The Danes protecting Greenland: They must learn from de Gaulle

“May you live in interesting times!” was a famous sentence a century ago. Supposedly a Chinese curse, it was a sardonic jab — “interesting” days tend to be troublesome. 

The “curse” was actually apocryphal. No such expression actually exists in China. But, in a way, it does seem to capture the spirit of our era. We certainly do live in interesting times — with Ukraine, the Middle East, Venezuela, and Taiwan also competing for our attention, it has been a while since the wheel of history has spun this quickly. 

The drama surrounding the Danish territory of Greenland has come to bring even more bewilderment to our days. It is true that America’s self-confessed ambitions on the territory of a loyal ally are unjustified, even treacherous. Indeed, Greenland has been a part of the Scandinavian world since the 10th century, when Erik the Red first settled the land with colonists from Norway and Denmark; Copenhagen has held real, continuous sovereignty over the territory since 1721, half a century before the Thirteen Colonies launched their war for independence from Mother England. That Denmark is an old, tiny, and defenceless nation makes Washington’s appetites all the uglier — particularly when America’s potential acquisition of Greenland seems so utterly pointless. After all, the United States already enjoys a sizable military presence in the region, with Copenhagen unlikely to object to more.

But the sudden rediscovery of Greenland by Washington is not, as many Europeans would prefer to believe, a morality play. It is not proof of America’s innate wickedness, nor of some uniquely predatory impulse latent in the Trumpian psyche. It is something far more banal—and far more damning for Europe: A crude demonstration of European powerlessness. Washington is pushing Europe around not because it is evil, but because it can. And it can because Europe itself, as a strategic actor, has made itself negligible. For that original sin, the Europeans themselves — not Trump — are to blame.

The cold, hard truth is that great powers do not consult the weak. President Trump’s close adviser Stephen Miller put it bluntly a couple of days ago when he said that “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else … but we in a real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power”. The fact that Europe’s opinion on the matter barely registers might be hurtful and unjust; but, more significantly, it is also a diagnosis. In the Hobbesian world of geopolitics, relevance is not granted. It is enforced.

Contemporary Europe is hopelessly ill-equipped for navigating these tricky waters. Disarmed, deindustrialised, and imploding demographically, it resembles less a civilisation in decline than one quietly opting out of history. Its armies are hollowed out, its arsenals depleted, its energy systems deliberately sabotaged in the name of moral exhibitionism. Instead of strengthening herself, Europe has decided to sacrifice them in a doomed, foreign war in the East just to spite Russia. It is why its elites speak so endlessly of “values”: Because they have renounced power—the only currency that makes one audible beyond his own borders. And, often times, inside them, too. 

The fact of the matter is that this weakness is not accidental. It is the product of decades of steady collective suicide. The internecine massacres of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 were followed by the no less insane abdication of Europe’s vast colonial empires — the base of her strength and her argument for global preponderance. Weakened, impoverished, and miniaturised, Europe then outsourced its security to the United States, its industry to Asia, its energy to Russia, and its future to immigration. It preferred to become the world’s museum, a beautiful, but unproductive and weak, monument to bygone days. The result is a continent that is older, poorer, and less confident with each passing year—while insisting, to everyone else’s amusement, that it still represents the moral centre of the world. It does not. And the world, increasingly multipolar and openly brutal, is under no obligation to pretend otherwise. 

This is precisely what General Charles de Gaulle instinctively understood when he returned to power to save his country, wounded by internal chaos and the pain of the Algerian War, in 1958. Having faced the Nazis in a fight for France’s independence, he grasped a truth that Europe has since erased from its memory: No one will ever defend your sovereignty for you if you don’t defend it yourself. Alliances are transient; interests are not. For de Gaulle, independence was not a slogan — it was the sine qua non condition of politics. That is why, as President, he insisted on a French nuclear force, on strategic autonomy from NATO’s integrated command, on energy self-sufficiency, and on the cultivation of national champions capable of granting the state technological and industrial self-sufficiency. He did not wait for the Americans to do anything for France — he understood that if it were to live up to its duty as an agent of history Paris would have to do those things by itself. Much of the strength his country – and, thus, Europe itself – still commands, it owes to the stubborn farsightedness of Monsieur le Général.

Europeans must all learn from de Gaulle’s radiant example. In his vision, France was not to be protected by its principles; rather it would protect its principles with its capabilities. Diplomacy mattered—but only when spoken from a position of strength. De Gaulle never believed that invoking abstract norms would deter a determined great power. He knew that, in the final analysis, the only factor of international respect is the reach and width of one’s arm.

In this regard, Trump’s America is hardly an aberration. It’s just an avalanche of long-forgotten truths. He is not looking out for Europe, nor should he be expected to. He is looking out for the United States, for that is his job. The scandal is not that America acts in its own self-interest, but that the nations of Europe no longer do.

If Europe wishes to survive as an independent centre of power and civilisation in a multipolar world, it must itself become a pole. That cannot be achieved through communiqués, climate targets, or legalistic incantations. It requires rearmament, reindustrialisation, energy sovereignty, and demographic recovery. It requires accepting that independence is a burden before it is a privilege—and that power is its price, but also its reward.

De Gaulle knew this. Europe chose to forget it. The time to snap back to reality is now.