Seizing Greenland: So, Europe, how does it feel to be Greece?

For decades, the capitals of Northern Europe have lived in a comfortable, self-righteous state. From the glass towers of Copenhagen to the secure ramparts of the Baltics, the mantra has been the same: Ιnternational law is the ultimate shield, and NATO is a sacred brotherhood of democracies. To the virtuous Northerners, the Greek-Turkish conflict has always been a messy, southern anachronism – a “bilateral dispute” that always called for more dialogue.

Then came January 2026, and the dream ended with a cold American surprise. When Washington decided that Greenland’s rare earth minerals were more important than Danish sovereignty, the “civilised” world finally saw what Greece – and the Hellenic world – has been facing since 1974. They saw a fellow ally, who also happens to be regarded as the leader of the free world, casually suggest that military options are on the table if the Kingdom of Denmark does not hand over the keys to its own territory.

The panic in Brussels was almost poetic. For weeks, we Greeks watched the Great Powers of Europe go berserk. We saw the German Chancellor and the French President rush to microphones, trembling with wrath about “unprecedented threats” and the death of the rule of law. It was a magnificent performance of selective outrage. They behaved as if the concept of an ally threatening an ally was a brand-new invention, a horrific mutation of the world order that appeared out of thin air in the North Atlantic.

Well, dear Europe, we Greeks have a word for this “unprecedented” horror: Turkey. For fifty years, we have lived with a NATO ally that occupies European soil in Cyprus. We have lived with a neighbour that flies fighter jets over our inhabited islands and declares a casus belli against us for simply wishing to exercise our legal rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. And for all those years, your response from the comfort of the North has been a patronising pat on the back and a lecture on restraint.

Fortunately, the immediate Arctic crisis has now cooled. At Davos last week, Donald Trump holstered his weapon. He took the military threat off the table in exchange for a framework deal that essentially treats Greenland as a strategic asset of the American empire. The Northern elites then celebrated this as some kind of diplomatic victory, breathing a sigh of relief, just because the bully decided to only take their lunch box instead of beating them up, too.

But the damage is permanent. The Viking funeral of European naivety is complete. The myth that your allies will respect your borders simply because you share a logo at a summit has been demolished. Danes, Swedes, Poles, Brits, French and the rest of the civilised European lot have probably now realised that in the eyes of a predator, sovereignty is nothing more than decorum. They have tasted the medicine we have been forced to swallow for over half a century, and they found it to be quite bitter.

Of course, hypocrisy remains a durable characteristic of the European project. Even as they cry foul over Greenland, the Great Powers continue to calculate their trade balances with Ankara. They are perfectly happy to defend sovereignty when it is under the Arctic ice, but they are oddly silent when it lies under the Mediterranean sun. They realised that if the “hard way” can be applied to Nuuk, it could also be applied to the North Sea,  the Baltic, or wherever else. But they are not honestly worried about international law. They are worried about being next.

The lesson of 2026 is one that Athens and Nicosia have mastered through blood and sacrifice: There is no such thing as a guaranteed border in a world of shifting appetites. A treaty is only as good as the deterrent you can put behind it. The Greenland Crisis was the moment Europe finally met its own Turkey – and the result was a collective panic attack. So give us a break, Brussels. You did not save the Arctic. You just realised that our present day Holy Alliance is actually a jungle and you have forgotten how it feels to be prey.