic Forum. Europe and Germany will step up in the Arctic as part of NATO rather than cede strategic ground, he signalled. Merz stressed that any threat to take European territory by force would be unacceptable and that Europe must invest in its own security, competitiveness, and unity to face “the demands of the new age”.

He welcomed the U.S. shift away from tariffs and forceful rhetoric over Greenland, but emphasised that European NATO partners will do more in the Far North to ensure security, including Germany’s increased contribution. “We will uphold the principles on which the transatlantic partnership is founded, namely sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Mertz said in Davos.

“Our new approach rests on what [Finland’s President] Alexander Stubb has termed “values-based realism” — or, to put another way, we aim to be principled and pragmatic,” Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 2026.

“Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said in his speech at Davos.

“Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” he continued.

“You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” he said

Is Talk of NATO’s Collapse Self-fulfilling?

Denmark’s Major-General Søren Andersen led home-guard soldiers from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France and Finland in cold-weather drills. The deployment, and plans for an Arctic Sentry operation with drones and sensors, modelled on NATO’s Eastern Sentry in the Baltics, make clear the alliance is treating Greenland’s defence as a live issue. In practice, numerous NATO countries are now working together to deter any power-grab: the North Atlantic is no longer “out of scope”.

Despite this show of force, alarm bells still ring in public debate. Many analysts and officials warn that talk of NATO’s collapse is dangerously self-fulfilling. EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas explicitly urged leaders not to stoke “end of NATO” hysteria that could play into hardliners’ narratives. Andris Sprūds, Latvia’s defence minister, was adamant that this row “is not the end at all” of NATO. He reminded audiences that NATO has long weathered sharp disagreements, like Greece vs Turkey, without imploding. Nonetheless, no one is pretending the stakes are minor. Denmark’s Frederiksen warned that if the U.S. actually attacked Greenland, “everything would stop – that includes NATO”. Even the Trump administration’s hawks worry openly about fracturing the alliance, Republican congressman Michael McCaul gloomily noted an invasion would spark “war with NATO itself”.

“Despite all the frustration and anger of recent months, let us not be too quick to write off the transatlantic partnership … We Europeans, we Germans, know how precious the trust is on which NATO rests. In an age of great powers, the United States, too, will depend on this trust. It is their — and our — decisive competitive advantage,” reassured the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the World Economic Forum in Davos 2026.

EU heads of government and state attend a dinner in the Great Hall at Amalienborg Palace, Copenhagen, Denmark, on Wednesday, October 1, 2025. King Frederik and Queen Mary are hosting the dinner on the occasion of a meeting of the European Political Community, EPC. PRPOOL. (Foto: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Scanpix 2025)

Kremlin: Greenland is Part of Denmark – Or Not

Russia and China are watching intently and quietly cheering the discord. Moscow’s hardliners have mocked the scare about Chinese bases in Greenland, and even Dmitry Medvedev quipped that Trump should hurry up with annexation to highlight Western weakness. The Russian embassy publicly accused NATO of an “accelerated militarisation” of the Arctic under “fictitious pretext” of a Russian or Chinese threat, warning that any drive to seize Greenland is “counterproductive and extremely dangerous”. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “we proceed from the understanding that Greenland is a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark,” adding that Moscow is monitoring the situation around the island.

Later in January, Moscow had a new stand. “What happens in Greenland is of no concern to us whatsoever … Washington and Denmark should sort it out between themselves,” the Russian President Vladimir Putin announced at the Security Council meeting on 21 January.

Russia also denied any intention to occupy Greenland. “We have nothing to do with plans to capture Greenland. … Washington knows clearly that neither Russia nor China have such plans,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted at Moscow press briefing, on January 20th. Lavrov combined this with a claim that Greenland is not a “natural part of Denmark”. Russian state media and commentators have continuously portrayed the U.S.-Europe rift as beneficial to Moscow, celebrating divisions in NATO and EU responses.

Beijing’s diplomats took a calmer tone: spokeswoman Mao Ning said Chinese Arctic activity is peaceful and insisted “the U.S. should not pursue its own interests by using other countries as a pretext”. In effect, both Moscow and Beijing benefit from the spat. As a German Marshall Fund analysis puts it, Trump’s Greenland rhetoric is “an own goal” that “alienates allies and plays straight into the hands of adversaries”. If NATO comes apart, Russia stands to regain strategic freedom in the High North, and China’s designs on shipping routes or minerals face less unified Western resistance.

Deeper Northern Defence Partnership Ahead

Across NATO-oriented circles, the Greenland crisis must be resolved within the alliance or not at all. Defence experts stress that the best outcome is one that keeps NATO intact and even strengthens Arctic security. Atlantic Council analysts believe a grand compromise is still on the table, for instance, simply renewing the decades-old US-Danish defence pact rather than annexing territory, so that no one “blows up the transatlantic alliance” for good. If the United States pulls back from NATO, then “NATO as it is now definitely will not exist anymore,” as Kubilius soberly warned. Europe has already begun planning a deeper northern defence partnership, linking Nordic armies with Canada, the UK and the Netherlands, to guard against just such a scenario.

Trade Bazooka To Defend

In late mid-January, Trump put a tariff gun on the table in the Greenland row: 10% on “any and all goods” from eight European countries from 1 February 2026, rising to 25% from 1 June 2026 unless they stop blocking his push to acquire Greenland. The targets are Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

This is a political punishment aimed at NATO allies who have publicly backed Danish sovereignty and, in several cases, sent small, symbolic contingents to Greenland under allied exercises. Trump’s message is simple: Support Denmark, pay at the border. European governments have called it coercion and “blackmail”, and the EU is already discussing countermeasures, including the use of its Anti-Coercion Instrument, the EU’s so-called Trade Bazooka.

At the end of the Davos conference, the tariff dispute between the US and some European NATO countries seemed to have been solved. “New tariffs would undermine the foundations of transatlantic relations,” the German Chancellor said. “If they are put in place, Europe’s answer will be united, calm, measured and firm,” he warned.

The immediate risk is economic noise. The bigger risk is strategic: tariffs as a weapon against allies blur the line between alliance management and economic warfare. That is exactly the sort of internal fracture that Russia and China benefit from: they do not need NATO to collapse to win. They just need it distracted, divided, and trading punches with itself.

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