Beyond Greenland, the systemic military questions for US and Europe

LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Earlier this month, the U.S. military invited Fox News host Brian Kilmeade to its largest army base in Europe to meet its top ground commander General Chris Donahue and attend one of his legendary daily training sessions with troops.

As well as being shown the operations centre in the German town of Wiesbaden, Kilmeade was shown how Europe-based U.S. army units were learning real-time lessons from Ukraine's protracted battle against a Russian invasion.

They included using 3D printing to synthesise and improve systems such as drones – all critical to winning a war not just with Russia in Europe, but any future conflicts in the Middle East or with China in the Pacific.

It was all a powerful pitch justifying America’s ongoing military support to Europe as well as hitting the Trump administration's talking points - the Fox News item noted how enthusiastic America’s frontline soldiers were for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, now rebranded “Secretary of War”.

It also included a direct call from the U.S. president himself to U.S. soldiers in the mess hall, thanking them for their efforts and explicitly linking recent U.S. military action in Venezuela to the deterrence of other potential U.S. foes.

That comment appeared to imply but did not explicitly mention Moscow and Beijing by name.

By the time the footage aired on January 15, however – just three days following the filming, the temperature was already rising over President Donald Trump’s talk of annexing Greenland. And behind closed doors, some of those U.S. military officers who have already voiced concern to European counterparts over Washington's current direction may have been feeling even worse.

Over the last week, the Greenland dispute triggered what is already being talked about as by far the worst transatlantic schism since 1945. There was even speculation the U.S. might be about to act militarily to seize the vast frozen island, inviting an actual armed confrontation with the handful of European troops sent there in a hurry this month.

That scenario has at least appeared to have receded since Wednesday, when Trump told the Davos World Economic Forum he had ruled out both military action over Greenland and threatened punitive tariffs against Europe – at least for now.

As of Thursday, pundits, analysts and serving military and government officials on both sides of the Atlantic were pondering the long-term damage – as well as the already thorny questions of what that might mean for the strategic transatlantic relationship, as well as wider geopolitics.

They included the chiefs of defence of every non-U.S. NATO member nation gathering in Brussels with the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich - the top-ranking U.S. officer in Europe who would lead all alliance forces on the continent in the event of conflict – for their scheduled annual Military Committee meeting.

Although the diplomatic mayhem appeared to be abating towards the end of this week, many of the underlying realities still lurk – while much of Europe remains horrified by Trump and his recent antics, there are if anything even greater worries over the long-term U.S. trajectory after Trump is gone.

MULTIPLE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

While histrionics and melodrama might be lower under any other U.S. leader, there are worries that any future and more straightforwardly isolationist U.S. administration – for example, one run by Vice President JD Vance – might ditch Europe permanently, all fuelled by official U.S. comments that Germany should take the top NATO command position by the mid-2030s.

That would significantly complicate NATO’s nuclear planning in particular. Alliance atomic strategy is broadly dependent on U.S. atomic bombs rather than the smaller arsenals of France and Britain. Any realistic U.S. pullback, however, would pose a strategic challenge.

Many broader structural concerns – particularly the degree to which the U.S. can afford to continue its traditional levels of military support to Europe at the same time it is preparing to confront, deter and if necessary fight an ascendant China – might well be true with any White House occupant.

Still, for all the political upheaval produced by Trump’s 2024 election victory and the speculation he might pull back support from Europe – perhaps even quitting NATO, the U.S. military itself has been quietly but determinedly stepping up planning with European partners.

The risk, though, is that they inadvertently risk making Europe more dependent than before not just on U.S. technology but also U.S. leadership and thinking – but that if a systemic security crisis arises, U.S. support may be nowhere to be seen.

The NATO military committee press conference saw its chairman Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, pledge that NATO remains “united”, telling those in Greenland that the fact negotiations were now underway meant they should have “no fear”.

U.S. General Grynkewich largely avoided directly addressing Greenland, but described the U.S. commitment to NATO’s Article 5 self-defence clause as “ironclad”.

What that really means, however, will continue to be examined – both by journalists in public and European ministers, commanders and officials meeting U.S. counterparts behind closed doors.

Among the attendees in Brussels was acting Danish military chief General Michael Hyldgaard, a former head of Danish special forces, therefore well known to U.S. commanders. His immediate subordinate, Denmark’s army chief Major General Peter Boysen – another ex-special forces chief - was in Greenland itself, leading the small recently deployed European troops attachment.

Whether either of them will have told U.S. counterparts the orders they were given in the event U.S. troops landed in Greenland to attempt an annexation we may never know.

In public, Denmark has maintained a frosty sense of “strategic ambiguity” over whether Danish or European troops might fire on any invading U.S. forces. While any such firefight might well have been brief and somewhat tokenistic, it might still have been disastrous diplomatically.

U.S. TANKS IN ESTONIA AT CHRISTMAS

While Denmark may have become suddenly alarmed about a potential U.S. military takeover of Greenland, for many other European states the concern remains ensuring U.S. troops keep their often long-running presence on their territory.

The example of Estonia – arguably the NATO nation most vulnerable to a limited Russian land grab or indeed larger military operation to seize its capital and all its territory – offers a case in point.

For most of the last year, the primary U.S. presence was a detachment of long-range HIMARS rockets. When they were withdrawn last autumn, there was huge relief in Estonia when the U.S. then announced a deployment of 14 M1-A1 battle tanks, even if the fact the tanks were still painted desert yellow suggested the decision might have been last-minute.

On their arrival in October, their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Jenkins told reporters: “Whether we have to fight here or somewhere else in the world, Americans do not run from a fight.” Despite that, though, there are lingering fears the U.S. might draw back the several hundred troops it has quietly stationed in the southern Estonian barracks of Reedo since 2023.

That reflects a larger if rarely spoken truth – that because of America’s overwhelming global military dominance, the “tripwire” presence of even a relatively modest handful of U.S. forces can act as a much greater deterrent against potential enemies such as Moscow and Beijing than much larger alternative forces including thousands of European troops.

The more America pulls back, the more European nations need to exponentially expand their forces. In the case of eastern NATO states this would affect Poland, requiring an enormous rapid militarisation and prompting both Germany and France to step up their ability to conscript large numbers of the population into fighting forces in the event of major conflict.

HI-TECH U.S. WAR PLANS IN EUROPE

Simultaneously, however, U.S. forces in Europe under NATO supreme commander Grynkewich and head of U.S. Army Europe Donahue, also the top NATO ground commander in time of conflict, have been building up their own war plans to use U.S. troops, technology and weapons to deliver a fast, decisive victory.

While much of that plan also remains secret, the public outline from Donahue at the major LANDEURO military conference in Wiesbaden in July made clear both the scale and sophistication the U.S. sees in the potential Russian threat and also its planned response.

Donahue warned that once the Ukraine fighting ceased and Russia realigned its military, the Kremlin could throw as many as 22 divisions at the most vulnerable points along NATO’s “Eastern Flank Deterrence Line”, vastly exceeding the number of currently deployed defending forces including U.S. troops.

But Russia’s forces, he suggested, could still be neutralised or destroyed “in a time frame that is unheard of and faster than we’ve ever been able to do it”.

That appeared to be a reference to a whole range of incoming systems including drones, long-range missiles, artificial intelligence-enabled analysis, intelligence and targeting systems, all now fast developing.

All of that, however, still relies on the U.S. president giving the orders committing U.S. forces to such action – as well as being willing to order units such as the U.S. Army’s new Europe-facing long-range missile batteries to cross the Atlantic from their U.S. bases.

The Greenland spat might not be over yet – on Thursday, Denmark was adamant that any deal struck between Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had not been ratified by Copenhagen. Even if it is, the wider systemic questions will not have gone away.