Trump says the U.S. ‘needs’ Greenland — Europe should take him at his word
When a sitting U.S. president openly claims the right to seize foreign territory for “security” and resources, Europe is no longer dealing with rhetoric but with timing. Yesterday should have been another clear wake-up call that these threats are no longer hypothetical.
As with Venezuela, which Trump sought to act against during his first term, Greenland has been on his agenda since at least 2019. The difference is that during his first term, there were still restraints—Congress, functioning agencies, and institutional resistance capable of slowing or blocking his most extreme actions. Those guardrails are now gone. Since returning to power, Trump has repeatedly threatened to take over Greenland illegally, explicitly refusing to rule out the use of military force. Europe should not dismiss these threats as mere political theater or propaganda for domestic consumption, because they reflect a consistent pattern in which Trump’s territorial ambitions, resource extraction, and personal enrichment are openly asserted as legitimate uses of American power.
Trump’s plan to effectively “run” Venezuela after using military force to remove Nicolás Maduro established this pattern clearly. He did not justify the operation by citing democracy, humanitarian concerns, or regional stability, nor did he attempt to construct a moral rationale for leadership change. He stated plainly that the objective was oil. That framing removed any ambiguity about motive and made clear that sovereignty, legality, and civilian consequences were secondary to material gain. It also provided the template through which Trump’s later claims, including those concerning Greenland, should be understood.
Those plans were reaffirmed when Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted an image of Greenland wrapped in the U.S. flag with the caption “Soon,” just hours after the U.S. military action in Venezuela. The post did not go unnoticed in Denmark, where officials publicly pushed back, underscoring that Greenland’s sovereignty is not negotiable. [Continue reading…]