From a power perspective, taking over Greenland is a much smaller challenge for the US than creating a pro-American government in Venezuela, which Washington is currently attempting, or overthrowing the Iranian regime, which it ultimately decided against.
Apart from the unlikely possibility of using force against Europeans, the US maneuver would not constitute such a gross violation of international law as the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, an unprovoked attack on Iran, or military support for Israeli mass crimes against Palestinians.
So why all the fuss?
Western Europe is not used to anything like this. For the first time, it is facing American imperialism at home, which is so well known in Latin America and the Middle and Far East, but which it has not yet experienced firsthand.
The situation is made even more peculiar by the fact that the US, as the main guarantor of European security, is threatening one of its most loyal protégés with force. This bizarre situation could have a positive outcome if, thanks to Donald Trump, Europeans realize that the era of American hegemony, which was beneficial to them, is over, and with it NATO, its main military institution.
Greenland as a factor in geopolitical rivalry
Although Europe has a legitimate reason to feel offended, there is no reason to exaggerate. In their own way, the Americans are completing the decolonization of the Western Hemisphere. Denmark is in a similar situation today as Spain was 130 years ago. At that time, the Americans had their sights set on the remnants of Spanish colonial rule in the Caribbean. When the Spaniards were expelled, the inhabitants of Cuba and the Dominican Republic faced either direct American rule or economic colonization administered by puppet regimes instead of freedom.
The Greenlanders are also dissatisfied with the existing Danish rule. Ethnically, linguistically, and geographically, they have less in common with the Danes than Cuba had with Spain. The Greenlanders do not want American rule either, but their freedom of choice will be relatively limited. If the Americans invest sufficiently in the islanders and give them a reasonable degree of autonomy, the locals may not open their hearts to them, but they may ultimately perceive them as the lesser evil.
There is no need to feel sorry for the Danes, who are likely to lose the last remnants of their former colonial empire. However, they themselves may regret it all the more because they did everything the Americans asked of them. Not only did they make Greenland available to them after World War II, but they also helped the American NSA eavesdrop on the communications of European leaders.
The famous affair of the American eavesdropping on the German chancellor's mobile phone had a Danish connection. They probably expected a little gratitude, but perhaps they did not know what the payoff for serving an Atlantic superpower looks like? They could have found out in Saigon, Kabul, Baghdad, or today in Kiev.
A ridiculous European response
Europe is responding with its own ridiculousness. Five Nordic countries and three superpowers are sending several dozen soldiers to the north. But so as not to anger Washington, they claim they have come to protect the island from Russia and China.
Europeans know very well that they cannot take care of their own security. That is why, unlike the Russians, Indians, or Chinese, they cannot discuss with Trump as equals. Now they want to show Washington that they will defend distant Greenland? Or do these eight want to demonstrate European resilience towards the US?
Trump is also responding in his own way and has threatened the unbreakable eight with tariffs.
Why NATO is ending
When the European powers get tired of this game of soldiers, they should realize that the end of NATO is not a warning in the event of an American takeover of Greenland, as the Danish prime minister says, but a reality that has been in place for some time.
NATO ended the moment the fundamental security interests of the US diverged from those of Europe. It may continue to exist as an institution, but in reality it has lost its substance and basic function, which is why keeping it alive is dangerous.
When did this split occur? Perhaps when former US President Barack Obama announced a foreign policy shift towards Asia. At that time, various Havel, Vondra, Schwarzenberg, Káčer, Bútora, Demeš, Kováč, and others wrote reproachful letters to Washington, saying that it was forgetting Europe. Or even earlier, when his predecessor George W. Bush began the invasion of Iraq to the applause of those Central European leaders, which the more sensible part of Europe rejected?
However, that moment of Atlantic division apparently came with the end of the Cold War, when realists concluded that NATO should either be dissolved or transformed, but instead it began to expand.
The war in Ukraine was a later stark warning. Russian aggression was provoked by Joe Biden's administration and the British. The Anglo-Saxons could afford to do so because they view the war in Eastern Europe as just another regional conflict that can be useful as long as it does not directly threaten them and at the same time exhausts their geopolitical rival. For Europe, however, this war is a huge burden and security risk.
The illusion of NATO's irreplaceability
Europeans had the opportunity to say at the time that European and American security interests are fundamentally different. NATO, which was supposed to protect the continent before the war, helped provoke it. At the turn of 2021 and 2022, Germany and France were still negotiating as if they were aware of this and were trying to achieve peace. In the end, however, they succumbed to the illusion of NATO's irreplaceability and adopted a policy from the US that was contrary to their fundamental security interests.
Then Trump returned. From day one, he made it clear that he was only interested in NATO as a source of income for American arms manufacturers and that he definitely did not see the geopolitical priorities of the US in Western or Central Europe, which NATO is supposed to defend. He imposed a nonsensical requirement on Europe to spend five percent of its GDP on defense. The European response? NATO must survive at all costs!
The current Greenland crisis has the advantage that even the most fanatical advocates of continuing the American protectorate over Europe cannot claim that the US is acting in Europe's interests. They have managed to present the war in Ukraine, forced purchases of overpriced American weapons, and other harmful actions as strengthening European security.
Paradoxically, the occupation of Greenland is much less damaging to European interests, but symbolically much stronger, as it involves the loss of territory belonging to a NATO member state. If even this does not convince Europe of the need to go its own way independently of the US, then the surrounding superpowers will inevitably divide up this lost, half-mad continent among themselves.