Much ado about nothing, or what happens when strategy leaves the facts behind?

After my retirement from NATO in 2018, I spent a few years as Professor of Strategy and Security at Exeter University. In teaching the principles of strategy to my graduate students, I always stressed the need to get the facts right first. Political leaders like to deal in bold visions of the future and grand ambitions for what they want to achieve. They prefer to stress the opportunities rather than acknowledge the risks. This is all fine and well in driving countries and societies forward. But if these visions are not followed up with detailed work on the realities that need to be confronted and the obstacles to be overcome, they usually do not go very far. It is always much better for strategies to fit the facts rather than the other way round. Therefore, effective cost versus benefit analysis is at the heart of all successful strategies.

At the same time, strategies are based on a number of assumptions about the behaviour of others and how they will react as situations evolve. Will they support or oppose the strategy and how much potential disruptive power do they have? Will a gain in one area be offset by greater losses in others? A classic problem in diplomacy and international relations is that more effort goes into the formulation and public presentation of strategy than in assessing the likely consequences and results. When strategy starts to leave the facts behind, we know we are in trouble as incoherence and contradictions pile up in rapid succession.

Donald Trump’s oft-stated desire to annex the Danish sovereign territory of Greenland, as part of his ambition to impose absolute US domination on the Western Hemisphere, provides a classic illustration of these well-known pitfalls of strategy. How is this the case?

First, let us take the US President’s claim that the US must own Greenland in order to be able to defend it. Faithful to his background as a New York property developer, Trump told his audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos that just having a temporary lease or rental agreement on a property would never make the US come to its defence. Only formal ownership permitted this. By this yardstick, the US would not defend a NATO member state despite its commitment under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty to do precisely this. This is a commitment that the US has upheld without interruption for 77 years. Despite frequent criticisms of NATO, Trump has yet to cancel or modify the Article 5 commitment and has even confirmed its continuing validity on numerous occasions (whatever the degree of trust the allies may have in US reliability if push ever comes to shove). The US also defends many other countries around the globe (such as Japan and South Korea with significant forces on their territories) and also multiple dependent territories not formally part of the US, such as Puerto Rico and the Marshall Islands. It is true that in terms of the US fighting on behalf of a NATO ally, Article 5 has never been tested. The only time it was invoked was after the September 11 terrorist attacks against New York and Washington when NATO allies came to the defence of the US, and in particular by sending troops to Afghanistan to help suppress Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

It is also true that the US only entered the two World Wars in the last century when its ‘property’ was attacked, either by Japan at Pearl Harbour in 1941 or the German submarine attacks against American shipping in the Atlantic in 1917. But in the postwar period we had the Truman Doctrine that pledged US defence of countries threatened by communism or the Carter Doctrine that committed the US to defend its oil supplies in the Middle East. It went to war over Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan without the pretension of annexing these territories or claiming any territorial concessions in return for its participation. President George H. W. Bush liberated Kuwait from the grip of Saddam Hussein without demanding Kuwaiti oil fields in exchange. The US has also stationed hundreds of thousands of troops in Europe and Asia together with thousands of tactical nuclear weapons to demonstrate its seriousness in being willing and able to fight for its allies and alliances.

With this type of forward presence, it could hardly avoid becoming embroiled in any cross-border aggression. Strategy is meant to answer questions, not open them. To clarify and confirm intentions rather than to create ambiguity and confusion. So Trump’s stance on Greenland reveals an inconsistency: is the US still committed to defending allies and interests beyond its immediate national borders or not? In terms of the workings of deterrence and global order, giving a clear answer to this question is of the utmost importance.

A second and related Trumpian assertion is that only the US can defend Greenland and so, to be defended, Greenland must agree to a US takeover. However, this argument lacks substance or consistency. The US does not need to own Greenland to station troops, ships and aircraft on the island. During the Cold War, it operated 17 military bases on Greenland with 15,000 soldiers. Under its 1951 bilateral defence treaty with Denmark, the sovereign power, the US can deploy new forces and capabilities in Greenland whenever it wishes. Yet in recent times, the Pentagon has chosen to maintain one facility, a space tracking radar at Pituffik, which occupies 150 US service personnel.

Trump evokes his Golden Dome drone and missile defence shield as a reason for needing a larger military presence in Greenland, but the US has long had early warning radars at Thule on the island and can easily upgrade these radars or add to them. When NATO was formed in 1949, Greenland was automatically incorporated into the new alliance’s area of responsibility as part of Denmark. Therefore, the US, along with other allies, has had the duty to defend Greenland for 77 years already without Washington ever informing the North Atlantic Council that it could not fulfil this commitment due to a lack of ownership.

Instead, the Pentagon has relied on other allies to help it do the job. The Pituffik space base is supplied by a Canadian ice breaker (the US has only one in its entire Coast Guard). The US has turned to Finland to build new icebreakers for the Coast Guard showing that the US military also relies on European suppliers. Area intelligence is supplied by Denmark, which deploys special forces teams with dog sleds to patrol the vast expanses of Greenland that is 80% covered by permanent ice and experiences extreme Arctic conditions. Trump mocked these teams but he didn’t explain how the US could do the job better given that none of Greenland’s settlements are connected by road.

Moreover, and despite Trump’s assertions that Greenland needs US protection, Denmark and its European allies have stepped up. Denmark has allocated $4.26bn this year to upgrading radars and military infrastructure and to holding exercises in Greenland. It is acquiring more patrol aircraft and observation drones, building additional frigates and solidifying plans to establish a military headquarters. Denmark recently held the first exercise in Greenland for many years called ‘Arctic Endurance’, which was joined by seven other European allies demonstrating the ability to reach Greenland quickly. Thus, in the hypothetical and very remote situation of a Russian incursion into Greenland, it is essentially European forces that would be contributing nearly all the rapid defence elements on current NATO planning. So far, the US has not announced any reinforcements of its own, nor sent US troops to participate in exercises like Arctic Endurance.

Having frequently stated that the US does everything for NATO and NATO nothing (or very little) for the United States, one would have thought that Trump would have welcomed this modest but still positive gesture of the European allies towards Greenland burden sharing. These are all assets that the US would need to replace and pay for itself if it takes Greenland by force. To take one example: the cost of building five more US military bases given the challenging environment is estimated to be between 20 to 30bn USD. Instead, Trump messaged that he saw the European military presence on the island as a ‘threat’ to the US (although later he backpedalled saying he had been misinformed). Trump’s rhetoric, particularly pointing to a likely Russian or Chinese attempt to seize Greenland, stands in stark contrast to his lack of appropriate action – especially when nothing prevents him from acting. Again, an infringement of the basic principles of strategy: a contingency requiring action logically receives that follow-up action.

Which brings us to the threat itself. All credible strategies must be grounded in a thorough threat assessment. If the threat is exaggerated, then so is the response. It is certainly true that the Arctic, the High North and the North Atlantic have become more important in recent years for NATO’s defence. The Russians have repurposed some of their Soviet era bases in the region and reinforced their Northern Fleet. Russian ships, submarines and strategic bombers like the Bear and Blackjack are more present in the region. Russian submarines hide under the polar ice pack.

Yet NATO has not been idle. Rotational fighter jets have returned to the Keflavik air base in Iceland, the UK and US have sent troops to Northern Norway for winter training, Denmark has concluded an agreement with the US to give the US Air Force greater access to its bases, and the Alliance has established two new regional commands in Norfolk, Virginia (for maritime operations) and in Mikkeli in Finland (for land operations). NATO has also located an increasing number of its major, combined arms exercises in its Trident Juncture series in the northern region. As during the Cold War, there is again much talk of the Greenland/Iceland/UK gap, the natural barrier between the northern and southern parts of the Atlantic that the alliance must control in order to deny the Russian fleet the possibility of disrupting the vital sea lanes of communication between North America and Europe.

The question is now Greenland’s significance to this evolving strategic picture in the High North? The immediate threat seems to be low.

Despite much speculation that the melting of the polar ice pack would led to a major increase in military and commercial shipping using the High North, Greenland does not seem to have been significantly impacted. The Danish Foreign Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, has pointed out that only one Chinese warship has docked in Greenland in the past ten years. Russian ministers also have been encouraging Trump’s acquisition of Greenland, not exactly the stance of a country that would want to occupy the territory itself. For Moscow, stirring up dissension and division in the transatlantic security relationship is clearly worth the sacrifice of some extra square kilometres of territory. Presently, Moscow sees its expansionist ambitions focusing more on Ukraine.

In truth, where the US should be worried about Russian and Chinese activity is not on the eastern side of North America, but on its western side. It is in the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska that Russian and Chinese naval and Coast Guard ships are operating. NORAD (the North American Air Defence Command) has been monitoring all this activity and reports that between 2020-2025 there were 95 Russian and Chinese intrusions into the North American air defence identification zone. Of these, 91 were around Alaska and 4 around Canada. None came from the direction of the Greenland/Iceland/UK gap. In 2024, a joint Russian-Chinese flight of nuclear armed bombers came within 140 miles of the Alaskan coastline, clearly rattling US military commanders. If the US needs a more persistent presence in the High North, Alaska seems more urgent than Greenland. It is far from clear how building up US forces in Greenland would make the US more secure in the northern Pacific. Strategy is all about redeploying forces from lower priority or imminent threats to higher priority concerns, not the other way round.

Although Trump has consistently made US national security his chief reason for wishing to acquire Greenland, he has occasionally referenced its considerable oil, gas and mineral reserves. Many believe that is his real motivation for wanting more US influence and control over the territory. After seeing the US impose one-sided oil and minerals deals on Venezuela and Ukraine, Greenlanders will naturally be wary of US drilling and extraction projects where the lion’s share of the profits flow to the US and only a modest number of jobs or new investments are created in Greenland.

An economic bonanza is also limited by the fact that Greenland is covered by thick ice and has very little inland infrastructure, making mining projects cost two to three times as much as in warmer climes. Because of transportation issues, most mining needs to take place in coastal regions with port access for ships. More mines have closed than opened in recent times. During the twentieth century, 18 mines closed down as high costs and logistical difficulties made them unprofitable. Today, Greenland has only two operating mines, one extracting gold and the other anorthosite, a component of paint and fibre. The situation with rare earths, the minerals that the Trump administration covets the most, is equally complicated and so far they have not yet been mined.

There are two international consortia working to start mining but one in south Greenland has been blocked by the Greenlandic government because of concerns that it could release uranium into the local fjords and farmland. The other plant needs to extract the rare earths from a rock called eudialyte, which makes the operation more expensive. Before they have even mined a tonne of rare earths, developing the sites has cost both consortia hundreds of millions of dollars. Just across the Labrador Sea on Canada’s Baffin Island, iron ore mining has consistently been a loss-making activity.

Greenland has ample oil reserves but the biggest field containing around $30 billion barrels is in the least accessible part of Greenland in the east. Oil majors such as Shell, Exxon Mobil and Equinor have surveyed Greenland in the past, but have not pursued investments there. All this to say: there is a big difference between finding oil, gas and minerals and producing them at an economical price. The melting of the ice pack might make drilling easier, but it would also make mine facilities more unstable. Consequently, US companies would need to invest multiples of billions of dollars to truly exploit Greenland’s mineral wealth at a time when Trump is already pressing US oil majors to stump up big sums to modernise Venezuela’s oil industry. Even with government subsidies, they might be unwilling to take the plunge. Further, an autonomous Greenland government might well apply European rather than American environmental regulations and standards, increasing the compliance costs for US companies even if they face no outside competition. The essence of strategy is to secure and protect the critical supply chains and raw materials and resources that are vital for the economy and national security. But the approach has to be realistic rather than speculative and make sense in terms of basic economics and return on investments. Especially when cheaper alternatives are available elsewhere. Strategy is never about over-promising and under-delivering.

The Trump administration has used a well-known tactic in promoting its claims to Greenland: it has blackened the reputation of the existing owner, in this case Denmark, to de-legitimise Danish rule and alienate it from the 57,000 Greenlanders, many of whom do indeed aspire to independence. Since 2009, Copenhagen has offered this perspective to Greenland. US officials have accused Denmark not just of neglecting the island’s defences but also of mistreating the Greenlanders and lacking a valid legal basis for claiming ownership of the territory. Trump has dismissed this as the result of one Viking long boat arriving in Greenland over a thousand years ago. Certainly, Denmark’s record as a colonial power is as imperfect as that of any colonial power, just as America’s treatment of its Indian and Black populations over the past 250 years has its blemishes as well. Some Trump supporters have started a social media campaign to try to undermine Danish rule while accusing Copenhagen of instrumentalising a public diplomacy campaign among Greenlanders against the US. What is incontestable is that 80% of Greenlanders do not want incorporation into the US. Yet the main argument of the US administration is that Greenlanders will be much more prosperous basking in the warm glow of all the economic growth that the US will bring their way. But again, is this contention true?

Greenlanders are heavily dependent on subsidies from Copenhagen even if fishing and a thriving tourist industry (possibly helped by all the free publicity that Trump has given Greenland in recent years) have stimulated investment and local employment. Denmark sends Greenland $700mn a year – equivalent to 20% of the island’s GDP. This makes Greenlanders among the most heavily subsidised people in the world. The government owns most of the housing stock and health care is free. About half the population works and half of that number (around 12,500) are employed by the state. Unemployment benefits come to 90% of the minimum wage. The Economist calculates that up to three quarters of the population have some form of dependency on the state. They receive on average $10,000 per capita every year. This is hardly the social model favoured in the US itself by Trump and his Republican colleagues who have slashed government jobs and fired thousands of civil servants, shuttering whole government agencies in the process.

The Republican controlled Congress has also cut benefits under Medicaid and is pursuing a heavy deregulation agenda. This is in sharp contradiction to the European welfare model under which the Greenlanders live, and undoubtedly one reason why US ownership is repellent to most Greenlanders. The type of economic activity that Trump favours, notably mining, will draw in foreign specialist labour and is not a driver of large-scale local employment. Good strategy relies as much on soft power (or ‘smart power’ as the late Joseph Nye of Harvard famously described it) as it does on leverage and hard power. Attraction is always more compelling as a means of getting one’s way than coercion and the use of force. It tends to be more long-lasting, easier to maintain and far cheaper for a great power seeking to expand its influence. But soft power works only if it comes across as sincere and credible and part of a long-term commitment in which benefits are evenly shared and smaller actors have a voice. The efforts of some Trump officials to outbid Denmark by offering Greenlanders a one-off payment of $100,000 strikes many as a bribe rather than a serious concern for their future well-being and development as a distinct cultural community.

Finally, good strategy seeks to promote a national or corporate objective without needlessly provoking opposition and backlash. Of course, as the science of physics teaches us, all action produces a reaction. But good strategy anticipates that and tries to pre-empt it or at least work around it so that valuable time and effort do not need to be diverted to overcoming that opposition. In short, good strategy tries to limit the extent and duration of the resulting shockwaves – but here the Trump Greenland strategy has committed all the classic errors.

First, by adopting a maximalist approach to achieving the US goal – more security in the Arctic – and rejecting (for a long time at least) all the more rational and easier-to-implement alternatives. This intransigence and refusal to rule out a military invasion were bound to build up Danish resistance and increase support for Denmark in Europe, including the UK and Norway. But the policy also proved unpopular among Americans, many of whom were just as flummoxed by Trump’s apparent obsession with Greenland as their European and Canadian counterparts. This was true even among Republicans, with unrest in the Republican ranks in Congress and some Republicans joining a Congressional delegation visiting Copenhagen to engage with the Danish Prime Minister and her government. The MAGA base was also uneasy, seeing Greenland as a distraction from the cost-of-living issues in the US that they want the President to focus on ahead of the mid-term elections in November.

Whereas some of Trump’s foreign initiatives have proved popular, such as reducing migration from Latin America or seizing Nicolas Maduro from his residence in Caracas, Greenland appeared largely disconnected from the day-to-day concerns of the average American voter. Trump normally has a good sense of shifting public opinion trends particularly within his base but this time his touch deserted him. Greenland may resonate with the ideologues in his administration and a handful of diehard MAGA supporters in Congress but it does not resonate with the heartland, probably one of the reasons that caused the President to U-turn and de-escalate in Davos.

Yet the biggest violation of the principles of good strategy occurred when the President announced that he was imposing a 10% extra tariff on Denmark and the seven other European allies that had sent troops to Greenland for the exercise and general reconnaissance. He threatened to increase the tariff to 25% if Greenland was not handed over by the beginning of summer. Asking for the impossible is never a good idea, nor escalating needlessly when there is no prospect of a concrete gain. At the same time, Trump was unable to provide an argument as to how this sudden move would advance the policy issue in question. Why not sanction just Denmark, the sovereign power and the one that decides, rather than other allies who were simply abiding by their NATO commitments, including to the US? Or alternatively, all the EU which had manifested its solidarity with its fellow member state, Denmark (albeit some more robustly than others)? Or Canada as well into the bargain? As these European allies had firmly upheld the principle of sovereignty and international law, it was far from clear how extra tariffs could suddenly make Denmark cave in given the reactions of Danish and European public opinion and political parties across the board, even on the populist right (which loves sovereignty above all else).

The tariff announcement also pushed Europe in a different, much tougher direction vis-à-vis the US. The EU discussed countermeasures against Washington, dusting down a €90bn package of targeted tariffs which had been drawn up as a potential retaliation during the previous round of US tariffs last summer. The aim was to hit producers in Republican controlled states first and foremost. President Macron suggested going a step further and invoking the EU “Big Bazooka”, the Anti-Coercion Instrument that would allow the EU to take measures against US banks operating in Europe, US tech companies or US investments and holdings. Some EU officials suggested restricting US use of its European military bases or radar stations. The EU bared its teeth and showed that it was finally learning the language of power. Even the normally Atlanticist British condemned the Trump tariffs and the unacceptable pressure on Greenland and Denmark in unusually robust statements.

Of course, had the countermeasures gone ahead, Trump could have responded in a manner that really would have hurt Europe. By withdrawing US forces from Europe or suspending the application of NATO’s Article 5 treaty clause. Trump could have imposed EU wide additional tariffs, stopped intelligence sharing and refused all further help to Ukraine. But in a globalised world, it is impossible to hurt others without hurting yourself as well.

In a single day, the Wall Street S&P trading index fell by 900 points, showing again the power of the markets to rein in the President on economic policy. Republicans were clearly unhappy about the new tariff threat and did not see how an all-out US-EU trade war could possibly serve US interests. For the first time since Trump’s return to office, some even began to speak out. US business leaders meeting in Davos were not cheerleading for more tariffs and trade and services restrictions either. So despite anti-European rhetoric in Davos from some Administration cabinet members, like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, when Trump showed up and gave his speech, he sought to defuse the very Greenland crisis he had created by promising not to use force against the Danish territory. He also rescinded the new 10% tariff on the eight European allies. Trump being his usual self, the climb-down was partially disguised by insults against the European allies in multiple directions as well as the US President still claiming to want to acquire Greenland eventually.

Later, after meeting the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, Trump announced that the two had agreed to a framework for the US and its allies to come up with an integrated approach to increasing their presence in Greenland and the Arctic more widely. The details still need to be fleshed out and no doubt the new military plan will be a key deliverable at the next NATO Summit in Ankara in July. But this was the solution that the allies had been proposing to Trump for months which he had hitherto ignored.

In the final analysis, the US stoked a massive transatlantic crisis in which the future of NATO was seriously at stake, and which has shattered any remaining European confidence in US reliability only to return to the status quo ante. At least for now – the mercurial US President can turn up the pressure valve at any time.

Yet from the European perspective, where a problem cannot be resolved satisfactorily in the foreseeable future, playing for time and winning time are at the heart of effective strategy. Time allows for adjustment, to reduce dependencies and vulnerabilities, to improve the arsenal of potential countermeasures, to get more allies and partners on board, and for diplomacy to find compromises and work arounds. Europeans will now no doubt accelerate their push towards more strategic autonomy, stronger defence and building stronger relationships with mid-sized powers as Canadian Premier Mark Carney advocated in Davos. What, on the other hand, did the US achieve?

The assertion of raw power not necessitated by any real crisis or military urgency seemed capricious. It isolated the US when the aim of successful strategy is to win friends and supporters. It is one thing to make implacable enemies even more implacable but another thing to alienate traditionally loyal allies who have fought alongside you on many past occasions. The more Trump laboured to find a solution, the less analysis showed there was a problem. In this situation, the best that can usually be achieved is a small gain for a much larger loss. The Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, was fond of saying that “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”. But bad strategy is breaking the eggs only to discover that you can’t cook the omelette.

If I were still a Professor at Exeter, I would certainly use Greenland as an illuminating case study in my graduate class on strategy. Yet much more importantly for the transatlantic security relationship is what happens when key international actors lose their capacity for proper professional strategic planning. This requires the ability of officials to speak truth to power without being demoted or fired. The State Department used to have a special channel whereby US diplomats disagreeing with a given policy could state their concerns directly to top management without being penalised.

Now the National Security Council that normally does the policy coordination work in Washington has been eviscerated. The National Security Advisor is doubling up as Secretary of State. Experts who understand the weight of facts and knowledge have been fired or sidelined. The academic and thinktank community (apart from some ideologically-aligned institutes) are not consulted. Trump likes quick oral conversations with loyalists and old friends rather than detailed intelligence reports and open policy discussions among experienced Principals. No ‘team of rivals’ in his cabinet to play the Red Team, rehearse Plan B and challenge the President and his political allies intellectually. No one to formulate valid and worthwhile objectives backed up by rational and intelligent means.

The President is proud of the fact that he likes to be unpredictable to keep everyone guessing and only makes up his mind at the last minute. This incapacity of the world’s foremost military and economic power to do professional and rigorous strategic planning must be worrying for the rest of the world, but especially America’s allies.

Yet there is one small consolation. As the EU embarks on its new Global Strategy during the current Cyprus Presidency to adapt to a more confrontational environment and the fragmentation of old alliances and partnerships, at least it can look to the US for inspiration on how not to do the job.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.