Navigating the Greenland Crisis: Europe’s Imperfect but Viable Options

The beginning of 2026 confronted Europe with a series of shocks that left little time to recover from the holiday lull. President Trump’s renewed rhetoric about acquiring Greenland, coming on the heels of the United States’ capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, has created an atmosphere in which long-standing assumptions about transatlantic security are being tested even more profoundly than during the already tumultuous year of 2025. Denmark’s prime minister has gone so far as to declare that any US military action against Greenland would effectively mean the end of NATO, a statement that reflects both the alarm felt in European capitals and the fragility of the transatlantic alliance.

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Navigating the Greenland Crisis: Europe’s Imperfect but Viable Options

Europe’s Constrained Choices

The beginning of 2026 confronted Europe with a series of shocks that left little time to recover from the holiday lull. President Trump’s renewed rhetoric about acquiring Greenland, coming on the heels of the United States’ capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, has created an atmosphere in which long-standing assumptions about transatlantic security are being tested even more profoundly than during the already tumultuous year of 2025. Denmark’s prime minister has gone so far as to declare that any US military action against Greenland would effectively mean the end of NATO, a statement that reflects both the alarm felt in European capitals and the fragility of the transatlantic alliance.

Similar concerns are now visible in public debates across Europe, where calls for a more assertive posture towards Washington are increasingly common. Yet much of this discussion overlooks basic structural realities. Europe remains heavily dependent on the United States for its security at a time when Russia continues to rebuild and consolidate its military capabilities. Even if NATO were to collapse, Europe would not suddenly gain the ability to reassert control over Greenland. More importantly, ending the alliance would inflict greater harm on Europeans than on Americans. Threatening NATO’s dissolution is therefore not a credible instrument of influence. Other tools, such as trade retaliation or restrictions on US technology companies, would likely trigger countermeasures from an administration with a high tolerance for economic confrontation. Europe’s performance in previous tariff disputes suggests it is reluctant to escalate, and ultimately it was European governments that conceded.

In the longer term, the necessary course is clear. Europe must strengthen its military capabilities, reduce its vulnerability to US pressure, and ensure that it can defend its own territory and interests if required. Yet even Europe’s readiness 2030 plan concedes that it will probably take four more years to construct a robust and sufficient European defence posture, and this timeline already appears optimistic. In the meantime, a president intent on imposing his will on allies can inflict considerable damage. That said, simply yielding to Washington is also indefensible, as it would erode Europe’s leverage over time and signal to other powers that the continent can be coerced without consequence.

Three Imperfect but Viable Strategies

The two most common strategies for dealing with external threats, hard balancing by rapidly building up capabilities and bandwagoning with the threatening great power, are therefore either infeasible in the short term or strategically damaging in both the short and long term. Therefore, three less conventional strategies should be considered which, while imperfect, contain elements that could guide Europe’s response: soft balancing, leash slipping, and institutional binding.

The first is soft balancing, the coordinated use of diplomatic and institutional tools to resist a dominant power without resorting to military action. During the Iraq War, several European states pursued this approach by forming common positions and building coalitions that expressed opposition to US policy while maintaining the transatlantic alliance. Something similar could unfold today in response to the current US threat of unilateral use of force.

Yet the first opportunity has already been missed: with the exception of Spain, no European state joined the statement issued by Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay condemning the intervention in Venezuela. This could have been the starting point for a broader coalition capable of defending the norm against the use of force in international relations, for example through coordinated resolutions in the UN General Assembly. Although the Trump administration itself would likely not be directly influenced by such resolutions, diplomatic alignment of this kind could further shift an already sceptical American public against attempts to take Greenland and strengthen those within the Republican Party who oppose this policy trajectory. However, if Europe did not support this norm in the case of Venezuela, other states will not support it when the norm is tested over Greenland, and Europe will be on its own.

A second option is leash slipping, the gradual effort to loosen dependence on the dominant ally by pooling capabilities and strengthening their alignment. This is not an attempt to replace NATO immediately, but rather a hedge against future uncertainty. The various coalitions assisting Ukraine exemplify this approach: flexible groups of states cooperating without relying solely on US leadership. Europe could expand this model through new defence arrangements. One largely symbolic, short-term, option would be to renegotiate the defence partnership with the United Kingdom in a way that includes a reference to the mutual assistance clause of the Treaty on European Union. Such a reiteration of this principle, also involving the UK, would signal to Russia and other states that Europeans will defend each other even without the United States.

A more substantive, longer-term measure would be the development of a tangible European pillar within NATO, in which European forces assume primary responsibility for the conventional defence and deterrence of Europe and operate within the Alliance’s existing command structure. Building such a force package will take time, and would require sustained political commitment as well as significant investment in capabilities, readiness and interoperability. Such initiatives would not replace or undermine NATO. However, they would create credible additional layers of cooperation that reduce exposure to shifts in US policy and, in doing so, reduce some dependency on the United States.

A third approach is institutional binding, the creation or strengthening of institutions that provide benefits to the dominant power but at the same time constrain its behaviour. Europe could attempt to agree with the United States on a governance structure for Greenland with real authority over issues related to security and the extraction of critical minerals, while leaving other matters under the authority of Nuuk and Copenhagen. Such a “Nuuk Council” or “Greenland Council” could give the United States a privileged position, but could also include Denmark, other European Arctic states such as Finland, Norway and Sweden, as well as the United Kingdom. A binding strategy is not guaranteed to be successful, particularly with an administration sceptical of international institutions. However, if the United States or President Trump is offered a position with a prestigious title, such as “Supreme Representative of the Nuuk Council”, he might be persuaded to accept this as a better option than an outright land grab. While this is far from the optimal outcome, it would give Nuuk, Copenhagen and other European states a voice and would at least avoid formally violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a NATO ally.

Acting Through Imperfect but Viable Options

None of these strategies offers a definitive solution, yet inaction would be worse. Europe needs approaches that impose costs on destabilising behaviour without escalating into open conflict with the United States. Soft balancing provides a vehicle for diplomatic coordination and the ability to impose legitimacy costs and, eventually, political costs; leash slipping fosters a degree of short term autonomy; and institutional binding might at least introduce some constraints on the United States. The challenge is to combine these tools in a way that manages the crisis over Greenland while preserving the security structures that have underpinned European stability for decades.

Prof. Dr. Tim Haesebrouck is an assistant professor with the Institute for International and European Studies of Ghent University in Belgium. His research focusses on military intervention, defence policy, small states, foreign policy analysis and foreign policy change.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)