At the risk of speculating at the top of an article as opposed to working though a lot of arguments first, it would based on Trump’s temperament and the seeming great success of knocking off Venezuela, or at least Maduro and his wife, seem to no-brainer that he will move sooner rather than later in seizing, as opposed to merely raiding, Greenland. Douglas Macgregor just described the Caracas romp as a vanity project. Trump will have considerable need for big splashy news-dominating distractions, based on the certainty of losing the war in Ukraine, Epstein not going away, and more and more economic pain for the bottom 90% in the US, starting with rising health care costs. And Trump loves the idea of leaving his stamp on history. The idea of a massive territorial acquisition is an even better monument than getting his face added to Mount Rushmore.
🇬🇱 The true size of Greenland pic.twitter.com/k4W3fI1uyS
— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) January 5, 2026
As many have noted, Greenland would be trivially easy for the US to take. It has fewer than 60,000 people, with over 1/3 in its biggest city, Nuuk. The US already has a base there. As we’ll unpack below, Denmark (much like Maduro apparently did before his capture) has offered the US every conceivable concession save handing over or selling Greenland.
For the moment, EU member states are making noises about solidarity with Denmark when they are in no position to stop a US grab.
Perhaps Denmark will do the rest of Europe a big favor and agree on a price. But there is one consideration that might lead Trump to hold back, which is not the “death of NATO” which seems like a certain result. Aurelien is probably best able to describe what that might look like operationally. But a more immediate result would be European states redirecting arms buys away from the US as fast as possible and actually having to put muscle and industrial strategy behind building up their arms industries.
Given the lack of managerial skills in elites all across the West, all the Europeans can do is yet more noise-making. At the end of this post, we have embedded a freshly-released Joint Statement as an illustration.
For starters, how do they quickly wean themselves of dependence on intel and targeting from US satellites? And what about all those bases in Europe? Even though the US under Trump has been making noises about reducing US forces there (now 84,000) and even closing some, several, particularly Ramstein in Germany, are key to force projection in the Middle East. And unlike Incirlik in Turkiye, where Turkiye has preserved some veto rights over US operations, Ramstein is a “permanent US military installation“.
But will the US military industrial complex be wiling to take that risk? Will a parade of ex-generals now on the boards of defense contractors tell Trump that taking Greenland could be very bad for their business and he needs instead to keep pressure on Denmark to cinch a sale?
A new story in the Financial Times describes the panic at top of Europe over Trump directly and via his chief of staff Steve Miller of doubling down on threats against Greenland.
The US will “de-colonize” Denmark by annexing Greenland. Stephen Miller will not rule out military force, and points out the weak Europeans will not fight back. After decades of enthusiastic support for US imperialism, Europe now finds itself on the receiving end. pic.twitter.com/pbYybUpBrg
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) January 6, 2026
However, keep in mind that Trump has yet to do anything muscular, like flying more soldiers into the Pituffik Space Base.
Nevertheless, European leaders seem to be in denial about the possibility that Trump is likely to proceed absent domestic impediments, despite having been verbally abused in person at the Munich Security Conference last year and rubbished in the recent National Security Strategy paper. Among other wee problems, many unpopular leaders have hitched what remains of their fortunes to Russophobia, when Europe is not and will not any time soon be able to stare down Russia alone. From the pink paper:
“It’s a fine line,” said one senior European official. “The solidarity with Denmark is crystal clear for everyone. But then there’s Venezuela where nobody is sorry [Nicolás] Maduro is going, but there are legal questions. And we want to keep the US onside for a dignified outcome in Ukraine.”
A second EU official said: “We know who our allies no longer are. It’s just we are still hoping we are wrong and the problem will go away,” referring to Trump’s disregard for the generation-old transatlantic alliance and the need for Europe to reduce its reliance on Washington. “We know what needs to be done, we just need to bloody do it.”
One Financial Times reader tartly shredded that view:
Androcydes
The lesson is that if you outsource your security to someone else, you can’t defend yourself from those that provide your security.
Notice that fear of Trump is so great that he has assumed the status of He Who Must Not Be Named:
But few explicitly denounced the US, and none referred to Trump by name despite the US president again saying “we need Greenland” just hours after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told him to stop issuing threats over the vast Arctic island.
[Denmark Prime Minister Mette] Frederiksen warned that repeated US ambitions over Greenland could threaten the future of Nato. “If the United States attacks another Nato country, everything stops,” she said on Monday….
Under a 75-year-old defence agreement, the US already has the sole military base on Greenland and local authorities in recent years have been open to it expanding its presence or opening a new one. But the US has reduced its presence on the Arctic island from a cold war peak of more than 10,000 soldiers to fewer than 200 at present.
Greenlandic ministers have also said that their island is “open for business”. But US investors have been slow to show an interest in the nascent mining industry, officials say.
“The only thing they haven’t yet offered is something they can’t ever offer: for Greenland to become part of America,” said one senior EU diplomat. Another added: “They don’t need to annex it. They can have whatever they want. That is what makes it so puzzling.”
The last remark shows a bizarre lack of comprehension about how Trump rolls. He is an extreme materialist and egoist. He had wet-dream level excitement over the grotesque prospect of a Trump Riviera in Gaza. He was pleased with his new coinage of the Donroe Doctrine. Getting legal rights that are tantamount to ownership is not in the same league as directly expanding US territorial holdings.
Later in the story:
The Greenland issue is particularly sensitive for Nato and its secretary-general Mark Rutte. Any US military action to take the island would result in two allies in direct conflict, throwing the alliance’s fundamental mutual defence clause into question and probably forcing the other 30 members to pick sides….
Officials point to a change in stance from other regional Nato members who are now supportive of the alliance playing a greater role in the Arctic, and the success Canada has had in smothering Trump’s previous rhetoric about making the country part of the US, in part by increasing defence spending.
Trump belittled Denmark’s approach on Sunday, claiming that it had added “one dog sled” to its defence of Greenland. But Copenhagen said in October that it would spend $4.2bn on two military units, a new Arctic Command headquarters, two ships, maritime patrol aircraft, drones and air surveillance radar units, all in Greenland.
Matt Stoller pointed out that there is plenty of precedent for how 1890s-loving Trump operates:
The best way to understand what just happened is to start with history. Because while Trump is unusually explicit about his rationalization for seizing control over a resource-rich territory, U.S. domination of the oil reserves of South America is not new. And neither is the fusion of corporate and state interest.
Ninety five years ago, in 1931, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who owned Gulf Oil (now Chevron), forced the President of Colombia to give his company the Barco oil concession, which borders Venezuela. How? Well Wall Street banks and the U.S. government threatened to withhold vitally needed bank loans if Colombia did not cede the franchise.
The parallels to the situation today are there. When Mellon seized these reserves, in partnership with JP Morgan banking interests, gunboat diplomacy was the norm. In the prior two decades, the U.S. had finished brutally putting down a resistance movement in the Philippines, and had become the global economic and political power after a gruesome world war. Woodrow Wilson had tried to establish a global rules-based order, which the GOP in the 1920s sabotaged.
At the time, Democrats were incompetent and split, as it was an era of deep reverence for the wealthy and bitter culture warring over race and alcohol. For instance, the head of the DNC in the late 1920s, a Dupont executive named John J. Raskob, published a pamphlet titled “Everybody Ought to Be Rich” encouraging Americans to borrow money to invest in the stock market.
Just as there is increasing support for cynical and nihilistic figures today, many in the 1920s felt warmly towards Mellon, Mussolini, and authoritarianism in general. U.S. Steel chairman Judge Elbert Gary encouraged Americans to “learn something by the movement which has taken place in Italy,” while progressive and New Republic founder Herbert Croly called Mussolini as substituting “purposive behavior for drifting and visions of a great future for collective pettiness and discouragement.” Gunboat diplomacy fit in well.
Again, the gaming. or one might say display of hopium, by EU leaders pre-supposes a decent level of rationality as well as restraint from Trump. But recall that he tried again to escalate against China even after Xi dropped the rare earths hammer, via threatening new tariffs in October. He has actually done so via his Venezuela land grab, where China has an estimated $70 billion in investment and was also using oil shipments as a method for repaying about $10 billion of loans.
However, Trump is deteriorating. He has been looking more aged of late and even slurring his speech. IM Doc argued last July that Trump has, not Alzheimers but white matter disease. and one of its major effects is loss of normal social filters. Trump as an obvious narcissist was already weak in that category. He has also chosen to surround himself with toadies. That is likely to mean even less restraint in a President who was already unduly impulsive and recently visibly fond of violence. From IM Doc’s comment:
We as physicians should be very careful to call out diagnoses on videos of patients. That being said, with Joe Biden it was so obvious that my kids could tell something was wrong. His dementia is obviously a part of some kind of neurodegenerative disorder – the symptoms of which were easy for all rational diagnosticians to see as far back as 2019. The open mouth gape, the constant inappropriate whispering, the pigeon toed gait, the peculiar way he fell, the inability to navigate stairs, the constant emotional disruptions, all pointed to that and it was not even closely subtle. Anyone can see it – play a tape of Joe Biden 2023 – and a tape of Joe Biden 2013. This was not simple aging. Anyone that is a true diagnostician that tells you otherwise is a liar or actually does not see patients. The media and political coverup of this has been something for the ages.
Trump is a completely different animal. He certainly does not have Alzheimer’s Disease. He absolutely has personality traits – and just listening to him and watching his behavior – I lean toward Narcissistic Personality Disorder and likely Antisocial Personality Disorder. Having been around wealthy and powerful people for large amounts of my professional life, he is not alone, indeed, he may be less affected with these than the majority I know.
At his age, and with some of the behavior I see, there is a far more common issue that may be going on. It is known as microvascular white matter disease – what used to be known in our culture as “hardening of the arteries”. This is profoundly common in The West. Multiple theories abound as to the cause…..smoking, eating unnatural fats all of our lives ( chips, french fries, donuts, KFC), diabetes and obesity. One may look at this as the brain manifestation of what we call Metabolic Syndrome or Syndrome X.
The white matter contains the billions of conduits going from one neuron to the other in the brain as opposed to the gray matter where the actual neurons reside. As we get older – and some of us are far more prone to this than others – the white matter begins to have large numbers of microscopic strokes. These may take out the CONDUIT for 10-15 neurons, maybe more BUT NOT THE NEURONS THEMSELVES. Our brain can rewire around them but eventually things begin to look like Swiss Cheese and there is no way to repair things. At that point, symptoms begin to set in. This is usually manifested as “filter” deficiencies, sudden emotional outbursts, inability to decide, long diatribes and stories about things from decades ago, inability to recognize one’s own mistakes and deficiencies, some mild memory issues but maybe not, increased impulsive and risk-taking behavior, anger and wrath, inappropriate laughing and crying among many others. This disease process also greatly magnifies the underlying personality disorders. There are more than 20 personality disorders – and it is often a sight to behold as some of these get worse.
This affects so many of our elderly. It is absolutely not Alzheimer’s. But it can eventually become a type of what we call dementia. Unlike Alzheimer’s, these patients can feed themselves, care for themselves, do housework, engage in family and social activities, and be self-aware. They however, are often “kept in the attic” away from the world so as not to embarrass themselves. I try my best with my patients to give them avatars in literature and culture to understand their issues. Literature is full of examples of this – but the most easy to comprehend touchstone for most people is the little old lady Sophia from The Golden Girls – Bea Arthur’s mom.
So if IM Doc is correct, the trajectory of Trump’s deterioration will result in even more ego-driven behavior, as difficult as a further ramping up in that category might be to envision. But if his assessment is correct, that increases the odds of a US seizure of Greenland and all of the huge fallout that would result. So be warned.
00 joint statement on Greenland
