NATO deploys forces to defend Greenland from NATO’s biggest member

(Originally published Jan. 16 in “What in the World“) France and Sweden have joined the growing build-up of European troops defending Greenland from U.S. invasion.

According to The Wall Street Journal, 15 French soldiers are bound for the icebound island, where they’ll join troops from Sweden, Germany, and reinforcements from Denmark. Norway and the United Kingdom are also expected to send troops. While the deployments by allied European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization aren’t large enough to stave an actual invasion, they will serve as a permanent deterrent to their largest ally seizing Greenland by force.

Trump hasn’t ruled out using force to take control of Greenland, a position that sounds ominously similar to the language China uses about Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province whose reunification with the mainland is inevitable, if not necessarily imminent. So far, Trump hasn’t launched Chinese-style military exercises to demonstrate America’s ability to seize Greenland if necessary and intimidate it from statements of political self-determination. Greenlanders remain defiant in the face of Trump’s threats, saying they have no desire to become part of the United States. Trump has justified his desire for Greenland on security, citing an imaginary threat from China and Russia, but Europeans now recognize that Trump simply covets the island’s territory and rapidly thawing resources.

Trump is busy on other fronts, though. After being dissuaded from attacking Iran without an aircraft carrier group handy to ensure an attack would topple Tehran’s regime, Trump is pressuring Mexico to let the U.S. military expand its attacks on alleged Venezuelan drug-runners to Mexican drug cartels. But instead of just exterminating people on fishing boats with unmarked civilian aircraft, the U.S. wants to launch strikes against fentanyl labs inside Mexico.