OPINION:
The controversy surrounding President Trump’s provocative actions involving Greenland isn’t really about territory but rather about Europe’s long-standing failure to take responsibility for its own security (“Trump strikes ‘framework’ for deal on Greenland, Arctic and drops threat of tariff on Europe,” Web, Jan. 21).
That failure has created a strategic vacuum so severe that discussions once considered unthinkable are now underway.
This concern is hardly new. After World War II, Sen. Robert Taft warned that alliances lacking reciprocal responsibility would weaken allies and overextend the U.S. He feared that permanent dependency would transform America from partner to guarantor. His concerns were dismissed.
Greenland matters not because of real estate but because of geography. The Arctic is rapidly emerging as a central arena of great power competition, and Europe has been conspicuously absent from its defense. That absence is no longer academic, as Russia steadily expands its Arctic military footprint and China declares itself a “near-Arctic power.”
Against these dangers, European responses have been feckless and mostly symbolic, with NATO’s northern flank remaining overwhelmingly dependent on American support.
This imbalance is structural given that European governments have long treated defense as an abstraction to be debated at summits and outsourced to Washington. America today is the principal defender of Western security, a role that carries real costs and finite political support. It’s unsustainable.
Europe’s deeper problem, however, isn’t budgetary. The continent has yet to decide whether it wishes to act as a serious geopolitical actor or remain a protected artifact of the postwar order.
Without a shared sense of resolve, even well-funded forces risk irrelevance and defeat. Strategic credibility rests not only on hard military assets and funding but also on will. If Europe continues to drift, then the U.S. will act to secure its interests with or without European leadership.
The real scandal is not that Greenland’s sovereignty is the subject of conversation but that Europe’s prolonged abdication of responsibility has made such conversations possible in the first place.
GLEN AUSTIN SPROVIERO
President, Educational Reviewer Inc.
Fair Haven, New Jersey
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