Why Europe’s far right has split with Trump over Greenland
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- Several prominent right-wing leaders say Trump’s aggressive posture toward Greenland amounted to a bridge too far.
- The rupture could jeopardize the Trump administration’s stated goal of a more conservative Europe.
NUUK, Greenland — One year ago, days before Donald Trump reclaimed power, the head of Denmark’s People’s Party took a trip to Mar-a-Lago. Morten Messerschmidt thought he and Trump shared a common view on the perils of European integration. Together, he told local media at the time, they could make the West great again.
In Europe, just as in the United States, Messerschmidt thought it was “nationale suverænitet” — national sovereignty — that over centuries had given countries large and small the tools to build their culture, traditions and institutions. Those were the values that conservative movements across the European continent are fighting to protect.
But Messerschmidt now finds himself on the defensive. The far-right politician is suddenly distancing himself from an American president who, off and on over the last year, has made aggressive plays to annex Greenland, targeting Danish borders that have existed for roughly 300 years.
Trump pulled back from military threats against the island this week. “It’s total access — there’s no end,” he said in an interview on Thursday with Fox Business. Asked whether he still intended on acquiring the island, Trump replied, “It’s possible. Anything is possible.”
Despite Trump’s fixation on Greenland since his first term, he declined to meet with Messerschmidt at Mar-a-Lago last January. Instead, the Danish politician found himself discussing the matter with Marla Maples, the president’s ex-wife.
“Portraying me as someone who serves a cause other than Denmark, and who would sympathize with threats to our kingdom, is unhealthy,” Messerschmidt wrote on Facebook last weekend. “It is slander.”
In his Davos speech focused largely on the fate of Greenland, Trump made no mention of the residents whose lives have been consumed by confusion and concern over his designs.
The Danish People’s Party is one of many far-right groups across Europe, aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement in their fervent opposition to immigration and related issues, suddenly in rebellion against an administration it once thought of as an ideological ally.
The president’s moves are now compelling them to reconcile their alliance with Trump with a core tenet on the political right, that nationalism is largely defined by people and place over historic stretches of time — or as Trump often said on the campaign trail, “without a border, you don’t have a country.”
“Donald Trump has violated a fundamental campaign promise — namely, not to interfere in other countries,” Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany Party, or AfD, said in Berlin. Her colleague added: “It is clear that Wild West methods must be rejected.”
The rupture could jeopardize the Trump administration’s own stated goals for a future Europe that is more conservative and aligned with the Republican Party — a plan that relied on boosting the very same parties now questioning their ties to the president.
In its national security strategy, published in November, the White House said it would “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” hoping to restore “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
And it is not clear whether the president’s decision to walk back his most aggressive threats is enough to contain the diplomatic damage. “The process of getting to this agreement has clearly damaged trust amongst allies,” Rishi Sunak, former prime minister of the United Kingdom and leader of its Conservative Party, told Bloomberg on Thursday.
Trump’s pressure campaign urging Ukraine to accept borders redrawn by a revanchist Russia had already strained relations between his inner circle and Europe’s far-right movements. But several prominent right-wing leaders say his aggressive posture toward Greenland amounted to a bridge too far.
On Wednesday in Switzerland, addressing growing concerns over the plan, Trump still left threats lingering in the air, warning European leaders that he would “remember” if they blocked a U.S. takeover.
“Friends can disagree in private, and that’s fine — that’s part of life, part of politics,” Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK party in Britain and a longtime Trump ally, told House Speaker Mike Johnson in London earlier this week. “But to have a U.S. president threatening tariffs unless we agree that he can take over Greenland by some means, without it seeming to even get the consent of the people of Greenland — I mean, this is a very hostile act.”
The developments followed weeks of escalating threats from Trump to control Greenland by any means necessary — including by force, if left with no other choice.
In France, the head of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, National Rally, said the United States had presented Europe “with a choice: Accept dependency disguised as partnership or act as sovereign powers capable of defending our interests.”
With overseas territories across the Pacific, Caribbean and Indian oceans, France has the second-largest maritime exclusive economic zone in the world after the United States. If Trump can seize Greenland by force, what is stopping him, or any other great power, from conquering France’s islands?
“When a U.S. president threatens a European territory while using trade pressure, it is not dialogue — it is coercion. And our credibility is at stake,” said the party’s young leader, Jordan Bardella.
“Greenland has become a strategic pivot in a world returning to imperial logic,” he added. “Yielding today would set a dangerous precedent.”
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