Greenland
The Icepick in the Back of the West
They laughed the first time. That was the mistake.
When Trump mentioned buying Greenland years ago, polite society chuckled. They treated it like the ramblings of a senile landlord who didn't understand that countries aren't condos. They made memes. They wrote think pieces about Danish sovereignty. They missed the point entirely.
They always miss the point because they still think we are dealing with a politician. We are not. We are dealing with an asset. And we are dealing with PrumpTutin, a dual-headed entity that requires chaos to breathe.
The move on Greenland is no longer a joke. "We're going to do something whether they like it or not," Trump said last week. "The easy way or the hard way." It is an invasion disguised as a transaction, and it is the perfect weapon to murder NATO.
Look at the map. Ignore the borders drawn by diplomats and look at the geography of war. The Atlantic is a highway, but the entrance is narrow. The GIUK gap—Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom—is the choke point. It is the throat of the Atlantic. Russian submarines based on the Kola Peninsula have only one path into the open ocean: through that gap. There is no other way. During the Cold War, NATO strung a network of underwater listening posts across the entire passage. Every Soviet sub that tried to slip through got tracked. That system still exists. The United States, Britain, Denmark, Norway—they share the data, coordinate the patrols, run the exercises together. It works because allies trust each other.
Putin hates this. He has hated it since he was a KGB mid-level functionary watching the Soviet empire rust. He wants the Arctic. He wants the ice-free lanes. He wants his nuclear subs to ghost into the Atlantic without a NATO shadow.
Enter Trump.
To Trump, Greenland is just a big white space on the map that he doesn't own. He probably couldn't pick it out on a globe, but he can point to the big white part and say "mine." It has minerals. It has ego. It's the ultimate acquisition. But to the architects of PrumpTutin's new world order, Greenland is the wedge.
Here is how it happens. It won't be D-Day. It won't be paratroopers over Nuuk. Not at first. It will be a demand. A "security agreement." A lease for a "protective force" to guard against Chinese expansion in the Arctic. The excuses write themselves. The United States will demand total control over the island's defense and resources.
Denmark, a founding member of NATO, will say no. They have to. They are a sovereign nation, and they have dignity, something we lost years ago.
Share on BlueskyAnd that is the moment the trap springs.
When Denmark refuses, Trump will move anyway. He will declare it a matter of national security for the United States. He will sanction Copenhagen. He might even land troops at Thule Air Base and refuse to leave, expanding the perimeter until the "base" is the whole island.
What does NATO do then?
Article 5 says an attack on one is an attack on all. But what happens when the attacker is the United States?
Europe, to its credit, is not waiting to find out. France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway are already sending troops to Greenland for joint exercises with Denmark. The operation has a name: Arctic Endurance. Macron announced that French military units are on their way. For the first time since the alliance was formed, European NATO members are deploying forces to defend against the United States. Let that sink in.
But here is the question that will break the West: what happens when American boots and European boots are standing on the same ice, looking at each other? Does France fire on the United States? Does Germany? The exercises are a statement. A warning. But warnings only work if you are willing to follow through. And no one in Brussels wants to be the person who gave the order that started a shooting war with Washington. But, PrumpTutin might.
That hesitation is where NATO dies. Not with a bang, but because the biggest wolf in the pack just ate one of the pups, and the rest of the pack circled up but couldn't bring themselves to bite.
This is the PrumpTutin dream. It destroys the security architecture of the post-war world without a single Russian missile leaving the silo.
Russia gets the Arctic. And here is the part most Americans will miss: the moment NATO fractures, the intelligence sharing stops. The United States is not going to hand sonar data to countries it just betrayed. The allies are not going to coordinate with a country that attacked one of their own. The GIUK gap is still there on the map, but the unified surveillance network that made it work is gone. Russia doesn't need to defeat the system. They just need us to stop talking to each other. Putin gets what he has wanted for decades—an open lane to the Atlantic—and he doesn't have to fire a shot.
It is brilliant, in a sick, tactical way. It leverages Trump's greed to fulfill Putin's strategy. It uses the brute weight of the United States military to break the very shield it was built to hold.
The moral weight of this is heavy enough to crush a spine. We are talking about betraying a friend. Denmark stood with us in Afghanistan. They fought in Helmand Province, one of the deadliest battlegrounds of the war, and suffered the highest casualty rate per capita of any nation in the coalition. Forty-three of their soldiers never came home because we asked them to go. Now we are eyeing their territory like vultures over a carcass.
I look at the news and I see people arguing about interest rates and culture war nonsense. They are fighting over the wine list while the ship takes on water. Meanwhile, the captain is steering for the ice, because his partner owns the salvage rights.
We used to be the good guys. Or at least, we pretended well enough to convince ourselves. Now we are just pirates with better aircraft carriers.
Greenland is the test. If we take it, if we bully a NATO ally into submission, the West is over. The treaties are just paper. The handshakes are just theater. And god is nowhere to be found in the details.
Watch the north.
