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

Forbes Breaking News

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.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended