Over the last several weeks, tensions over the future of Greenland have raised the risk of a military confrontation between the United States and its NATO allies, even as all sides say they hope to avoid war. Earlier this month, several European NATO members sent small military contingents to the semiautonomous Danish territory for what they describe as a reconnaissance and joint exercise mission, which senior French diplomat Olivier Poivre d’Arvor characterized as a “first exercise” meant to signal that “NATO is present” in response to US takeover threats.

These European deployments to and around the Greenlandic capital of Nuuk (population roughly 20,000) followed a January 14 White House meeting between US vice president J. D. Vance and the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark, after which Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said there remained a “fundamental disagreement” with the Trump administration over the territory’s status and rejected any US acquisition of Greenland as “totally unacceptable.”

One might imagine that the Trump administration — already busy overseeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s invasion of the Twin Cities, tightening its grip on Venezuela’s oil reserves, and rattling sabers at Iran — had more than enough on its plate at the start of 2026. Yet even after stepping back from open talk of using military force to seize Greenland, the administration has continued to press ahead with its campaign to bring the island under US control, over the objections of long-standing Western allies, a handful of Republican senators, the vast majority of Americans, and an even larger share of Greenlanders.