During his second term, President Trump has ramped up his campaign for the annexation of Greenland. He has often cited national security concerns and the threats posed to NATO by Russia and China there. This is despite Greenland, as a Danish territory, being currently within the alliance and even having an American base already, namely the Pituffik Space Base.
After threatening both tariffs and military action, and the rest of NATO deploying a rather small military force to the island, President Trump announced that he and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had “formed the framework of a future deal.”[1] The specifics of the deal still have not emerged, not even regarding whether Denmark or the United States would own Greenland and how access to minerals would work, beyond one US official stating it involved the US getting “total access” to parts of Greenland for an unlimited amount of time.[2]
During this crisis the unnerving prospect even emerged of a military conflict within NATO. Although this is often perceived as being ‘unprecedented’, this is not at all accurate. A direct military conflict has already taken place within NATO – and more than 50 years ago at that. Despite no formal declaration of war, during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in the summer of 1974, the troops of two NATO members, namely Greece and Turkey, fought each other directly.
The conflict in Cyprus was rooted in longstanding ethnic tensions. In 1960, Cyprus was granted independence after being ruled by the British for 82 years and a significant Greek insurgency. However, neither the Greek majority, who made up around 80% of the island’s population, nor the Turkish minority were satisfied with independence. The former wanted enosis (union with Greece), whereas the latter wanted partition (taksim). Despite attempts at power-sharing between the two communities, with Archbishop Makarios serving as President and a Turkish Vice President, interethnic violence continued throughout the 1960s, with the Turkish Cypriots forming their own parallel administration in 1963.
Under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, Greek and Turkish forces were stationed on the island, with both countries, as well as the British, being granted the right under Article IV to intervene in the event the treaty was violated. Turkey used this as justification to invade Cyprus on 20 July 1974, following a coup in which Greek ultranationalists in the Cypriot National Guard and EOKA-B overthrew Makarios in pursuit of enosis, under the rule of the Greek Colonels’ Regime.
Despite a brief ceasefire obtained on 22 July and the collapse of the junta in Greece, on 14 August, after peace talks broke down, Turkey invaded again. This time, one-third of the island was occupied, with 200,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots displaced. This far exceeded the rights granted under the Treaty of Guarantee, as did the subsequent settlement of thousands of Turkish civilians in the occupied zone.
Around 2,000 Greek troops fought alongside approximately 10,000 men of the Cypriot National Guard.[3] Some of these had been stationed on the island under the Treaty of Guarantee, others were sent in under Operation Niki, and the officer corps of the Cypriot National Guard all came from the Greek Army. The Greeks performed remarkably well, delaying Turkish advances in Kyrenia and at Nicosia Airport. However, they were simply no match for the 40,000 Turkish soldiers and 20,000 Turkish Cypriots.[4]
The Greek army’s relatively impressive performance did not make up for their numerical inferiority, poor military planning, and internal divisions. They relied on outdated battle plans from 1964 (when they had more than 10,000 troops on the island),[5] ignored the buildup of Turkish troops in Mersin, and initially ordered their forces not to attack the invading Turks, instead focusing on Turkish enclaves in Cyprus – a decision described by Foukas as “suicidal”.[6]
Faced with the prospect of total war against a much larger army, the Greek High Command defied the Dictator Ioannidis’s orders and chose not to mobilise for total war.[7] This both sealed the fate of the regime and undermined the entire purpose of the Greek forces acting as a “tripwire mechanism”, as Matthew Slack describes it: a small force meant to deter conflict by risking escalation if attacked.[8] Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, who led the democratic government that replaced the junta, also refused to escalate beyond limited reinforcements, allegedly remarking that “Cyprus was always far away”.
Many generals feared escalation due to internal dissatisfaction, structural weaknesses in the army, and the simple fact that Greece had no viable path to victory. To prevent escalation, several senior officers sabotaged the war effort, with reinforcements aboard the ship Rethymnon ordered to divert to Rhodes.
Greece’s deterrence ultimately failed. Turkey secured the north of Cyprus through the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, facing only a three-year US arms embargo. Greece merely withdrew briefly from NATO’s command structure, not daring to leave the alliance altogether.
This case illustrates that deterrence failed not because the Greeks did not fight, but because they could not escalate. The presence of troops and their being attacked did not prevent conflict, as they lacked both the capacity and the political will to turn a limited clash into a war they could plausibly win.
Many unfortunate parallels exist with the situation in Greenland. The forces of the weaker side – i.e. the rest of NATO without the United States – are vastly outnumbered. Only 200 Danish troops are stationed on the island, reinforced by just 37 NATO troops sent by the rest of NATO including one unfortunate Briton.
Another parallel is the lack of sound military planning. Just as Greece relied on outdated plans and ignored clear warning signs, Europe today faces years of chronic underinvestment in defence, a problem Trump himself has repeatedly highlighted. Fear of confrontation would likely shape European responses, especially given mass dissatisfaction and reluctance among younger generations to serve in armed forces.
One key difference is that, despite genuine outrage at Trump’s posturing, Greenland does not hold the same cultural weight for Europe as Cyprus did for Greece, where the island was and is widely seen as part of the nation separated from the mother country.
The Greek experience shows what happens when a force fights bravely but is unable to escalate. Any conflict in Greenland would likely play out even worse, given lower cultural stakes, far fewer troops, and deeper structural weaknesses in European defence.
The fact that direct NATO-on-NATO fighting occurred in 1974, and that the alliance neither collapsed nor meaningfully punished the aggressor, should serve as a stark reminder. In confrontations, diplomatic or military, the weaker side cannot rely on international treaties and token forces to compensate for fundamental strategic weakness.
The importance of not assuming that treaties will hold and that others will come automatically to one’s defence cannot be overstated. Security guarantees and troop deployments do not work because of the risk that soldiers might die, but because the other side believes they can kill – and, most importantly, win.[9]
[1] R Scott, M Khan, C Boccia and L Martinez, ‘Here’s what we know about Trump’s ‘framework’ of a Greenland deal’, ABC NEWS (2026). https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-framework-greenland-deal/story?id=129470995
[2] ^Ibid.
[3] Matthew Slack, p151.
[4] Slack, p151.
[5] E J Erickson, Mesut Uyar – Phase Line Attila: The Amphibious Campaign for Cyprus, 1974 (Quantico, Virginia Marine Corps University Press, 2020), p78
[6] V K Foukas, ‘Uncomfortable Questions: Cyprus, October 1973 – August 1974’, Contemporary European History, 14:1 (2005), 45-63 at p58.
[7] Slack, p165.
[8] Slack, pp1-2.
[9] A Lanoszka and M Hunzeker, ‘The Efficacy of Landpower: Landpower and American Credibility’, Parameters, 45:4 (2016), 17-26 at p18. https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/15415/1/HunzekerLanoszkaParameters.pdf.
