What until recently seemed like a rhetorical extravagance of Donald Trump begins to take on a doctrinal shape. The American administration no longer talks about Greenland as a geopolitical joke, but as a “national security imperative”. And the arguments used are, for Europe, unsettling.
Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House and one of President Trump’s most influential ideologues, put it bluntly: states are not entitled to keep territories they cannot defend. And Denmark, in his opinion, does not meet this criterion in the case of Greenland.
“The new international competition is moving to the polar region,” Miller explained in an interview with Fox News. The Arctic, navigation routes, control of movements and resources – these would be the real stakes of the 21st century.
In this context, Trump’s adviser questioned Denmark’s right over Greenland, arguing that the Danish state “cannot defend” the territory, due to its military and economic limitations. “To control a territory you must be able to defend it, develop it and populate it. Denmark has failed in all these chapters,” Miller stated, in a formulation that caused consternation among Western allies.
He also claimed that the United States would already be obliged to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” to defend Denmark within NATO, describing this arrangement as “unfair” and “unjust to the American taxpayer”, who would have been “subsidizing Europe’s security for generations”.
This is a logic that is more reminiscent of the 19th century than of the international order built after the Second World War. A logic in which international law, sovereignty and alliances become secondary to the supreme criterion of military power.
This rhetoric is not accidental. It repackages an older vision of Trump: alliances are not values, but transactions. And if the balance is not in America’s favor, the rules can be rewritten.
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