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The iceberg ultimatum: Washington’s hostile bid for Greenland

Donald Trump bluntly declares the United States will take Greenland regardless of consent, invoking China and Russia, jolting Denmark and Europe and exposing an openly coercive turn threatening NATO unity and European sovereignty.

by TODAY

Updated 10-Jan-2026

What you need to know

🔹 President Trump threatens to acquire Greenland, abandoning diplomatic norms during industry talks.
🔹 He framed annexation as protecting NATO from Russia and China.
🔹 Greenland’s rare earth resources drive American strategic ambitions.

T he veneer of diplomatic decorum finally cracked this afternoon, somewhere between a discussion on Venezuelan heavy crude and the hors d’oeuvres. In a room populated by the titans of the American oil and gas industry — ostensibly gathered to discuss energy security in the Southern Hemisphere — President Trump pivoted north, delivering a grim forecast for the Kingdom of Denmark.

“We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” the President declared, discarding the nuanced ambiguities of statecraft for the blunt trauma of a boardroom takeover. The ultimatum was stark: the acquisition of the world’s largest island would proceed “either the nice way or the more difficult way.”

For European observers, the “difficult way” is a phrase that carries a distinct chill, sharper even than the Arctic winds.

The Landlord of the North

The justification offered was classic protectionist theatre. “If we don’t do it, Russia or China will,” the President reasoned, framing the potential annexation as a reluctant burden rather than an imperial grasp. “We’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”

It is a curious logic that claims to “save” NATO — a point Trump reiterated with his characteristic arrogance during the same briefing — by threatening the territorial integrity of a founding member. To ‘save’ the alliance, it seems, one must first cannibalise it.

Copenhagen, naturally, is not laughing. The Danish government has long maintained that Greenland is open for business but emphatically not for sale. Yet, the sheer asymmetry of the threat — the world’s military hegemon eyeing the territory of a nation of six million — sends tremors through chanceries from Berlin to Ottawa.

The Rare Earth Realpolitik

Let us not be naïve about the stakes. This is not about ice, nor is it strictly about the proximity of Ivan or the People’s Liberation Army. It is about the periodic table. Greenland sits atop some of the planet’s most significant undeveloped deposits of rare earth metals — neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium. These are the vitamins of modern industry, essential to everything from the F-35s’ guidance systems that patrol the skies to the wind turbines that power the US grid.

With the “Donroe Doctrine” now effectively American policy, Washington is signalling that it will no longer tolerate strategic dependency on supply chains it does not physically control. The juxtaposition of this announcement with a meeting on Venezuelan oil is instructive: the U.S. is swiftly moving to ring-fence the resources of the entire Western Hemisphere, treating the Atlantic Ocean not as a bridge, but as a moat.

The European Paralysis

The silence from Brussels is deafening. The European Union finds itself in a strategic vice. To condemn the U.S. is to risk the economic wrath of a White House that views tariffs as a primary instrument of foreign policy. To stay silent is to tacitly accept that European borders are negotiable if the price — or the threat — is high enough.

If the U.S. proceeds with the “difficult way” — be it through aggressive economic coercion of Nuuk, or the expansion of the Pituffik Space Base into a de facto occupation zone — the concept of European sovereignty becomes theoretical.

We are witnessing the erosion of the rules-based order, chipped away not by our adversaries in the East, but by our guarantors in the West. As Donald Trump remarked, we wouldn’t have a NATO without him any longer. The bitter irony, which may soon dawn on the ministers scrambling in Whitehall, the Quai d’Orsay and Brussels, is that we might not have much of a Europe left with him either.