Jan 19, 2026 04:37 AM
(This post was last modified: Jan 19, 2026 05:03 AM by C C.)
https://unherd.com/2026/01/why-trump-wil...greenland/
INTRO: You can draw a neat line around the eight countries Donald Trump has targeted for his 10% punitive tariff: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Europe’s liberal north-west is trying to frustrate Trump’s grab of Greenland.
But there are 21 other member states who have not been sanctioned. One is Italy. Giorgia Meloni has already said she told Trump that his tariff threat was a mistake. I think it was too. But is Meloni going to break with the President over a patch of land that is far away and irrelevant to Italy’s security and economy?
Will Spain? Or Greece? Or Malta and Cyprus? What about eastern Europe? Will Viktor Orbán, Andrej Babiš, and Robert Fico — the populist prime ministers of Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia respectively — run to the rescue of their liberal friends in Denmark? Even Poland, with a government that is as pro-EU as it can get, is hardly going to sacrifice its strategic alliance with America over a few rocks of ice near the Arctic.
The truth is that the Europeans never really cared about Greenland. It was the first country to leave the EU – in 1985 – long before Brexit. It’s a fishing nation; fish is over 90% of its exports. And it left because EU fisheries policies would have deprived it of the right to manage its own stocks. Greenland could have been the EU’s, had it really wanted to keep it.
So here is my bold prediction: Trump will win his battle for Greenland. The Europeans will not stop him, for they are weak and divided. The irony is that the EU chose this military and geostrategic weakness. It chose to deprive our militaries of necessary resources in favour of welfare transfers and support for NGOs. A decade ago, the eurozone had an opportunity to create a political, economic and financial union in response to the sovereign debt crisis. But it chose not to because it was inconvenient. Meanwhile, the UK chose to leave.
When the European member states of Nato decided to bow to Trump’s pressure and increase defence spending last year, they did not create a European defence union. They can’t agree on anything...
[...] The EU’s single market is full of regulatory barriers. Its hostile green and tech regulation did not change the world for the better; it succeeded only in damaging Europe’s competitiveness. As a result, unlike China and America, Europe will not share in the AI boom. The EU, in its current form, is further from becoming a superpower than it was 30 years ago.
A union in which member states retain full sovereignty is only as strong as its weakest member. And that’s Germany right now. Given the state of Germany’s economy, and its dependence on the US, it would be... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): Greenland ploy still not rousing Europe to take defending itself seriously?
INTRO: You can draw a neat line around the eight countries Donald Trump has targeted for his 10% punitive tariff: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Europe’s liberal north-west is trying to frustrate Trump’s grab of Greenland.
But there are 21 other member states who have not been sanctioned. One is Italy. Giorgia Meloni has already said she told Trump that his tariff threat was a mistake. I think it was too. But is Meloni going to break with the President over a patch of land that is far away and irrelevant to Italy’s security and economy?
Will Spain? Or Greece? Or Malta and Cyprus? What about eastern Europe? Will Viktor Orbán, Andrej Babiš, and Robert Fico — the populist prime ministers of Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia respectively — run to the rescue of their liberal friends in Denmark? Even Poland, with a government that is as pro-EU as it can get, is hardly going to sacrifice its strategic alliance with America over a few rocks of ice near the Arctic.
The truth is that the Europeans never really cared about Greenland. It was the first country to leave the EU – in 1985 – long before Brexit. It’s a fishing nation; fish is over 90% of its exports. And it left because EU fisheries policies would have deprived it of the right to manage its own stocks. Greenland could have been the EU’s, had it really wanted to keep it.
So here is my bold prediction: Trump will win his battle for Greenland. The Europeans will not stop him, for they are weak and divided. The irony is that the EU chose this military and geostrategic weakness. It chose to deprive our militaries of necessary resources in favour of welfare transfers and support for NGOs. A decade ago, the eurozone had an opportunity to create a political, economic and financial union in response to the sovereign debt crisis. But it chose not to because it was inconvenient. Meanwhile, the UK chose to leave.
When the European member states of Nato decided to bow to Trump’s pressure and increase defence spending last year, they did not create a European defence union. They can’t agree on anything...
[...] The EU’s single market is full of regulatory barriers. Its hostile green and tech regulation did not change the world for the better; it succeeded only in damaging Europe’s competitiveness. As a result, unlike China and America, Europe will not share in the AI boom. The EU, in its current form, is further from becoming a superpower than it was 30 years ago.
A union in which member states retain full sovereignty is only as strong as its weakest member. And that’s Germany right now. Given the state of Germany’s economy, and its dependence on the US, it would be... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): Greenland ploy still not rousing Europe to take defending itself seriously?
![[Image: fgBG4wP.jpg]](https://iili.io/fgBG4wP.jpg)
