By Ben Emos & Don Terry | Friday, January 16, 2026 | 5 min read
Donald Trump isn’t about to launch an assault on Greenland, but the shockwaves from his remarks are already testing America’s relationships abroad. That reality hit me during a quiet exchange with a neighbor—one of those unplanned political conversations that don’t unfold in think tanks or diplomatic corridors, but in the ordinary places where people try to make sense of a chaotic world. What started as a casual chat in the backyard became a reminder of how far these geopolitical tremors travel.
My neighbor, a Dane, voiced a question that’s been circulating on both sides of the Atlantic: Could Trump actually attack Greenland? I told him no. Not because the language coming out of Washington has been reassuring—it hasn’t—but because a military strike on Greenland would cross a boundary that still holds weight, even in an era defined by unpredictability.
What struck me afterward wasn’t the question itself, but what it revealed: diplomacy has reached a point where allies are no longer just disagreeing with Washington—they’re trying to assess whether its words are anchored in reality at all.
Let’s be clear. A U.S. military attack on Greenland is extraordinarily unlikely. Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally. Any attack would risk triggering Article 5, fracture NATO from within, and set off institutional resistance across Congress, the Pentagon, the courts, financial markets, and allied capitals. Even Donald Trump, who has tested norms more aggressively than any modern president, has not crossed into direct military aggression against a treaty ally. That line, for now, still holds.
So why does the Greenland talk persist?
Because it isn’t really about invasion. It’s about performance. Trump’s fixation on Greenland fits a familiar pattern: coercive rhetoric framed as deal-making, dominance presented as strategy, and spectacle substituted for policy. The language of “taking” or “conquering” territory plays well with a domestic audience conditioned to see alliances as burdens and foreign policy as a zero-sum contest. It’s leverage theater, not a war plan.
That doesn’t make it harmless.
When I told my Danish neighbor I didn’t believe an attack would happen, I added something else—more uncomfortable, but honest. Trump’s worldview is undeniably shaped by racial and cultural hierarchies. That affects who he demonizes and who he doesn’t. It affects tone, empathy, and restraint. Denmark and Greenland don’t fit the category of populations he instinctively dehumanizes. That reality matters when assessing risk.
But race alone is not the decisive factor. Institutions are.
Trump avoids attacking Denmark not because Danes are white, but because Denmark is powerful, legally protected, and embedded in alliances that still constrain American action. Race may shape rhetoric, but institutions shape limits. That distinction is critical. Confusing the two leads to bad analysis—and worse policy.
The comparison some people make to Trump’s claims about “white genocide” in South Africa helps clarify this. That rhetoric costs nothing. It requires no action, no confrontation with allies, no legal consequences. Greenland is the opposite: real territory, real people, real treaties, and real fallout. Trump has always been far bolder with words than with irreversible acts.
Brushing off the Greenland episode as nothing more than bluster misses the deeper risk. The danger was never an American armored column heading toward Nuuk. The real concern lies in the slow erosion of trust—and in the way wealthy individuals with business interests in the Arctic managed to influence how Trump viewed the region. Former national security adviser John Bolton has said that Ronald Lauder was the one who first floated the idea to Trump.
Several reports also note that Elon Musk publicly embraced the notion of Greenland aligning with the United States. He suggested that Greenlanders would be welcomed as American citizens and later wrote on X that the island would be “most welcome” to join the U.S. if its people chose to.
If Trump were ever to take aggressive action toward Greenland, the involvement of influential figures—Ronald Lauder, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Peter Thiel, and others—would warrant serious public scrutiny. Their interests, connections, and commentary form part of the larger story about how power and wealth intersect with U.S. policy in the Arctic.
Diplomacy depends on shared facts. Allies can disagree sharply over interests, but they need to believe that statements reflect reality, not improvisation or fantasy. When American officials repeat or tolerate claims that allies privately know are false—such as exaggerated Russian or Chinese activity used to justify territorial pressure—the credibility of the United States weakens. Not dramatically. Incrementally.
That’s why Europe is responding with troop deployments and unusually blunt language. Not because they expect an invasion tomorrow, but because they are planning for a future in which American assurances can no longer be taken at face value. When allies start preparing around Washington instead of with it, something fundamental has shifted.
This is how power decays—not through conquest, but through disbelief. Not with a single lie, but with a pattern of indifference to truth. When leaders refuse to correct or constrain reckless rhetoric, it becomes normalized. And once normalized, it becomes risk.
Greenland will remain Danish. That’s not really in question. The deeper question—the one my neighbor was really asking—is whether America can still be trusted to mean what it says.
Right now, too many allies are leaving the table unsure. And that uncertainty, more than any imagined invasion, is what should worry us most.