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Renaud Girard
Renaud Girard is Chief Foreign Correspondent at Le Figaro. An advocate of political realism, he studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. He has worked as a war correspondent and written books about the Middle East, geopolitics and international relations.
The day after the US military operation to kidnap the Venezuelan president in Caracas, Katie Miller, the wife of the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, shared a map of Greenland in the colors of the American flag on the social network X on January 3, 2026, accompanied by the terse caption: “SOON.”
Katie Miller’s message should be taken seriously. She is not some silly girl texting her whims. She is a high-level Republican activist, a graduate of two American universities, who worked for the party from 2014 onward, eventually rising to the important position of Vice Presidential Communications Director under the first Trump administration. In February 2025, the 47th President of the United States appointed her as a member of the PIAB (President’s Intelligence Advisory Board), the structure of a dozen people who advise him, within the White House, on intelligence matters.
In response to this provocative tweet, Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark, a kingdom that already possessed the island of Greenland when the United States declared its independence, published a statement on Facebook demanding that Washington stop talking about annexing this vast, icy territory.
Located in the northeast of the North American continent, four times the size of France, but with a population of only 55,000, Greenland, 35 km from Canada and 2,000 km from Russia, holds obvious strategic importance for an America reviving the Monroe Doctrine and anxious to defend the "Western Hemisphere," stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, against any foreign incursion.
Furthermore, the fact that Greenland contains 1.5 million tons of rare earth elements (compared to 2 million in the United States and 44 million in China) is not insignificant to the American president.
Like McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, the only two presidents cited in his inaugural address on January 20, 2025, Trump is fascinated by territories and square kilometres. The fact that Russia, with its 17 million square kilometres, is larger than the United States bothers him. If Canada and Greenland were somehow to join American territory, Washington would have a contiguous territory of 22 million square kilometres, which would undeniably make America "great again." To be the greatest in the world, not only in terms of its economy and military, but also its territory…
Despite the Kingdom of Denmark's recent decision to maintain its order for F-35 fighter jets from America, the latter continues to treat it with a certain nonchalance. In 2021, when an advisor at the Élysée Palace praised the merits of Macron's idea of "European strategic autonomy," Ms. Frederiksen curtly replied that her country would always feel closer to Washington than to Paris. There are some things one regrets saying…
Greenland's legal status is complicated. An autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark (which retains its prerogatives in matters of foreign relations, defense, and security), Greenland joined the EEC (now the European Union) in 1973 along with Denmark. However, twelve years later, the autonomous territory decided, by referendum, to leave the EU. It is therefore no longer part of the EU. But, as subjects of the King of Denmark, its inhabitants remain European citizens.
The new international "order" inaugurated by Donald Trump reminds me of how the Roman Republic once treated its allies and neighbours. How will Europe react if, tomorrow, a regiment of American marines were to seize Greenland and plant the Stars and Stripes there - a possibility that no one can now rule out?
There will certainly be a lot of shouting in Copenhagen, and probably some disapproving statements in the Scandinavian countries. In Brussels, and in the other European capitals, the statements of condemnation will be more convoluted. Europe will therefore react with words and rhetoric, but it will do absolutely nothing concrete.
Because in Europe, as everywhere else, the law follows national interests, not the other way around. Imagine Poland taking the slightest anti-American measure in solidarity with the Danes, when it cherishes, as if it were the apple of its eye, the missile batteries installed on its territory by the Americans and aimed at Russia.
Imagine Italy, viscerally attached to Washington since 1945, taking the slightest practical measure against America? Of course not.
Not only will the Europeans show no military solidarity whatsoever with Denmark, but they won't even sanction the American economy, to which Ms. Von der Leyen, President of the Commission, submitted on July 27, 2025, when she visited Trump's private golf course in Scotland to strike a "deal" with him.
Courageous but not reckless, the European heads of state and government will nevertheless shower Ms. Frederiksen with public embraces in an attempt to console her. For, unlike Mr. Trump, they are, of course, full of "humanity"...
When, sixty years ago, General de Gaulle advocated for an independent and "all-around" defence for France, many European politicians wondered, more or less publicly, if the French president had become senile. He was simply a visionary.
This article was first published in Chronique internationale du Figaro.