This month's edition explores what the new US National Security Strategy means for Europe, Donald Trump's pursuit of Greenland, the EU's weak foreign policy, and much more.
For decades, the transatlantic alliance rested on an assumption that while Washington might act unilaterally abroad, it would never turn the levers of American power against its closest allies. That assumption no longer holds.
This month’s cover story examines the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy, which casts Europe not as a partner but as a political problem to be solved. Its call to cultivate “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” suggests a readiness to interfere directly in European politics. As one analyst told The Parliament: “This strategy can be framed in imperial terms” — a move away from shared rules and norms, and towards pressure and coercion.
The strategy’s embrace of spheres of influence — a world ordered by raw power — has already moved beyond theory. Washington’s decision earlier this month to remove Venezuela’s president through direct military action marked a return to overt regime change as a tool of US statecraft. More alarming for Europeans has been Donald Trump’s escalating push to acquire Greenland, with the use of force now openly discussed.
Were the US to take the Danish territory by force, the consequences would be existential for the NATO. Article 5 cannot survive a scenario in which the alliance’s leading member attacks the territory of another. Even short of that, the threat alone is further rupturing the crumbling foundation of the postwar transatlantic alliance.
Just as this magazine went to print, European troops were touching down in Nuuk on a reconnaissance mission following failed talks between US and Danish officials. The Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said bluntly that it was clear Trump wants to “conquer” Greenland.
European leaders have responded with strong rhetoric, but the continent’s continued defence dependence limits its room for manoeuvre. “I don’t think the EU would defend Greenland militarily…the EU isn’t a military institution,” Juraj Majcin, a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, told The Parliament.
Yet if there is a silver lining, it lies in the clarity of the moment. The ambiguity that once allowed European capitals to hope for a return to pre-Trump ‘normalcy’ has evaporated. The question now is how European leaders will respond. Whether they choose to appease or confront the US president will determine Europe’s role in an emerging world order increasingly shaped by intimidation and force, rather than consent and co-operation.
— Christopher Alessi, Editor-in-Chief