Here Are The Potential Ramifications For NATO Of Trump’s Push To Control Greenland: Expert Weighs In

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On "Forbes Newsroom," Mike Albertus, Professor at the University of Chicago, discussed the potential consequences for NATO of President Trump's ongoing push to acquire Greenland for the U.S.

Transcript

00:00this. It does feel like a huge threat to the NATO alliance, but in his first term and in campaigning

00:07for his second, President Trump has made it clear that he's not quite a fan of NATO. What would the

00:13ramifications be? Are there specific things that you have in mind as you talk about a shift to the

00:19geopolitical world order here? Well, I think that, you know, you're right in saying that, you know,

00:25Trump is not a fan of NATO, but the United States was, of course, a critical architect of NATO and in

00:32many ways has, you know, has supported NATO materially to a quite substantial degree over the course of

00:40decades. And that underpins a lot of how we think about the strategic sort of positioning of Europe

00:47and the United States vis-a-vis other powers, particularly Russia, but also other powers more

00:53globally. And so, you know, rewiring that alliance would be just a very big departure,

00:59be a very big departure from the world order that the United States helped to create in the aftermath

01:03of World War II. And it would hark back to, I think, you know, the attempt to acquire Greenland

01:09would certainly tear NATO to shreds. And beyond that, it would yield the beginning, I think, and

01:16we're already seeing the hints of this, of a new era of territorial competition where the, you know,

01:23threats to acquire territory and actual acts to acquire territory are going to become much more

01:28common like they were in, let's say, the 1800s or the like, right? So it will become, you know,

01:34it'll be sort of a, you know, back to the future in that front.

01:37Back to the future. I saw one commentator say that an American aggressive stance towards acquiring

01:45Greenland could change the tenor of the conversation around Russia and Ukraine and China and Taiwan.

01:54Would it effectively hasten what you just described, the back to the future, if the U.S. were to

02:00aggressively acquire Greenland?

02:02I think that's definitely true. I mean, it's hard to imagine a U.S. that both aggressively

02:07acquires Greenland and that is serious about Ukraine's territorial integrity or, you know,

02:13Taiwan's sovereignty or the like. And the Trump administration has already made it, I think,

02:18crystal clear when it comes to, you know, Ukraine's position against Russia, where the United States

02:23stands. It's certainly not squarely on the Ukrainian side, as it has been for the first several years of

02:29the war. There's much more of a hands-off position and, you know, let the chips fall where they may

02:36to a considerable degree, right? You know, the same is true. I think, you know, China would,

02:42I don't see how they could read those sorts of activities in a different way other than that the

02:47United States is not, is attempting to, you know, project its authority in ways that are consequential

02:53for other global powers and that it doesn't, you know, is not so interested in protecting, you know,

02:58smaller states, smaller powers, you know, and that Taiwan included in that list.

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