Greenland, Trump, and Europe’s Problem with Action
Trump’s talk about Greenland is not a move. It is a bluff. And as in poker, the bluff itself matters far less than the reaction to it. Europe’s reaction is the tell. It reveals what cards its leaders are actually holding—and which ones they are pretending to have.
I am not a fan of Donald Trump. I have written many times about his shortcomings and the damage he has done to American political culture. But there is a lazy category of criticism that consistently misses the point: dismissing Trump as simply “stupid,” “unhinged,” or “foolish.” That reflex says more about the people using it than about Trump himself.
Trump is not nearly as interesting as the reactions he provokes. And nowhere is that clearer than in Europe’s response to his rhetoric about Greenland.
If Trump had not become a businessman, he could just as easily have become a thespian. Few political figures wear the fool’s mask as effectively as he does. The exaggeration, the provocation, the apparent absurdity—it is not random. It is bait. And the people most convinced they “see through” him are often the ones most completely taken in.
This performance is not aimed at Europe, at foreign ministries, or at editorial boards. It is aimed squarely at a domestic audience. Trump’s supporters watch as credentialed elites—armed with diplomas, titles, and endless closed-door meetings—react to obvious provocation with outrage, panic, and solemn declarations. Each overreaction reinforces the point Trump is trying to make: that the people who claim to run the Western order lack strategic composure.
Greenland is not a policy proposal. It is a provocation designed to draw a reaction.
The United States is not going to invade Greenland. The American public does not want it. Congress does not want it. The Pentagon certainly does not want it. Trump knows this. Washington knows this. What matters is not the substance of the statement but the reaction it produces.
And the reaction is always the same. Emergency meetings. Statements. Moral lectures. A frantic insistence on being taken seriously. The inability to ignore a taunt is mistaken for leadership, when in fact it reveals fragility.
There is a horrific war in Europe’s own backyard, and Europe cannot bring itself to act decisively or meaningfully. Ukraine is freezing, bleeding, and fighting for survival while European leaders argue over wording, escalation ladders, and domestic sensitivities. If they cannot defend Europe, what exactly are they going to do for Greenland? A continent that struggles to secure itself does not become formidable simply because the map gets colder.
This is not prudence. It is paralysis dressed up as responsibility.
Europe clings to the belief that sanctions alone—carefully designed to avoid real discomfort at home—can defeat determined adversaries. Sanctions did not defeat Iran. They have not toppled authoritarian regimes elsewhere. Yet European leaders persist in the fantasy that they can economically break Russia without energy shortages, political backlash, or serious sacrifice. The result is moral posturing without decisive action.
Against this backdrop, the hysteria over Greenland looks like displacement. It is easier to react loudly to rhetorical theater across an ocean than to confront failure at home.
Trump’s actual leverage has nothing to do with invading Arctic islands. It is economic. The United States runs a massive trade imbalance with Europe—one that benefits Europe far more than it benefits the U.S. That imbalance is why tariff threats and sanctions talk have teeth. Europe understands this, which is why it reacts so defensively to even symbolic pressure.
This dynamic exposes a deeper problem. Europe wants American protection without American pressure. U.S. markets without U.S. leverage. Security guarantees without meaningful responsibility. It criticizes the United States for being “cowboys,” yet behaves like a handmaiden—dependent on American power, allergic to American bluntness, and unwilling to accept the risks that power entails.
And this problem is not confined to the military.
Europe can make weapons. It has industrial capacity. It will rearm now, because it has to. But the problem is not capability—it is action. Decision-making is slow, procedural, and defensive. Everyone waits for consensus, cover, and someone else to move first. The will to act lags far behind the ability to produce.
The same pattern appears in technology. Europe lags astronomically behind the United States and China when it comes to developing and scaling new technology. This is not about intelligence or talent. It is structural. The U.S. and China build platforms, take risks, scale aggressively, and tolerate failure. Europe regulates first, moralizes innovation, and confuses caution with wisdom.
Europe excels at refinement, preservation, and luxury. Chocolate and handbags. That they do better than anyone. But these are not substitutes for power—military or technological. A system optimized for preservation struggles to compete in an environment that rewards speed, risk, and disruption.
This is the world Trump is playing to. His performance works because it exposes an elite culture that confuses process with power and language with action. Each frantic denunciation, each emergency summit, each solemn declaration confirms the image he is selling at home: a continent run by people who cannot distinguish between theater and threat.
Calling Trump “stupid” avoids a harder truth. The performance works. It works because the tell is real.
The mistake is taking the mask at face value. The bigger mistake is assuming that contempt is a substitute for competence.
Greenland is not the story. The reaction to it is. And until Europe learns to read its own tells—and act when the stakes are real—it will continue to confuse provocation for danger, performance for policy, and motion for action, while others quietly win the hand.