In Trump’s Drive for Greenland, NATO Is the First Casualty
The threat of a new trade war with Europe is pushing the trans-Atlantic alliance into its deepest crisis since World War II
Updated Jan. 18, 2026 The Wall Street Jouranl
BRUSSELS—A few months ago, officials on both sides of the Atlantic hoped that they had saved the Western alliance—the world’s biggest economic and military community.
Today, the team that won the Cold War and led the globe is in tatters.
President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on European allies that resist a full U.S. takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland has fused two areas of trans-Atlantic tension—trade and security—into an explosive cocktail that is plunging the alliance into its deepest crisis in over 70 years.
“World Peace is at stake!” Trump posted on Truth Social, saying that China and Russia would take over Greenland unless the U.S. did.
He attacked European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for sending military personnel to the territory at Denmark’s invitation, saying that only the U.S. could secure the island. Then came the threat of escalating tariffs until they agreed to the U.S. owning Greenland.
Trump’s economic threat and dismissal of allies’ usefulness have added to the sense of shock across Europe, where governments are reeling from the unprecedented outbursts of U.S. hostility since Trump returned to the White House a year ago.
NATO, which was founded on a sense of a common destiny among Western democracies, has relied as much on trust and political cohesion as on its military infrastructure. The belief that the U.S. was deeply committed to its European allies and would defend them against an attack has been the foundation of NATO’s credibility and its power to deter enemies.
That trust and commitment are now in serious doubt. Many veterans of the alliance on both sides of the Atlantic wonder if it can recover.
“The organization will survive, but the trust—the glue that has held it together for over 75 years—has been shattered, so it will not be effective,” said Doug Lute, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former U.S. ambassador to NATO.
Deferential displays
Trump’s revived threat to take over Greenland is testing the limits of the allies’ approach of managing the White House by offering cooperation and limited concessions.
European leaders are now searching for a response, and are caught between fear of further provoking Trump’s ire and determination to draw a line in the ice over Greenland.
Some countries want to show Trump that his pressure will also have consequences for the U.S., such as jeopardizing the trade deal reached with the European Union last summer that avoided a trade war and stood to benefit American businesses. Some officials are looking at ways they could trigger harsher trade retaliation, while other leaders hope to defuse the latest row with behind-the-scenes outreach to administration officials.
The leaders of Denmark and seven European allies on Sunday issued a statement warning that the “tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.” The group pledged “to stand united and coordinated in our response.”
European countries have been loath to criticize Trump for the past year, despite deep misgivings over his handling of trade, the Russia-Ukraine war and trans-Atlantic relations more generally. Their strategy amounted to a trade-off, sacrificing economic benefit for security.
Allied leaders have tried using flattery and deference to manage Trump, such as when NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called him “daddy” last summer. But Europeans are increasingly concerned that displays of praise and fealty aren’t working.
Most European governments fear that a full-blown rift could lead to Trump declaring the end of NATO, which would force them to build their own military alliance without the U.S.—a costly challenge for countries struggling with chronically low economic growth and strained public finances.
Early last year, verbal barrages and abrupt policy shifts from the White House fed a sense that the U.S. was turning its back on the trans-Atlantic world that Washington built after World War II. The administration attacked Europe’s democracies over immigration and free speech while threatening to impose heavy tariffs on European goods. Its push to end the war in Ukraine involved rapprochement with Moscow and arm-twisting of Kyiv.
Relations appeared to thaw last summer following strenuous European efforts to persuade Trump that allies are useful for U.S. interests and not a hindrance. In June, he gave NATO his blessing after allies agreed to spend a lot more on defense, and when eight European leaders left a White House meeting with Trump in August, they felt cautiously optimistic that trans-Atlantic relations had stabilized.
It didn’t last. Trust between Europe and the U.S. took another beating when a U.S. peace plan for Ukraine emerged that favored Russia. Then the White House’s new national-security strategy in December targeted European allies while taking a soft line on the West’s main adversaries, Russia and China.
Damaged articles
Europeans have for years argued that while they didn’t spend as much on arms as the U.S., they consistently stood by it and defended Western interests.
The sole time that NATO invoked its founding treaty’s mutual-defense clause, known as Article 5, was to support the U.S. after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In Afghanistan, Denmark incurred the highest per capita fatality rate among all NATO countries, including the U.S.
Now, the administration has essentially said that past efforts don’t affect current U.S. thinking. “Just because you did something smart 25 years ago doesn’t mean you can’t do something dumb now,” Vice President JD Vance told Fox News recently.
Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on U.S. readiness to stand behind Article 5. During his first term, he stunned allies on an early visit to alliance headquarters by not making the routine U.S. pledge to defend NATO members.
During his re-election campaign in 2024, Trump said he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to allies that don’t meet spending targets. He also questioned whether European countries would come to America’s aid in a crisis.
Before a NATO summit last June, when asked if he stood by the pact, Trump replied: “Depends on your definition. There are numerous definitions of Article 5.” Last week, he wrote on Truth Social: “I DOUBT NATO WOULD BE THERE FOR US IF WE REALLY NEEDED THEM.”
Veterans of the Atlantic alliance warn that the West’s adversaries will be the main beneficiaries of the rift.
“Ultimately this is only damaging America’s standing in the world, and America—like Europe—needs friends and allies in this more dangerous world,” said Oana Lungescu, who served as NATO spokeswoman for 13 years, including through Trump’s first term, and is now at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank. “The only people I see benefiting from this are Putin and Xi. They must be ordering popcorn,” she said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Trump’s demand to own Greenland is particularly perplexing to Europeans because to them, and many Americans, it lacks logical basis—unlike his gripes over Europe’s low military spending.
Trump is just the most forceful in a long string of U.S. presidents who have demanded that NATO allies contribute more to their own security. Europeans have for years acknowledged their shortcomings. On trade, while Europeans questioned Trump’s economic arguments, they understood his political agenda and the need to engage on it.
But with Greenland, Trump has almost no sympathetic ears in Europe. Even one of his staunchest supporters in the region, British euroskeptic firebrand Nigel Farage, on Saturday criticized Trump’s tariff threat, saying: “We don’t always agree with the U.S. government and in this case we certainly don’t.”
Trump’s skepticism about NATO has been on display for years, but his willingness to pick a fight with European allies appears to be rising as he grows bolder about wielding U.S. power.
One of Trump’s most consistent views over several decades has been that the Pax America—the U.S.’s global hegemony since World War II, managed via a system of alliances—is a burden on America, allowing allies to exploit the U.S.’s provision of both military security and consumer demand for goods.
Dogged defense
European and other U.S. allies have long recognized the inevitability of the U.S. retreating from its role as the world’s policeman. But they weren’t prepared for the Trump administration’s expressions of disdain and hostility. On Saturday, Trump again dismissed Denmark’s capacity to defend Greenland as amounting to “two dog sleds.”
On Truth Social, Trump accused Denmark and other European allies of endangering world peace by sending a small number of military personnel to Greenland.
Denmark had invited the allies to Greenland for exercises and informed NATO about them. “Exercises like the one Denmark is undertaking, as well as the deployments of additional troops, bolster our collective defenses there,” said U.S. Army Col. Martin O’Donnell, spokesman for NATO’s military command, on Thursday.
Governments including the U.K., France and Germany have billed the deployments as an effort to show that NATO allies are committed to defending Greenland against rivals such as Russia, but Trump said their purpose was unknown.
“This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable,” Trump wrote. He said the European countries involved would face a 10% tariff on all goods sent to the U.S. from Feb. 1, rising to 25% in June, unless a deal is reached for “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
Denmark has said the U.S. is welcome to beef up its military presence in Greenland and has sought to open talks on cooperation there. But Copenhagen and the government of Greenland have said the island isn’t for sale.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that a forcible U.S. annexation of an ally’s territory would be the end of NATO. Europe’s major countries have backed Denmark, saying only Danes and Greenlanders can decide the future of Greenland.
NATO has survived serious internal tensions before, such as during the 1956 Suez crisis, when the U.S. forced the U.K. and France to break off their invasion of Egypt, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which France and Germany opposed.
Those moments were difficult for the alliance, but it persevered, said Lungescu. “But this feels like a very dangerous moment,” she said. “One we haven’t seen before.”
Write to Marcus Walker at Marcus.Walker@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com