The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), born in 1949 as part of the strategy of containment of the Soviet Union in the Cold War, has experienced several ups and downs.
In the Cold War, two NATO members withdrew from the military command of the organization - France and Greece. Then, after the end of the East-West confrontation, NATO found itself without a clear purpose. Eventually this was sorted out during the fall of Yugoslavia and when other conflicts out of the traditional NATO coverage area erupted - say, in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, the Gulf of Yemen. Yet, as recently as 2019, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron expressed his concern for what he considered a virtual brain death of the North Atlantic Alliance. He added that Europe stands on the edge of a precipice, and unless it thinks strategically as a geopolitical power, it would no longer control its destiny. The thing is that Europe has never been in control of its security, which has been dependent on the U.S..
In February 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine and, to many, this resuscitated NATO to the point that even two Scandinavian countries, traditionally reluctant to be part of military commitments, joined the institution: Finland and Sweden. The two argued they feared Russia may develop military actions against them and thus, the North Atlantic Alliance increased its members to 32 - originally, NATO was founded with 12 countries, two in North America and the rest in Europe.
As opposed to the once antagonistic Warsaw Pact, used by the Soviet Union to attack its members and allies - Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland - NATO has never interfered in the affairs of its members. When Turkey and Greece collided over Cyprus back in the 60’s, the United States made clear that it was not for NATO to intervene. Same when De Gaulle withdrew France from the institution: although Washington regretted the decision of Paris, it did not punish the country for leaving the alliance.
Things have dramatically changed, however, during the Donald Trump administrations. During his first term, Trump insisted that NATO members needed to spend more on the alliance and criticized the fact that very few of its members paid the agreed two percent of their GDP on military expenditure. The aggressiveness of Trump has reached new highs with the demand of a “genuine” compromise on European and transatlantic security, by insisting on an average military expenditure of five percent of NATO members’ GDP. The apparent cohesion of NATO reinforced due to Russia’s military actions against Ukraine in 2022 has begun to evaporate, not only due to the military budget the US wants its allies to spend, but also because Trump has decided to speak directly with Russia and Ukraine, largely ignoring his NATO allies. It is not surprising that Georgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy has recently suggested it is time for Europe to speak to Russia.
With that in mind, one may be surprised to know that once Donald Trump “decapitated” the Venezuelan Government by arresting former President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, sending them to New York where they will face trial, a new act of aggression has been suggested, this time against Greenland, by arguing that Washington intends to prevent Russia and China to access the resources of the gigantic island - Greenland is home to rich deposits of natural resources, including oil, gas and rare earth minerals. Donald Trump has suggested that even though he is willing to negotiate the purchase of the island he keeps open the military option.
Greenland is the largest island in the world, with a territory of 2,166,086 square kilometers (a little bit larger than Mexico) and a population - mostly composed by Greenlandic inuit- of 56,841 inhabitants. It is an autonomous territory of Denmark that shares a border with Canada’s territory of Nunavut in the high Arctic region. Historically, Greenland has been associated with Scandinavian kingdoms for more than a millennium. Denmark, a founding member of NATO, has authorized several military activities by the US on the island. As part of the military cooperation between Denmark and the US, Washington has maintained the Pituffik Space Base, former Thule Air Base in Greenland, since the 1950s, as part of the space surveillance and space control of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Military cooperation between the US and Denmark has also included the presence of nuclear weapons in Greenland. The United States built a secret nuclear-powered base, called Camp Century, in the Greenland ice sheet and sadly in 1968 a US bomber with four nuclear bombs crashed while trying to land at the Thule Air Base, leading to extensive radioactive contamination. In fact, one of the four nuclear bombs remains lost. The fact that Greenland has US nuclear weapons on its territory was denied by Dannish authorities until Washington revealed their existence. Embarrassed by the American recognition this led to a major scandal in 1995 since officially Denmark supports a nuclear free zone in Scandinavia. Copenhagen has blamed former Dannish Prime Minister Hans Christian Hansen (1955-1960), because in 1957 he held a meeting with the US Ambassador and did not make clear enough Denmark’s non-nuclear policy when the US official asked him whether Copenhagen would like to be informed if Washington deploys nuclear weapons in Greenland. According to historians, this was a tacit “go ahead” by Hansen.
Several US Presidents and diplomatic authorities have made offers to buy Greenland, since the island is in the Western Hemisphere and is perceived by Washington as essential for its national security. Andrew Johnson back in the 1860s offered to buy the island, after the 1867 purchase of Alaska. Later, in 1910 the US Ambassador to Denmark, Maurice Egan suggested to the State Department that the US give Denmark the Philippine island of Mindanao - that was a US territory - in exchange for Greenland and the Danish West Indies. Later, in 1946, US President Harry Truman offered 100 million dollars to Denmark to buy Greenland. After that Copenhagen agreed on letting the US have military installations on the gigantic island.
During the first Trump administration, the president offered to buy Greenland as part of a real state deal. Denmark said the island was not for sale. Despite that, Trump has insisted on either purchasing or seizing it by force. The reaction of Scandinavian and European countries is of concern. Some of them have territories they administer overseas with varying autonomy, including France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain, among others who have a presence in the Indian Ocean, Africa, the Antarctic and the Caribbean. It is understandable that the perception in these countries is that the demands of Trump on Greenland may pave the way for future takeovers or annexations.
It should not be forgotten that the US considers the Western Hemisphere a platform for its leadership in the world, under the MAGA label. This is why it has insisted that Canada may become the 51st state of the American Union; it has put pressure on Panama over the costs for American ships using the Canal; it has confronted the Brazilian courts that handed out their sentence on former President Jair Bolsonaro; it has provided financial support to Argentina so that it pays its dues to China, thus making it more dependent on the US. The fact that many countries in the Americas have already elected libertarians, right wing and/or ultra-right characters as Presidents, favors Trump since this helps him to get a consensus over several actions including the decapitation of the government in Venezuela, the support of Israel against the Palestinians, the reluctance to multilateral institutions, etcetera.
The Europeans, who now seem willing to talk directly to Russia on Ukraine, NATO and other issues of common interest, face a new and unimaginable scenario where Washington, not Russia, could be using military force to seize a territory, Greenland, whose population clearly states they do not want to become Americans or Danish but to remain independent, in a sovereign association with Copenhagen. The opinion of Greenlanders matters, but the fact that the US is analyzing its options, thinking about mostly its national security priorities, is putting more tension on transatlantic relations at a time when most Europeans are adjusting their budgets to comply with the GDP military expenditure demanded by Trump. Thus, one more time, NATO is facing an existential threat, this time provoked by the priorities of its major partner. Trump may want to consider the history of the Warsaw Pact, whose death is linked to attacks performed by the Soviet Union against the alliance members. Poor Greenland: so far from God, so close to the United States!
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by María Cristina Rosas, a professor and researcher in the faculty of political and social sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. The column appears in The Rio Grande Guardian International News Service with the permission of the author. Rosas can be reached via email at: mcrosas@prodigy.net.mx
