Angst about Trump's Greenland threat

I am not going to lie, I feel a certain schadenfreude at Donald Trump’s threats to “acquire” Greenland against the wishes of Europe.

- Kweku Ampiah

Trump’s comments, widely dismissed in Europe as absurd or dangerously unserious, nevertheless touched a raw nerve.

Greenland is not just a vast Arctic landmass rich in strategic minerals and shipping routes; it is also a symbol of European sovereignty, embedded within the Danish realm and protected by a dense web of alliances, treaties and international norms.

Reports that France, alongside other European states, has sent troops to Denmark in a show of solidarity underline the depth of unease provoked by even rhetorical challenges to territorial integrity in Europe.

Trump has identified eight European countries opposing US influence over Greenland and warned that they could face a 10% tariff for their stance.

What merits attention, however, is not simply Trump’s brazenness but the shock with which European elites have reacted.

The schadenfreude I feel stems precisely from this reaction. France and Britain, in particular, have behaved no differently toward African countries since the 1960s, when those countries euphemistically became ‘independent.’

For decades, Western powers have assumed an enduring right to intervene politically, economically and militarily in African states, whether to engineer regime change or to keep compliant governments in power.

These interventions have often been justified in the language of stability, development, or humanitarian concern, while masking the pursuit of strategic and commercial interests.

Trump’s threats toward Greenland differ mainly in style rather than substance: they are loud, crude and unapologetic, stripped of the Obamaesque liberal cadence that has traditionally softened similar exercises of power.

This asymmetry in perception reveals a deeper problem in the global order. When coercion is directed outward from the West toward the Global South it is normalised, bureaucratised and framed as responsible governance.