There is talk of a crisis between the United States and Europe. Europeans complain that the US is increasingly turning inward. They say the US cares less and less about Europe. This is a correct observation. Americans and Europeans have often disagreed, but today it is meaningful to speak of a real divide between the US and Europe. US President Donald Trump has said he wants to buy Greenland from Denmark. He has said that the US will take over Greenland even if the Danes say no. He has even threatened Sweden and other European countries with punitive tariffs if they oppose the US plans.

NATO

The US has grown tired of Europe refusing to take security responsibility. Europeans want to spend money on benefits and welfare and shift defense costs onto American taxpayers. This has been going on for decades. NATO members are expected to allocate two percent of GDP to defense. When Donald Trump became president in 2016, only three out of NATO’s 28 member countries reached the target line. Three out of 28. Here are some examples:

• Germany (1.2%)
• France (1.8%)
• Italy (1.2%)
• Canada (1%)

Trump threatened to leave NATO, and reluctant allies promised to increase their defense spending.

Increased Political Repression

US Vice President JD Vance discussed this issue at the Munich Security Conference just over a year ago. NATO was formed by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949. The background was tensions between the US and Western Europe on one side and communist Eastern Europe on the other.
NATO was not only a military pact; it was also a political community built on Western democratic principles: democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. Not democratic principles in general. Western ones. Vance questioned in his speech whether this community of values still exists, and he gave several examples of how European governments have systematically restricted their citizens’ freedoms and rights.

No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. …
I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process, protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.

What did Vance mean? He said that the democratic system in Europe is collapsing. Politicians refuse to accept that people are not interested in their utopian future visions. European politicians no longer see themselves as elected representatives; they see themselves as educators of the people.

Europe Is Over

Vance’s criticism is repeated and deepened in The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, November 2025. The NSS is an official document that compiles the United States’ national security interests and describes how the current administration intends to handle them.

The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.

But the problem is not only creeping totalitarianism. The document raises another, more consequential question: How long will Europe remain European?

Should present trends [mass immigration] continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. … Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.

The Core of the Crisis

US President Donald Trump has said that the US needs Greenland for national security reasons. He would never have said this if he trusted his NATO allies in Europe. But that is exactly what he does not do. The Americans are right on two points:

• Europe has become less free, more censorious, and more repressive.
• Mass immigration from the third world, combined with declining fertility rates among the continent’s historical populations, will destabilize Europe and in the long term affect the continent’s security policy priorities.

Will Europe in the long run be a reliable ally? The Americans do not believe so. Europe has fallen. The continent that gave the world representative democracy, science, and free markets is collapsing due to the political elites’ utopian urge to experiment. The US must prepare to go it alone. It is in this perspective that the Americans consider it necessary to buy or take possession of Greenland.

Final Words

The conflict between the US and Denmark is discussed mainly in moral terms. People say: “Might does not make right.” The US has as little right to Greenland as Denmark has to Florida. That is true. The US has no moral right to Greenland. The question, however, is whether the problem does not also have a realpolitik aspect. If Western powers had only emphasized morality at the expense of realpolitik considerations, Eastern Europe would most likely still be communist.
That is the bitter truth.
The American administration reasons in realpolitik terms. A shift in perspective is seen as necessary because the transatlantic cooperation no longer has a future, and because the enemies of freedom, above all Russia and China, will not be stopped by abstract arguments about morality and immorality.