THE Europeans appear bewildered. After they — for instance in the stance of Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz — attempted to justify the illegal and unprovoked US war of aggression against Venezuela as well as the violent abduction of President Nicolas Maduro with the assessment that “the legal classification of the US operation is complex,” US President Donald Trump is now pushing to detach Greenland from the Danish state association and annex it next.

In any case, the EU’s covert complicity with the US proves useless if it was actually supposed to provide protection from this very US.

As in the case of Venezuela, the US makes hardly any effort to present convincing justifications for an intervention. The rationales for the violations of international law stand on clay feet. Thus, even in the trial against Maduro in the US, the accusation that he is a member of a drug cartel is already being relativised. And Trump’s claim that Russian and Chinese ships are currently everywhere in Greenland and that the island is therefore needed for national security does not even bother with facts.

As in Venezuela, ultimately the exclusive securing of raw materials stands in the foreground; Greenland’s offers for talks on this as well as the geopolitical securing of a future Arctic front against Russia and China change nothing about that.

Plans for a ‘free association’ instead of direct occupation

Anyone who primarily thinks of military occupation in the event of possible US control of Greenland may be mistaken. The British Economist reports on considerations by the Trump administration to conclude agreements with the island comparable to those with the Pacific states of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau.

There, Washington receives extensive decision-making powers in security and defence matters in exchange for financial support. Formally, these states remain independent, yet through the agreements they are closely tied to the US. Such an association agreement with Greenland would additionally offer the US the advantage of distancing the island from Denmark.

Already through an agreement from 1951, the US is contractually permitted to station an unlimited number of troops in Greenland. Currently, there is only one active US military base in the north of the island.

Whichever path the Trump administration takes, it is determined to resolve the matter promptly. In the background stands the new strategic orientation of the US to control the western hemisphere — that is, the entire American continent, to which Greenland also belongs — and to use it as a basis for renewing global US hegemony.

The goal is not a division of the world into exclusive spheres of influence in which Russia and China could act accordingly in their surroundings, but rather the creation of a platform from which the US can renew its imperialism in order to take up the conflict with Russia, but above all with its main rival China.

As with all human endeavours, however, the question arises whether the intention will succeed or whether the opposite of what is desired might not occur.

Consequences in Venezuela and the unmasking of international law

Although the US has reportedly killed at least 80 people in Venezuela and abducted the president, they do not yet control the oil. While Maduro faces an operetta-like and Kafkaesque trial in New York — the public humiliation of the defendant alone speaks for a show trial — his deputy Delcy Rodriguez, a convinced Chavista, has been sworn in as acting president. Rodriguez presents herself as co-operative but does not want to give US oil companies like ExxonMobil carte blanche, as Trump demands.

Trade with China and Russia is also not restricted from the Venezuelan side. On the contrary, a closer alliance with the Brics states now seems more attractive for Venezuela in order to defend itself against the impositions from Washington and the plan to have the country governed by the US.

Moreover, the US has demonstrated that international law no longer applies to them. In doing so, they have given the international legal order valid since 1945 a first-class burial. Washington de facto invokes the law of the stronger with the claim to create order worldwide, thereby simultaneously unmasking Western hegemony.

Even democracy and human rights are no longer even invoked as an alibi for legitimising interventions. The legitimacy gap seems above all to unsettle EU leaders like Kaja Kallas and Ursula von der Leyen, who practise abstract commitments to international law.

Strengthening counter-forces and Europe’s role as bystander

The rapid sequence of events — that Greenland now follows Venezuela — raises the question of whether such a system of threat does not unintentionally strengthen the counter-forces and make trade relations, for example with China, more attractive in the region, since one need not fear raids by the trading partner there.

Ultimately, the US strengthens the counter-powers with its reckless approach — comparable to an empire that does not want to leave the world stage voluntarily but at least wants to stage a spectacular exit for itself.

The Europeans, on the other hand, remain spectators of world history. Berlin, Brussels, Paris and London have tied themselves to those who want to push them against Russia into the front line of a hopeless war without being directly attacked themselves; here one should also think of the terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines as well as their prehistory, in which various US administrations declared they would do everything to prevent the construction or operation of these gas pipelines.

While parts of the global South attempt to seize the opportunity to emancipate themselves from the US and adopt a neutral position, the Europeans content themselves with the geostrategic role as the US’s bridgehead in Eurasia. This includes not only the stationing of up to 100,000 US soldiers in Europe and the US plans to station missiles in Germany in 2026 that could take out Russian command centres, but also the increasing dominance of major European companies by US investment funds like BlackRock as well as the decades-long shaping of transatlantic elites in politics, economy, and media.

Out of Nato

Anyone who wants to set a signal for their own democratic sovereignty must now demand the withdrawal of US troops and the closure of US bases. Nato, which represents neither a community of values nor a defence alliance but helps secure US hegemony in Europe, must be left if one still wants to preserve a remnant of self-respect.

Yet how much rule rests on hegemonic armoured violence was shown in the joint statement by the heads of state and government of France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Britain and Denmark on Greenland. There, reference is made to the protection of Greenland by noting that Nato has already made the Arctic a priority and wants to intensify this, and that both the US and Denmark are members of Nato, in order indirectly to reject the US claims.

And Polish Prime Minister Tusk added emphatically: “No member should attack or threaten another member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Otherwise, Nato would lose its meaning…”

A grotesque error by the Europeans. The Nato treaty — according to the official fiction — protects the alliance territory, but not the member states from each other; Greece and Turkey have already had to experience this in their conflicts. Should US troops be deployed to Greenland in larger numbers, no-one will intervene.

The approximately 60 Danish soldiers including the liaison officer at the US military base in Greenland and the around 70 Danish police officers would certainly be ill-advised to get the idea of offering resistance. In any case, the Europeans will do nothing, just as with Venezuela, and perhaps even drink the cocoa through which they are being dragged.

Sevim Dagdelen is a former member of the Bundestag.