Donald Trump’s interest in Greenland is not a territorial fantasy. It is a strategic signal. It only makes sense if you accept his underlying belief that NATO, as currently constituted, no longer serves America’s core security interests. This situation is simply the logical outcome of a worldview in which alliances are liabilities, institutions are obsolete, and power is exercised unilaterally.
To understand this logic, it is necessary to step inside Trump’s worldview. He genuinely believes that for over a century the rest of the world has ridden on America’s coattails. From hot wars and cold wars to global security, from currency and trade to culture and technology, the United States has underwritten the system. Trump’s conclusion is blunt: America has given enough. It is time for payback.
That belief shapes his approach to strategy and decision-making. Seen through an “America versus the world” lens rather than “the West versus the rest”, unilateral action appears rational. Actions that might otherwise seem destabilising are, in this framing, efficient exercises of power. A US-led, quietly managed regime change in Venezuela, for example, would deliver a goldmine of intelligence. Russia and China would lose a client state and access to the world’s largest oil reserves. A major dark-finance and narco-state hub would collapse. Others would take note. No UN process. No NATO consensus. No WTO debate. America first.
The same logic underpins Trump’s thinking on Greenland.
Russia’s most serious conventional and strategic threat today emanates from its Northern Fleet. Despite the strain of the war in Ukraine and years of sanctions, Moscow has continued to invest heavily in this capability: nuclear submarines, advanced surface vessels, hypersonic missiles, layered air defences, and increasingly sophisticated autonomous undersea systems. This matters because between 95 and 99 per cent of global data traffic, including the vast majority of communications between the UK and the United States, travels via undersea fibre-optic cables. Where many European governments see a threat to global trade, Trump sees a direct threat to America.
Greenland sits at the centre of that strategic contest. It is vast, sparsely populated, and geopolitically decisive. It is also controlled by Denmark, a NATO member and therefore, in Trump’s view, part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
From his perspective, exerting control over Greenland would decisively shift the balance of power in America’s favour. That is the calculation. In practice, he would likely settle for a dramatically expanded US-led NATO presence on the island. Such a move would strain allies, but it would still constitute a strategic win for Washington.
The difficulty is that the same chessboard looks very different from Moscow. Vladimir Putin has always framed international politics as “Russia versus everyone else”. Institutions such as NATO and the European Union do not moderate that perception; they reinforce it. A core Russian objective has therefore been to weaken, fragment, or hollow out those institutions over time.
This is where the strategic risk lies. Trump’s unilateralism may make sense from a narrow US perspective, but it also advances Russian interests. In taking steps that alter the balance of power in America’s favour, Washington risks eroding the very institutions that sustain that balance.
The risk is not that America acts alone, but that it does so in ways that fracture the system designed to preserve stability. For NATO, the task is clear: adapt or be bypassed. If the alliance cannot offer credible capabilities, strategic coherence, and value commensurate with American investment, unilateralism will remain an attractive option. And that outcome aligns far more closely with Russian interests than Western ones.
Ben Everitt is a former Member of Parliament and graduate of the Royal College of Defence Studies
