Russia and China must be having a field day.
EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, delivered the only clear diagnosis of the times when she took to the social media platform X over the weekend to comment on the increasingly tense drama surrounding Greenland.
After Donald Trump declared trade war on eight of the USA’s own NATO allies on Saturday night, demanding they bow to his wishes to take over Greenland, both NATO and the EU are facing a moment of destiny. Or rather: an existential crisis that could, at worst, spell the end for at least one of these organizations.
Both outcomes, as Kaja Kallas points out, would be beneficial to the Chinese and Russian regimes, enhancing their opportunities to influence a world in turmoil.
And perhaps Donald Trump is playing the same game: He certainly despises the EU and has made it his official policy to bolster Europe’s EU-hostile nationalists, while appearing indifferent to NATO.
As German military analyst Carlo Masala writes in his bestseller ‘If Russia Wins’ and recently reiterated to Politiken: »If you look at it negatively, Trump is either a Russian asset or just a confused man without a plan«.
If it ever made sense to talk about the world – and especially the West and Europe – standing at a historic crossroads, it is now.
Seriousness not to be mistaken
The seriousness was also unmistakable when the leaders of the NATO countries now targeted by Donald Trump’s latest economic warfare issued a joint statement on Sunday with this warning: »Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. We will continue to stand united and coordinated in our response. We are committed to upholding our sovereignty.«.
The statement followed the bombshell dropped by Donald Trump on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday night. It targeted NATO members Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland.
All risk having their exports to the USA subjected to a punitive tariff of 10 percent from February 1 and then 25 percent from June 1 if Donald Trump has not gotten his way and taken over Greenland by then. Over the past few days, the affected countries have sent symbolic military forces to Greenland to show that the Greenland dispute is about more than the USA and the Unity of the Realm. It concerns all of NATO, which has never been as divided in its history as it is now.
Polish security expert and former diplomat Robert Pszczel, who has previously worked for NATO, puts it this way on the social media platform X: »Pretending that we are not dealing with an existential crisis for NATO is no longer possible nor desirable«.
He points out that the threats and economic blackmail that the American government is now subjecting its allies to are in direct conflict with NATO’s Article 1 and 2.
In the first article, member countries commit »to settle international disputes by peaceful means and refrain from the use of threats while strengthening their freedom and security«. Article 2 speaks of »promoting stable and prosperous conditions through economic cooperation«.
Shockwaves
As such, the American behavior must send shockwaves far beyond Europe. For how much can the USA’s other allies, especially in Asia, really count on The United States now? All warning lights must be flashing red.
The USA’s old ally in Canada, which Donald Trump has also thought should be incorporated into the USA, has already begun to approach China. On Friday, the Canadian government signed a trade agreement that, despite concerns about human rights in China and suspicions of Chinese interference in Canada’s elections, eases tariffs on Chinese electric cars. Conversely, China eases tariffs on Canadian agricultural products.
»We take the world as it is – not as we wish it to be«, said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently during a visit to Beijing.
But what will the EU do?
The bazooka
From the French side, on Sunday President Emmanuel Macron’s staff floated the idea of using the EU’s so-called trade bazooka for the first time ever.
The so-called Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) allows for restricting imports of goods and services from the USA. For example, the EU can decide that American companies will no longer have access to participate in public tenders in the EU. Additionally, export bans or other restrictions on exports to the USA can be imposed.
At the same time, there are threats from several sides in the European Parliament to cancel the planned ratification of a new trade agreement with the USA next week. This was the agreement that was supposed to settle the previous Trump-era trade war by accepting a unilateral 15 percent tariff on EU goods to the USA.
Activating the trade bazooka, however, would be an even stronger step, points out the online media Politico. It is thus a tool originally designed as a weapon against hostile states. Now they are talking about using it against their hitherto most important military ally.
It says something about the seriousness of the situation. And it would, in any case, be a reaction that stands in stark contrast to the European deflection in the trade dispute with Donald Trump.
Everything at stake
»For Europeans, everything is at stake in the Greenland issue«, believes German Die Zeit commentator Mark Schieritz.
He warns against thinking that Donald Trump will calm down on his own. He will always want more. Therefore, the Die Zeit commentator joins the chorus of voices calling for both a trade war against American tech giants and considerations about the conditions for European participation in this year’s World Cup in the USA.
Under the headline Es reicht!, »enough is enough«, Mark Schieritz continues: »If Donald Trump actually succeeds in gaining control over Danish territory, the European project will be over, and it will probably only be a matter of time before the American president strikes again«.
Conversely, the American president has previously ‘folded his cards’ when faced with strong opposition, including in the trade war with China. Critics even call him the Taco President: Trump Always Chickens Out.
Moreover, Donald Trump is currently facing growing internal opposition in Congress to his Greenland ambitions, as well as poor poll numbers, and criticism for not living up to his economic campaign promises. A tariff war with Europe, which annually buys American goods worth around 4.250 billion kroner and secures about two million jobs, will not make things easier for him.
A European escalation of the situation, however, is easier said than done. For what will Europeans do if Donald Trump responds to their resistance by further withdrawing support for Ukraine, either by stopping European purchases of essential American weapons or American intelligence?
Or put another way, so the principles are clear: What if Donald Trump forces Europeans to choose between, on the one hand, Ukraine and a temporary halt to Russia’s advance in Europe, and on the other hand, the defense of Greenland and the West’s own respect for a rules-based world order?
Clamp
Europe is in a clamp, further complicated by the fact that Europe’s own economy will also be pressured by an intensified trade war on top of rising defense costs.
So the big question is who will blink first. And what the cost might be of blinking. For will the EU then have any credibility left as a force? Could it even take so much air out of the union that it ends in the EU’s own death, as Die Zeit warns? And what if NATO also effectively dies because the Trump attack on eight of the alliance’s members has already stripped so much credibility from the alliance that you can still hear the champagne corks popping in Moscow?
Such questions are now lining up.
Right now, it’s as if the parties are ‘playing chicken’: In each car, they are driving at increasing speed directly towards each other, betting that the opponent will get scared and swerve at the last moment. Few can foresee the consequences if that doesn’t happen.
And thus another complicated question arises: How can the current situation be de-escalated without one of the parties losing face? The higher the parties climb up the trees, the harder it is to come down. And the more it hurts to fall.
But that is the task right now: to regain control of the situation.
Exactly as Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Moderaterne, M) and his Greenlandic colleague, Vivian Motzfeldt, tried in Washington, D.C., as recently as last Wednesday. And as they continued to hope after the meeting with the USA’s Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But even Vance and Rubio were quickly overrun by the boss, Donald Trump. Their credibility also stands battered.
Authoritarian Trump
It all adds to the image of an increasingly authoritarian Donald Trump, who is now also trying to establish a kind of alternative UN in his own image. It is initially supposed to deal with Gaza, but later other conflicts. According to the news agency Reuters, the USA’s president has already sent invitations to various countries to be represented in a new peace council, a ‘Board of Peace’. Countries can only sit for three years unless they pay nearly 6.5 billion Danish kroner to the council, where Trump will be chairman.
Parallelly, the temperature is rising in the USA itself with the aggressive behavior of American immigration authorities in places like Minneapolis. The Justice Department has even gone after the Democratic state governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for obstructing this behavior.
This is the USA that will later this year mark the 250th anniversary of its founding as the world’s leading democracy. One can, as American historian Heather Cox Richardson points out on Facebook, only speculate on how posterity will look back on it.
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