There is unfortunately an increasing

chance of a war happening between

Denmark and the United States. A

sentence that you would have said was

insane and completely unrealistic just a

couple of years ago. The recent

escalation in tensions began just hours

after the US military raided Venezuela

and seized that country's president when

Katie Miller, the wife of Steven Miller,

the architect of President Trump's

immigration and domestic policies,

tweeted out an image of Greenland

covered in the American flag with a

caption ominously reading soon in all

capitals. And nearly the same time,

Trump himself, while aboard Air Force

One, insisted that America needed

Greenland from the standpoint of

national security. Trump has repeatedly

said over the past few weeks that

anything less than full American control

over Greenland is completely

unacceptable to him and that deploying

military force to seize the island isn't

off the table. On the 14th of January,

the Danish foreign minister and his

Greenlandic counterpart met with

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice

President JD Vance in Washington to

discuss the status of Greenland, which

ended with the Danish foreign minister

leaving exasperated and convinced that

Trump fully intends to conquer Greenland

by any means necessary. Shortly

afterwards, eight European countries

sent a small token force of military

personnel to Greenland to conduct joint

exercises with the Danes on the island

and to send a message of solidarity

against the United States, which Trump

responded to with fury. A couple of days

later, on the 17th of January, he

announced that he would be implementing

new tariffs of 10% on all goods exported

to the US by the European countries who

sent their troops to Greenland, plus

Denmark, and that the rate would

increase further to 25% on each of them

by the 1st of June, unless they relented

and agreed to support America's desire

to purchase Greenland, in which case the

new tariffs would be dropped. Denmark

and Greenland's position throughout this

whole dispute has repeatedly been that

Greenland is not for sale no matter what

the price on offer is. While the Trump

administration has repeatedly threatened

that they will do whatever it takes to

acquire Greenland, including using

military force through an invasion if

they continue refusing. Trump has since

seemingly walked back some of these

threats, though. While speaking at the

World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump for

the first time said that he was dropping

his military threat to seize Greenland

through force. Nonetheless, he said that

he was still committed to acquiring

Greenland through a purchase and

complained that it had been a historical

mistake for the United States to have

returned Greenland back to Denmark after

the Second World War when the US

occupied the island for a few years

during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.

Most recently, Trump has claimed that he

has reached a compromised deal with NATO

in which smaller pockets of territory in

Greenland around US military-based sites

will effectively be seated and

transferred over to American

sovereignty. an agreement that is

supposedly being modeled on the

sovereign base agreement in Cypress

where the UK carved out two territories

around their own military bases on the

island in 1960 that are recognized

sovereign British territories beyond the

authority of the government in Cyprus.

Denmark, however, has stated that they

have rejected this agreement and that

their position remains that no territory

in Greenland will be seated under any

circumstances. Trump, ever

unpredictable, may always return back to

Greenland with his pressure tactics and

threats again in the future. So, what

was previously an unthinkable question

now actually has to be asked. What would

actually happen if the United States

really did launch an invasion and

occupied Greenland? Allow me to do my

best to explain and speculate to the

best of my abilities. First of all, if

the US actually did launch an invasion

of Greenland, the operation to occupy

and control it would be fairly simple

and straightforward. Denmark, who

controls Greenland as a self-governing

autonomous territory, has very few

actual defenses on the island. There are

usually only about 150 Danish military

and civilian personnel who work across

six small military facilities on the

island. Although Denmark has recently

announced that they will be deploying a

thousand combat ready troops to the

island in light of America's threats.

Nonetheless, Denmark has placed no

fighter aircraft, missile defenses, or

heavy ground forces on Greenland of any

kind that can offer up any sort of

meaningful resistance to a committed

American invasion force. Denmark's tiny

military presence on the island usually

consists only of small patrol units and

limited surveillance assets, which

ironically is because Denmark has

historically relied on the much more

powerful United States to defend

Greenland instead. Greenland is a

geographically massive territory,

roughly the same size as the entire

eastern time zone of the United States,

but it's also incredibly sparssely

populated, home to fewer than 57,000

people, most of whom are Greenlandic

Inuits by ethnicity. Because of that,

there are very few population centers

across the island to be concerned with

taking over during an invasion scenario.

Greenland's capital and largest city,

Nuke, is home to only around 20,000

people, which is already more than a

third of the entire island's population,

all concentrated right there. While

everywhere else are basically small

settlements, an American invasion of

Greenland wouldn't look anything at all

like other modern invasions in Ukraine

or Iraq, or even like the US military

raid that captured Venezuelan President

Nicholas Maduro. There would not be any

contested beach landings or large-scale

kinetic combat operations. Instead,

American invasion forces would be

focused on securing control over

Greenland's principal infrastructure and

access points as rapidly as possible. US

military transport planes would land at

the already existing US military base in

Greenland at Puffic, while others would

land at Greenland's handful of major

settlements. Fighter aircraft would

secure Greenland's airspace, while the

Navy would secure the possible maritime

approaches. The troops on the ground

would deploy to quickly capture and

secure the island's ports, airfields,

and communication systems to deny access

to Greenland from reinforcements coming

from Europe in an operation that would

kind of resemble Russia's capture of

Crimea in 2014. And doing so wouldn't

require a large invasion force like what

was recently deployed to Venezuela. Most

military theorists argue that in order

to successfully occupy and hold a

territory and combat the insurgency from

the local population in the territory,

you need a ratio of about 20 to 25

occupying soldiers per 1,000 residents

to conduct counterinsurgency operations.

That implies that in order to occupy and

hold Greenland and suppress an

insurgency from the local population,

the American invasion force would

realistically only need to consist of

between 1,140 and 1,425

soldiers, which is only a fraction of

the armed force that the US assembled

off the coast of Venezuela before the

operation was launched that seized

Maduro. Realistically, when considering

that Denmark might have up to a thousand

soldiers present in Greenland for

defense, the US would probably not need

to commit any more than 10,000 of their

own soldiers to the initial invasion and

occupation of Greenland. With no air

defenses, no fighter aircraft, and no

heavy ground forces to worry about in

Greenland, a lightning and determined US

operation to seize control over the

island would likely be successful. And

it would probably also involve minimal

bloodshed even with Denmark's recent but

still modest and underequipped

deployments. Indeed, the local

Greenlandic opposition would no doubt

vehemently resist the whole operation.

According to a poll in 2025 that was

conducted by a Danish paper, nearly 85%

of Greenland's population reject the

idea of joining the United States. There

would be virtually universal protest and

resistance and probably even initial

insurgent activities against the

invasion. But they are so few in number

and so lightly armed that any

substantial resistance couldn't possibly

last for very long. Take the example of

Argentina's invasion and occupation of

the Faulland Islands in 1982. In what I

believe would be the most similar modern

historical comparison to this. Back

then, Argentina invaded and occupied the

British controlled Faulland Islands with

an initial force of about 2,000 soldiers

and marines, who were able to rapidly

overpower the tiny British population on

the islands, who only numbered around

2,000 themselves. Only 68 Royal Marines

were present on the islands to resist

the initial 2,000 strong Argentine

invasion force. And so, their capability

to resist them was very limited. They

initially fought back and killed one of

the invading Argentinean soldiers, but

other than that, they were ordered to

avoid heavy casualties and quickly

surrendered within hours. A similar

course of events would almost certainly

take place during a hypothetical US

invasion of Greenland today. The initial

military takeover of the island would be

fairly easy and well within the

capabilities of the United States, but

what would come afterwards would be

absolutely catastrophic from an

economic, geopolitical, and political

perspective. During an interview with

CNN in early January, Steven Miller

exclaimed that nobody would fight the

United States militarily over the future

of Greenland. Indeed, this was the exact

same belief that drove Argentina to

invade and occupy the Faulland Islands

in 1982. The assumption that the

Faulland Islands weren't actually

important enough to the British to

really start a war over. In their case,

Argentina grossly miscalculated

Britain's willingness to defend their

own territory, no matter how far away

from the mainland and sparsely

populated, which triggered a ferocious

British counteroffensive that drove them

out of the islands, killed hundreds of

soldiers, and even resulted in the

collapse of their government. In that

case, however, Burden's military

capabilities far exceeded those of

Argentina, which of course influenced

their decision to counterattack. During

a US invasion of Greenland scenario

though, the opposite situation would be

in place because America's military

capabilities utterly dwarf those of

Denmark and indeed even the whole of

Europe combined. The budget of the US

military is nearly 100 times larger than

the Danish military's budget is. While

the US military spending alone makes up

around 23 of all of NATO's collective

military spending put together, meaning

that the US spends roughly twice as much

on its military as every single other

country in NATO does combined. Unlike

during the Argentine invasion of the

Faulland scenario when Britain

realistically could consider a military

response to retake the islands, Denmark

and even the rest of Europe would simply

not have the same option to work with.

Denmark could and almost certainly would

immediately take every possible

political avenue available to protest

against America's invasion and

occupation. Politically, while Greenland

is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, it

is not itself a member of the EU or

considered EU territory. Because of that

legal distinction, it's ambiguous and

unclear if the EU's mutual defense

clause would actually be able to be

triggered over a Greenland invasion. But

since Greenland is actually a part of

NATO, NATO's mutual defense clause would

be much more legally concrete than the

EU's would be. So right away, Denmark

would argue that America's invasion of a

sovereign territory in Greenland

directly violated article 5 of NATO's

founding treaty, which asserts that an

armed attack against the territory of

one NATO member shall be considered an

armed attack against all of the other

members as well. The problem with this

direction is that NATO as an

organization was never founded with the

belief that one of the alliance's

members would blatantly attack another

one. And so there's no internal

mechanism within NATO that's built to

handle a situation like this. It's

important to state that NATO has

experienced significant internal

military tensions between its members in

the past. Between the 1950s and 70s, the

UK and Iceland engaged in the so-called

cod wars over fishing rights in the

North Atlantic that culminated with

Icelandic ships actually opening fire on

British ships in 1975 and Iceland's

threat that it would even withdraw from

NATO entirely before the crisis was

diffused diplomatically. In the 1990s

and 2000s, during NATO's expansion east,

there were significant concerns at the

time about the renewal of border

disputes concerning Hungary and the

large Hungarian majority territories in

neighboring Romania and Slovakia. And

most critically of all, there has been

the longunning military confrontation

between Greece and Turkey, who until

recently were considered the most likely

two NATO countries to go to war with

each other. Turkey and Greece both

joined NATO in the 1950s. But in 1974,

Turkey invaded Cyprus and entered into

direct conflict with Greek troops who

were present there. After which Greece

withdrew from NATO's integrated military

command for the next 6 years in protest.

Both sides maintained extensive and

bitter maritime disputes against each

other in the Aian Sea. In 1996, a great

fighter aircraft even shot down a

Turkish fighter over the Aian Sea and

killed its Turkish pilot. And as

recently as 2020, a Turkish warship

locked its fire control radar system

onto a French frigot in the Eastern

Mediterranean during boiling tensions

over the civil war in Libya. Ultimately,

none of these incidents between NATO

members caused any long-lasting impacts.

But a fullon invasion by the United

States into the sovereign territory of

another NATO member would make all of

these previous incidents seem like

child's play by comparison. Denmark

would argue to the North Atlantic

Council, NATO's decision-making body,

that the United States had directly

violated article 5 of the NATO treaty.

The problem is that in order for the

North Atlantic Council to actually

activate article 5, it requires the

universal consensus of all 32 of the

NATO allied members. If any one of the

NATO allies refuses to give its approval

to the council for an article 5

violation, then there won't be a

consensus and article 5 won't be

formally triggered. This essentially

gives any NATO member a de facto veto

power over the triggering of article 5

by the council by simply refusing to

give its approval. And in this scenario,

the United States would almost certainly

do this and block the article 5 clause

from being formally activated in

response to its own invasion. Even if

every single other NATO member approved

of it, NATO in effect would become

paralyzed and trapped by the invasion

and would not be capable of formally

responding to it as a collective

organization. This is why many analysts

and politicians say that a US invasion

of Greenland would immediately spell the

death of NATO as an organization,

including Denmark's own Prime Minister,

Medie Frederickson. The United States is

the fundamental core of NATO as an

organization. Not only does the US alone

make up 2/3 of NATO's collective

military spending, but for more than 34

of a century now, the Supreme Allied

Commander Europe, the second highest

ranking position within the alliance,

has always been held by an American

general, including today. This commander

is responsible for drafting up NATO's

defense plans for Europe, including

Greenland, and they've consequently

always assumed a high degree of US

military involvement. While US military

officers are deeply interconnected

throughout every major NATO command,

responding through NATO, an organization

that's dominated by the US against armed

US aggression, will simply not be

possible. And that could well spell the

rapid collapse of NATO as an

organization. as trust in the US among

NATO's other allies will immediately

evaporate and collapse. To say nothing

of the absolute collapse of faith in the

United States in Denmark, who has

historically been among America's

greatest, most loyal, and most effective

allies with an incredible geographic

vantage point along the Danish Straits,

enabling them to bottle up the Russian

Baltic Sea Fleet within the Baltic.

Losing that ally alone would be an

absolutely catastrophic consequence. The

nations of Europe would at this point

likely face the greatest moment in their

history since the Second World War with

an impossibly difficult decision to

make. Would they rebuke the US invasion

and occupation of Greenland or would

they try to accept it and continue on

with business as usual as much as

possible? On the one hand, many European

countries would likely feel that

Greenland is simply not important enough

to risk completely shattering ties with

the US over the UK, Norway, Denmark, the

Netherlands, and Italy all currently

operate the F-35 fighter as a part of

their militaries. While Finland,

Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czecho,

Romania, and Greece have all ordered

F-35s and are awaiting their deliveries.

An immediate shattering in relations

with the US over the Greenland issue

risks the US withholding access to the

communications, targeting data, and

munitions that are necessary to

adequately operate the F-35, which in a

flash would immediately undermine and

weaken all of their air forces and

capabilities and crash tens of billions

of dollars worth of already paid for

orders. Worse, European militaries would

have no palatable options to replace

their effectively bricked F-35s with.

The only other countries that

manufacture true fifth generation

fighters as advanced as the F-35 are

Russia and China, neither of which are

particularly attractive suppliers to

Europe either. European-made

alternatives like the French-made Rafale

or the Swedishmade Grippen or 4.5

generation fighters and not as advanced

or capable as the F-35 is. Completely

replacing the F-35 with domestically

produced Rafale or Griffin fighters

would take at least a decade, cost tens

of billions of euros worth of unexpected

costs, and still leave European air

forces disadvantaged when compared to

the American and Russian air forces, who

both possess true fifth generation

fighter capabilities. All of this alone

would make strongly confronting the US

over a Greenland invasion a bitter pill

for many of the European countries to

swallow. But there's a lot more to be

concerned about as well. The British

military in particular is substantially

more dependent on the US military than

most others are in Europe. The UK

signals intelligence, for example, is

deeply integrated with the US. But the

most sensitive area is the UK's nuclear

deterrent. For one, the UK doesn't even

have an independent ballistic missile

program. The UK utilizes Trident

missiles for its nuclear deterrent

aboard its nuclear armed submarines, but

it doesn't actually own any of its

Trident missiles outright. Rather, the

UK leases their Trident missiles from a

shared USUK pool from the US Navy's base

in Kings Bay, Georgia instead. In a

flash, if the UK strongly confronted the

US over a Greenland invasion scenario,

the US could effectively retaliate by

ending its lease agreement on the

Trident missiles and Britain's

submarine nuclear deterrent force in the

process. Reestablishing an independent

UK submarine nuclear deterrent without

the Americans would likely take decades

and tens of billions of pounds worth of

money, which is both politically and

financially not very feasible. Burden

also has to worry about its future

nuclearpowered submarine force as well.

Under the terms of the AUS agreement

with the US and Australia, the UK is

currently set to build 12 new

top-of-the-line nuclearpowered attack

submarines with share technology designs

from the US, which means that the US

could also retaliate by pulling their

support from the pact and leaving the

UK's current nuclear submarine plans in

ruin as well. On top of these concerns,

there's also the fear of what Russia

might end up doing in the event of a

paralyzed or a collapsing NATO. If the

US invasion of Greenland indeed ends up

triggering a collapse of NATO, Russia

could attempt to hasten the process

further or take advantage of the chaos

by probing NATO and the EU's defenses in

the east. Most alarmingly of all in the

Baltic states. Who's to say that shortly

after American boots hit the ground in

Greenland and cause a crisis with a NATO

in the west, Russian troops don't march

just across the border of Estonia and

seize control over the city of Narva and

spark another simultaneous crisis in the

east. Narva is a majority Russian city

in Estonia that's immediately across the

border from Russia, which Russia would

no doubt claim rightfully belongs to

Russia, just as it's done with Russian

majority areas in Ukraine in the past.

If NATO collapses or becomes paralyzed

over the Greenland invasion, then who

would end up coming to Estonia's defense

over Narva? Estonia, probably unlike

Denmark with the Greenland invasion,

could actually trigger the EU's mutual

defense clause over an invasion and

occupation of Narva. But it would leave

out the US, the UK, Canada, and Turkey,

some of NATO's most powerful members.

Faced with a crisis in Greenland and

another crisis in Narva, Russia could

gamble on the EU. not actually

forcefully responding to the occupation

of a city that has a Russian ethnic

majority anyway. And then the EU would

be placed into a crisis of confidence as

well. Europe would also have to be

deeply concerned about the future of

Ukraine as well. A collapse of NATO

scenario from the Greenland invasion

would destroy Ukraine's hopes of joining

an alliance that no longer exists.

Ukraine and many other European

countries will worry that antagonizing

the US too much over Greenland would

risk jeopardizing Washington's tentative

offer to join them in offering Ukraine

security guarantees after the war with

Russia is over. The implied threat to

Europe that the Trump administration

would make with the Greenland invasion

would be effectively for them to choose

between Ukraine and Greenland. Another

impossibly difficult choice. For all of

these security related reasons, many

states in Europe might ultimately

calculate that the fate of Greenland

simply wouldn't be worth the cost of

significant push back. Some, like

France, who had the foresight to build a

much more independent military than the

UK and other European countries, might

push back more aggressively, but they

would still have few options to truly

retaliate militarily. Many of the

European nations would find themselves

stuck in a position between the reality

of their military dependence on the

United States and their public's fury at

the blatant US violation of Denmark's

and Greenland sovereignty. A recent poll

in Germany found that 62% of Germans

favored support for coming to Denmark's

aid during a conflict with the United

States. Whether it would actually be

possible for the German military to even

do so or not. It is possible that NATO

wouldn't actually collapse outright over

the invasion. But what is certain is

that the underlying trust in the United

States and NATO among every European

ally country would be permanently and

irrevocably lost for an entire

generation, if not even longer. The UK,

the Netherlands, and France especially

would all be deeply distrustful of the

US's intentions for decades going

forward with their own sovereign

territories in the Western Hemisphere to

worry about America deciding to

unilaterally seize next. How, after

seizing Greenland, could the US possibly

assure these three countries that they

wouldn't seize Guadaloop or Martineique,

Aruba or St. Barton or Bermuda or the

British Virgin Islands next using

similar pretext and arguments they did

for Greenland. Any chance of the US

really cooperating with European nations

on just about anything would be dead in

the water for decades. A disaster during

an era of increasing great power

competition with China and Russia.

China, while probably publicly

protesting, would also be ecstatic that

the invasion and occupation would free

them from any push back on invading and

occupying Taiwan. Next, Russia would be

similarly ecstatic at the conflict

erupting within NATO, the possibility of

NATO just completely collapsing, what it

would mean for their ongoing war aims in

Ukraine, and what it could mean for

pushing the door open to further

assaults on the Baltic states, like the

Narva option. While Europe would

probably ultimately not retaliate

against the US invasion directly through

military means, there were many indirect

and economic methods that they would

probably take to retaliate instead if

that's the path they ultimately choose

to go down. The European NATO states

could for example force the closures of

several critically important US military

bases that are present on their

continent like Roa in Spain, Avano and

Siggonella in Italy, Black & Heath in

the UK, and most importantly of all,

Ramstein in Germany. a sprawling air

base that hosts tens of thousands of

American soldiers that has long been

critical for sustaining US military

operations in the Middle East and

Africa. Shutting down all or even some

of these bases across the continent in

response to the US seizure of Greenland

would severely undermine America's

ability to project power into the Middle

East and Africa. As recently as the 7th

of January of this year, the US military

seizure of a Russian linked oil tanker

in the North Atlantic near Iceland

relied heavily on their access to UK

airfields and ironically unspecified

support from Denmark. Now, some of these

states might also be wary of actually

forcing the US military out of their

countries for good out of fear removing

the US security umbrella that has

defended them against outside threats

for generations now at this point. But

obviously at the same time, a direct US

attack on one of their own NATO allies

in Greenland could end up crashing any

idea of the US security umbrella even

existing for anyone at all. Possibly

worst of all, the British can also

choose to suspend their cooperation with

the US military on Diego Garcia, one of

America's most critical air bases for

projecting power into the Indo-acific

region that is now on the territory of

Maitius that is leased to the UK, who

then allows the US military to operate

on the island. Threatening the closure

of the Diego Garcia base to the

Americans is probably the most critical

point of military leverage that the

British could apply on the Americans in

response to a Greenland invasion.

Another way that the Europeans could

respond would be through economic

retaliation. Blanket tariffs against all

American imports would be difficult for

most to stomach because all of the major

European economies are much more reliant

on trade with the US than the US is on

them. 17% of UK exports go towards the

US while only 4% of US exports go in the

opposite direction. While similarly 10%

of German exports go towards the US

while only 4% of US exports go to

Germany. Not to mention that after

Europe worked to cut out Russia from

their oil and gas supply after the

Ukraine invasion, they significantly

increase their oil and gas imports from

America instead to compensate. Now if

they cut out the US from their oil and

gas supply just like they did with the

Russians before them, who else will they

have to turn to next? Rather than

issuing blanket tariffs on all incoming

American goods that could risk

retaliatory American tariffs taking

their own more significant exports to

the US market, Europe would likely

attempt to surgically target America's

tech industry as much as possible

instead, which is probably America's

biggest pain point and the least harmful

option that the Europeans could take to

themselves. Europe could roll out fines

or even bans against big American tech

firms like Meta, Google X, Tesla, and

Apple, blocking them from being able to

operate in Europe so long as Greenland

remains occupied and no doubt crashing

their stock prices in the process, which

would also send the tech heavy US stock

market plummeting. Even more

threatening, the EU could opt for the

technological nuclear option and

restrict America's access to the ASML

company's ultra advanced

photoiththography machines. the only

ultra complex machines in the world that

are capable of manufacturing the world's

most advanced microchips. Cutting out or

restricting the US from ASML's machines

would make it impossible for the US to

build the most advanced chips that it

needs for just about everything, which

of course would be catastrophic.

However, the US would likely retaliate

to this nuclear option with an

equivalent nuclear retaliation and

restrict Europe's access to the ship

designs from leading American companies

like Nvidia and AMD. ASML itself also

relies on acquiring a lot of parts for

their machines from multiple US

companies like Cyber who provides ASML

with their most advanced light sources.

This US retaliation would effectively

prevent ASML from being able to build

any of their machines in the first place

which would basically end up resulting

in the crashing of the economies and

technologies on both sides of the

Atlantic. So, it's unclear if any of

that would actually end up happening or

not. When it comes to chip

manufacturing, the US and Europe are

probably just too deeply intertwined

with each other to ever truly decouple.

At least not for decades and at a cost

of untold amounts of treasure. Some in

the EU have also threatened another

financial nuclear weapon as a response

to a US invasion. A coordinated mass

selling off of the trillions of dollars

worth of US treasuries that the European

countries collectively hold. Doing so

would, at least in the short term,

significantly damage the US economy by

skyrocketing interest rates, which would

spill over into jacking up mortgage

rates, spiking borrowing costs, and

increasing the interest payments that

the US government has to make on

servicing his national debt. Over time,

however, other buyers would ultimately

absorb the bonds. It might end up taking

a while, but they would probably become

absorbed eventually by other wealthy

countries who don't really care about

Greenland, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

And over the long term, the US would

most likely end up stabilizing itself.

The EU probably wouldn't take this

option because it would be the

definition of cutting off one's nose in

order to spite their face because it

would probably be a lot worse for Europe

than it would be for the United States.

By mass selling off all of their US

treasuries at once, about $8 trillion

worth of them across Europe and the UK,

they would be driving down the price of

trillions of dollars worth of assets

that they themselves own and would be

selling into a rapidly collapsing

market, significantly damaging all of

their own national reserves in the

process. In the end, it's an option that

would probably cost the European

countries lighting around $2 trillion

worth of their own national reserves on

fire to spite the US over Greenland. And

so, would they really feel like burning

that much of their own money into the

ether just for the sake of Greenland?

Probably not. And that's why this option

isn't a very realistic one. Just like

some of the other major economic threats

like restricting ASML, these options are

financially mutually assured destruction

and will devastate the European

economies probably even more severely

than the American economy.

Realistically, the worst economic

retaliation that the Europeans would

probably end up taking would be

targeting the American big tech firms

because that's the option that a

significantly lower risks for major

blowback. Canada, meanwhile, would face

a cataclysmic strategic disaster by the

US takeover of Greenland. With Greenland

occupied and controlled, the US would

manage to completely encircle Canada on

all possible sides from the south, east,

and west, with the North blocking Canada

in by the frozen Arctic. An American

controlled Greenland would effectively

block Canada's connection to the

remaining allies in Europe and lock in

their strategic isolation, surrounded by

the US. An incredibly alarming position

to be in with an American president who

routinely threatens to annex Canada.

After the president sat by a US invasion

and seizure of Greenland and the new

strategic reality of becoming surrounded

by an openly hostile America, Canada

would have no remaining choice but to

take its defense and sovereignty

incredibly and deathly seriously. What

has been a peaceful and stable border

for more than two centuries would

overnight transform into an increasingly

militarized border resembling the EU's

frontiers with Russia. And most

disastrously of all, Canada would be

left with no other choice than to rush

towards building a nuclear bomb as a

final guarantee of their deterrence and

sovereignty. North America would

overnight become transformed into a

deeply unstable and uncertain place.

while relations between America and

Canada would be wrecked for at least a

generation or longer, just like they

would be with Europe. And all of these

dire earthshattering consequences,

collapsing America's most strategic

alliances with NATO states in Europe and

Canada and ruining any chance of these

allies cooperating in the Arctic and

other regions over an island that is a

very questionable value to the US owning

and controlling instead of Denmark.

Under current treaties between the US

and Denmark, the US is already legally

allowed to position however many troops

they want on Greenland and perform just

about any military operations they want

to there. Trump has repeatedly lambasted

Denmark for neglecting Greenland

security and risking it being overrun by

the Russians or the Chinese, but his

criticisms ignores that the US

themselves have done the exact same

thing in Greenland. Once upon a time

back during the Cold War, the US had a

massive 10,000 of their troops deployed

to Pufik Space Base in the north of the

island, which back then was known as

Thuli Air Base. But after the Cold War

ended, the US steadily winded down their

operations at the base and across

Greenland to the point where today only

a few hundred US troops still remain

deployed there. Some of the Trump

administration have hailed Greenland's

potential as a treasure trove of rare

earth materials waiting to be seized.

This ignores, however, that Denmark

already allows American mining companies

to operate in Greenland if they wish,

and they've repeatedly denied the entry

of Chinese companies to the island under

direct US pressure. Moreover, not a

single American mining company has yet

expressed any actual interest in mining

in Greenland at all. because of the cost

of mining. The materials on an island

with almost zero infrastructure that are

also buried beneath miles of ice sheet

that covers 80% of the island are

considered to be astronomical. The rare

earths indeed exist on Greenland. But

being able to actually recover them in a

way that's considered economical is very

uncertain, at least not for another

century or two until the ice sheet melts

a bit further. Trump's purported

concerns about Russian and Chinese

submarines operating freely in the

Arctic is somewhat based in truth. Just

in December of 2025, a Chinese submarine

operating in the Arctic successfully

journeyed beneath the ocean's ice sheet

for the first time. A major new threat

for Washington to be concerned about

during a potential conflict with China.

But notably, the biggest threat to

America in the Arctic isn't seemingly

coming from the direction of Greenland

at all, but from the direction of Alaska

instead. Between 2020 and 2025, NORAD

has counted a total of 95 different

Russian and Chinese incursions into the

American and Canadian air defense

identification zones. Out of those, not

a single one of them took place from the

direction of Greenland. directly from

the north beyond Canada. There were only

four reported incursions, while the

overwhelming majority, 91 out of 95 of

them, took place from the west around

Alaska. Russia and China are actively

probing the defenses of North America

around Alaska and have never once in the

past 5 years probed them around

Greenland. And when you actually look at

the geography of this part of the world,

it starts to make sense why. The Bearing

Strait, the only entrance into the

Arctic from the Pacific side, is much

closer to China than Greenland is. If

China was going to deploy submarines

armed with conventional or nuclear

missiles into the Arctic to threaten

America with, the most likely and

quickest path that they would take would

be through the Bearing Straight. While

America's defenses around this straight

are also extremely low. The nearest deep

water harbor to the Bearing Strait that

the Americans currently control is

located at Dutch Harbor, more than 700

nautical miles away from it. During an

incident in 2022 when a Chinese Russian

patrol entered into the US EEZ nearby,

all the US could muster as a response

was just a single small coast guard

cutter to monitor them. The primary US

and Canadian air bases in the Arctic

region are deep within their interiors

and far away from the coasts. In order

to intercept and monitor incoming

Russian and Chinese aircraft around

Alaska, US and Canadian fighters usually

have to fly for more than 1,500 nautical

miles and have to be refueled repeatedly

while flying in the air. Like during

another incident as recently as 2024

when a joint Chinese Russian strategic

bomber patrol came within just 140

nautical miles of Alaskan territory. So

rather than focusing on Greenland to

enhance national security, the US should

in reality be focusing on what they

already control in Alaska instead, where

the threats appear to be far more acute

and the local geography far more

strategic. Once upon a time during the

Cold War, the US operated and maintained

a massive military base on this speck of

an island in the Illutian Island chain

called Adac. Back then, more than 6,000

US troops were deployed to the base on

ADAK, which was used as a strategically

located listening post for tracking

Soviet submarines. But after the Cold

War ended, the base was steadily shut

down throughout the 1990s, and it has

been largely left behind to the

elements. What was once a sprawling base

home to 6,000 soldiers and their

families, has shrunk down to only a

couple of dozen people still remaining

on the island today in the 2020s. But

ADAC could and should become a renewed

vital interest to the US again today in

the new modern world. ADEX sits at the

strategic gateway to the Arctic,

guarding the approach to the Bearing

Strait, and flanking both Russia and

China. Even in its current state of

disrepair after decades of neglect, the

old base at ADAX still includes a deep

water harbor, fuel storage sites, and

two runways, while also being positioned

about a thousand nautical miles closer

to Taiwan than America's other major

bases are in continental Alaska.

Rebuilding and restaffing the old base

on ADAK to its full potential would

address America's security concerns in

the Arctic in ways that nothing on

Greenland ever could. Because ADAX

geography is more strategic to the US in

the event of a conflict with China or

Russia than even Greenland is.

Greenland, of course, is important as

well. But again, America can already

position as many troops as it wants on

Greenland and do whatever it wants on

the island under currently existing

treaties. Greenland is important to the

United States from a security

perspective, but there's no practical

difference between Denmark owning

Greenland versus America owning

Greenland on that specific point. While

Greenland is also largely useless from

an economic perspective for at least

another century or two, recent polls

have shown that only 7% of Americans

actually support using military force to

seize Greenland from Denmark. And the

island is simply not worth all of the

enormous cost that would be incurred by

taking it. By doing so, America would be

choosing a frozen, sparssely populated

island over its own continental alliance

system in Europe and Canada that has

formed the backbone of international

stability in the North Atlantic region

for generations now. And that is why

actually invading Greenland would almost

certainly become one of the greatest

foreign policy blunders in all of

American history, at least since the

Vietnam War, and possibly even further

back. Now, there's a lot of data that

goes into producing these kinds of

videos. Whether it's visually showing

you the scale and location of

Greenland's population pattern,

detailing out where Russian and Chinese

aircraft have incurred on American and

Canadian airspace, or showing you how

large the island of Greenland is when

compared to the Eastern time zone of the

United States, the ability to actually

visualize raw data like this on the map

instead of just reading about it in text

format is exactly what makes learning

about these kinds of complicated

geopolitical subjects so incredibly

fascinating to me. And it's why the

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