Trump’s Pragmatic Approach To Europe Cuts Through Decades of Emotional Reactions

American Thinker 

Donald Trump’s interest in Greenland, controlled by Denmark, has been routinely dismissed by critics as eccentric or unserious. That reaction says far more about modern political reflexes than it does regarding sober strategy.

Strip away the passions and the theatrics, and the logic behind Trump’s thinking becomes not only rational but also difficult to refute. Greenland is not a novelty. It is a strategic linchpin. The refusal to acknowledge that fact exposes a deeper problem in how Americans, particularly those of European ancestry, are conditioned to think about Europe, loyalty, and national interest.

Trump has been direct about his reasoning.

Greenland matters because of national security, not sentiment, symbolism, or diplomatic jargon. He has explicitly stated that the island is vital to American defense interests and warned that if the United States does not secure its position there, Russia or China will fill the vacuum.

That is not bluster. It is a recognition of geography and power.

Greenland sits astride the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap, a historic maritime chokepoint. It is critical for monitoring Russian submarine activity and missile trajectories. As Arctic ice recedes, the region is becoming more militarily and economically relevant by the year. Russia has already expandedits Arctic military infrastructure. China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state” and pursued investment footholds across the region.

Geography does not care about intentions. It rewards presence. 

The United States already operates Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, formerly Thule Air Base. It is the northernmost American military installation in the world and a core node in early warning radar, missile defense, and space surveillance systems. These are designed to protect the American homeland from threats traveling over the polar route.

That alone should end any debate about Greenland’s relevance.

Full American sovereignty or control would allow for expanded air, naval, and space operations without dependence on Danish political constraints. Trump has been blunt that Denmark’s stewardship is inadequate for an era of great power competition.

That assessment may be uncomfortable, but discomfort does not make it wrong.

Greenland also possesses vast deposits of rare-earth minerals and other critical materials essential to defense technologies and advanced manufacturing. Reducing dependence on Chinese supply chains is a stated bipartisan goal, yet resistance emerges the moment a concrete solution presents itself. Trump has emphasized security over minerals, but the economic dimension reinforces the strategic case.

The hostility to this logic is not rooted in facts. It is rooted in emotion. Specifically, it reflects a lingering emotional deference to Europe that distorts American judgment.

Most Americans still descend, to one degree or another, from continental European ancestors. Danish, German, Polish, French, Italian, and other nationalities passed down stories, traditions, and a sense of inherited connection. That history is real. What no longer exists is any reciprocal obligation.

Continental Europe does not view America as the home of its extended family. It does not even view the United Kingdom, which is technically European yet separated from France by a channel, in this way. It views Americans as a separate people whose usefulness peaks in moments of crisis.

European political culture has always been transactional. When danger rises, appeals to shared values and history intensify. When stability returns, distance and condescension resume. This is not a moral indictment. It is a pattern.

Europe’s modern peace is not self-generated. It was enforced. After 1945, American power froze centuries-old rivalries beneath the surface. NATO’s Article 5 commits the United States to treat an attack on any member as an attack on itself, creating automatic pathways to American involvement in European wars.

For decades, many European states underinvested in their own defense, relying on American guarantees. Defense spending targets set in 2014 were routinely missed until Trump’s pressure years later. This dependency was not accidental. It was encouraged by the knowledge that emotional and historical appeals would ultimately override American self-interest.

History provides a brutal warning. World War I began as a European blood feud driven by royal entanglements, nationalism, border disputes, and pride. The United States correctly stayed out for nearly three years. Only when European powers faced exhaustion did calls for American intervention intensify.

The United States entered in 1917. Over 116,000 Americans died, and more than 200,000 were wounded. Many fought under European command doctrines that accepted mass casualties as routine. After the war, European leaders rejected durable peace frameworks and imposed punitive terms that all but guaranteed another conflict. Within a generation, the continent burned again.

The lesson is not isolationism. It is realism.

That realism is urgently relevant today. An influential Russian advisor to Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin openly discussed limited nuclear use as a deliberate policy tool, not as idle rhetoric. He framed such use as a “necessary sin” aimed at forcing European de-escalation. Germany and Britain have been explicitly named as primary targets due to their central roles in supporting Ukraine through logistics, funding, intelligence, weapons, and sanctions.

This is not random.

Britain provided early and sustained military and intelligence support to Ukraine. Germany abruptly severed decades of energy dependence, repositioning itself as a NATO logistics hub and major financial backer.

From Moscow’s perspective, these states form the backbone of Western pressure. Targeting them rhetorically serves to intimidate Europe without triggering immediate confrontation with the United States. It is a classic coercive strategy rooted in Cold War precedent.

This pattern was visible days after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, when Vladimir Putin ordered nuclear deterrence forces placed on high alert to deter deeper Western involvement. Far more recently, Russia has conducted strikesnear NATO borders using nuclear-capable systems as deliberate signaling.

Continental Europe understands this language because it has lived in geopolitical turmoil for centuries.

Appeals, whether overt or implicit, to America about shared European identity encourage Americans to confuse historical origin with present-day loyalty. Continental Europeans do not finance America when she resolves her security dilemmas. They do, however, expect America to subsidize, and even bleed for, the Old Continent’s defense.

That asymmetry has been consistent. Cultural attitudes in continental Europe routinely portray Americans as crude, loud, or disposable in war and embarrassing in peace. Utility is assumed. Reciprocity is not.

Recognizing this reality is not anti-European. It is pro-American.

Trump’s handling of Greenland represents a pivot away from emotional foreign policy toward geographic logic. Securing the Arctic strengthens homeland defense. It counters Russian and Chinese expansion near American approaches. It reinforces Western Hemisphere and near-perimeter security rather than entangling the country further in European historical cycles.

This is not isolationism. It is prioritization.

Europe is wealthy, educated, and technologically advanced. It can defend itself if it chooses to. Recent spending pledges emerged only after Trump demanded fairness, confirming that dependency was a choice, not an inevitability.

Americans of continental European ancestry deserve honesty. Heritage is not destiny. Sentiment is not strategy. Loyalty should flow toward citizens living now, not toward continents that perfected the art of exporting their wars.

Trump’s stance on Greenland forces a reckoning beyond left and right. It asks whether American policy will ultimately be guided by emotional inheritance or by clear-eyed assessment of national survival.

That question matters more than even the most passionate of rhetoric. It always has.