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Guest Essay

Jan. 19, 2026, 1:00 a.m. ET

The U.S. consulate in Nuuk, Greenland.Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

When I took my post as secretary general of the Council of Europe just over a year ago, I did not think that I would ever have to write about the possibility of the United States taking military action against a member state.

Yet here we are.

President Trump has vowed to make Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, which is a member of the Council of Europe and a founding member of NATO — part of the United States, and that he will do so “the easy way” or “the hard way.”

His statements about the territory have strained relations between states and called into question the rights, consent and democratic choices of Greenland’s people. For now, this remains talk. But recent events in Venezuela show how quickly words can harden into action.

Mr. Trump has also said* *that he is constrained only by his “own morality,” not international law, brushing aside the legal order established in the aftermath of World War II.

The Council of Europe, with its 46 member states, including non-E.U. countries like Britain and Turkey, was born out of that war. It was founded on the idea that law, not raw power, must guarantee the dignity and rights of individuals and the sovereign equality of states. When a major power central to the creation of the postwar legal order openly questions the necessity of international law, it shakes the foundations we’ve worked for decades to reinforce.

Democracy, multilateralism and accountability once defined the postwar order. These words are increasingly dismissed as elitist, woke or dead. We need to ask ourselves, on both sides of the Atlantic, if we want to live in a world where democracy is recast as weakness, truth as opinion and justice as an option.

Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, accompanied by extensive Greenlandic self-government, is settled law. It rests on the inviolability of the territorial integrity of Denmark under international law. Its purpose is to guarantee stability and legality while preserving, not constraining, Greenland’s democratic right to shape its own future.

The Trump administration’s main argument for acquiring Greenland rests on legitimate national security concerns. But the United States already maintains military capabilities in Greenland at Pituffik Space Base and, under existing agreements, could expand cooperation significantly without threatening Danish sovereignty or seeking approval from either Copenhagen or Nuuk, and without any transfer of territory.

This suggests that something else is at work.

We are witnessing the return of an old strategic reflex: a Cold War mind-set in which geography is treated as destiny and influence as zero-sum, and independence is seen as a strategic risk rather than a democratic choice. The fear is that an independent Greenland might one day drift toward Russia’s or China’s orbit, placing their weapons at America’s doorstep. It would be an Arctic repeat of the Bay of Pigs.

This is the logic of spheres of influence, an echo of the Monroe Doctrine, now visible in legislation proposed last week by a member of Congress that frames Greenland’s annexation in national security terms tied to China and Russia. The same logic is reflected in the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy, released in December, which makes America’s sovereignty and strategic interests a priority over multilateral norms and collective security.

Europe must act to protect its legal framework, and the Council of Europe is ready to play its part. The right of peoples to determine their own future, the protection of international law, and accountability for violations of sovereign rights are the foundation of our security and our values.

In moments of crisis, Europe often speaks through national capitals rather than in a single political voice, as the recent joint statement by several E.U. member states on Greenland illustrates. This is a political reality that highlights why legal institutions with a collective mandate matter. The Council of Europe’s work on accountability mechanisms for Ukraine, including the Register of Damage and the International Claims Commission, shows that law can still structure international action at a time of political fragmentation.

The same approach applies in the Arctic. The Council of Europe stands ready to support Denmark and Greenland through concrete legal and institutional cooperation. If Europe fails to articulate a legal and political vision, others will fill the vacuum, shifting security from law to strategic leverage.

What’s at stake is not only Greenland’s sovereignty, but also trust. Alliances rest on predictability and on the expectation that power, especially allied power, remains bound by law. If international law can be set aside when it becomes inconvenient, trust is gone. If strategic calculations lead to a disregard for sovereignty in Greenland, how will Europe continue to believe in U.S. commitments elsewhere?

When Europe insists on sovereignty and accountability, it is not posturing. It is defending what makes both America and Europe strong. To ignore this is to set a dangerous precedent, one that could unravel the trans-Atlantic bond and weaken the foundations that keep us standing.

International law is either universal or meaningless. Greenland will show which one we choose.

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