{"id":270077,"date":"2026-01-06T10:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T10:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/270077\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T10:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T10:11:07","slug":"the-eu-doesnt-look-ready-to-stop-donald-trump-taking-over-greenland-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/270077\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU doesn\u2019t look ready to stop Donald Trump taking over Greenland \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

European leaders are increasingly anxious that Donald Trump<\/a> will follow through on his rhetoric about taking over Greenland<\/a>. But there is no sign that they are ready to do anything about it.<\/p>\n

Who will fight for Greenland?<\/p>\n

When Katie Miller, a former White House official who is married to current deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted a map of Greenland with the word \u201cSOON\u201d just after the US attack on Venezuela<\/a> last weekend, it looked like standard, Trump-era trolling. But when the president himself told reporters on Sunday that he still believes the US needs Greenland for national security, Denmark<\/a>\u2019s prime minister Mette Frederiksen said she thought he was serious.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wants Greenland. This is a conflict \u2013 we agree on that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A former Danish colony, Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark but it enjoys home rule in almost everything except foreign policy, defence and monetary policy. Like other European leaders, Frederiksen sought to distinguish between Trump\u2019s violent abduction of Venezuelan president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and any potential action against Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the United States were to choose to attack another Nato<\/a> country, then everything would come to an end,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, Nato, the world\u2019s strongest defensive alliance \u2013 all of that would collapse if one Nato country chose to attack another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump says his only interest in Greenland is for defence, and its strategic importance has grown as climate change sees ice melting and new waterways opening up, intensifying competition in the Arctic between the US, Russia and increasingly China. A transpolar waterway that could emerge through the Arctic Ocean by 2050 will make Greenland\u2019s situation more valuable than ever.<\/p>\n

Melting ice will also make it easier to access Greenland\u2019s oil and gas reserves and its critical minerals which include zinc, iron, copper, nickel, cobalt, uranium, graphite, niobium, neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium. When the European Commission signed a minerals agreement with Greenland in November 2023, it noted<\/a> that 25 of the 34 critical raw materials identified as strategically important for Europe\u2019s industry and the green transition could be found there.<\/p>\n

The language used by European leaders and the commission about Trump\u2019s threats to Greenland is only marginally more robust than what they have been saying about his action in Venezuela. And their problem is the same, just as it was when they were faced with Trump\u2019s tariff threats: they have made themselves so dependent on the US that they cannot even confront a threat from Washington to their own security.<\/p>\n

Stephen Miller said on Monday night that the annexation of Greenland was now established US policy. But he dismissed a reporter\u2019s question about the use of military action to take control of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States should have Greenland as part of the United States,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you\u2019re asking, of a military operation. Nobody\u2019s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the past year is anything to go by, there is no reason to believe that Europe will put up any kind of fight, military or otherwise.<\/p>\n

Please let me know what you think and send your comments, thoughts or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to denis.globalbriefing@irishtimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European leaders are increasingly anxious that Donald Trump will follow through on his rhetoric about taking over Greenland.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,382,356,2219,13,14,137837,17768,6,11,12,15,16,5,4897,7,8,4450,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-270077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-denmark","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-global-briefing","16":"tag-greenland","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organisation-nato","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories","26":"tag-venezuela","27":"tag-world","28":"tag-world-news","29":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115847619072864892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}