The EU will cheer America’s every land grab, even to its own detriment

14 Jan, 2026

Western Europe has long abandoned its independence for American vassalage, and is now reaping the result

By Rachel Marsden, a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English. rachelmarsden.com

RT composite. © Getty Images / Bill Pugliano; Connect Images

There are three major foreign-policy items on the EU’s radar, and they’re all connected: Ukraine, Venezuela, and Greenland. All three involve Washington doing whatever it wants, largely to the EU’s detriment.

And no, this didn’t start with Trump. He just yanked off the white gloves and revealed Washington’s bare knuckles in all their glory. All three cases also involve the EU at least pretending that it’s on Washington’s side – even when resistance would have been squarely in Europe’s own interests. The US has long viewed the EU as an economic competitor and has repeatedly leaned on “national security” to pressure it into undercutting itself.

The EU was only too happy to comply once its initial resistance to US sanctions against its economy-fueling supply of cheap Russian gas via Nord Stream finally collapsed. That resistance evaporated entirely when Russia, after years of US-led NATO treating the Ukrainian side of its border like a militarized flophouse – complete with neo-Nazis bunking in the guest rooms – finally had enough.

The EU followed the same script with Trump’s recent attack on Venezuela: ritual nods to national sovereignty, enthusiastic praise for the outcome, and a determined refusal to name or shame the perpetrator.

It took them several hours to synchronize their talking points. Kids in a cult all dressed up in identical rhetorical outfits for Daddy Trump. Lots of talk about “illegitimacy.” Not the coup itself. Not the “drug trafficking” accusations, even though fentanyl doesn’t appear once in the indictment and the Justice Department has already quietly abandoned the idea that there’s even such a thing as the “Cartel de Los Soles” that the US once accused Maduro of leading. And certainly not the illegitimacy of kidnapping a sitting head of state from his own country to try him for crimes in another – without an extradition treaty. Instead, they keep calling Maduro himself “illegitimate,” even as he’s charged by a country whose constitution enshrines the right to keep and bear arms, for possessing weapons – in Venezuela.

 

Read more

 Why Washington will take Greenland

 

 

Of all people, it’s hard to understand British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s excuse for playing along with this Trumpian charade. He’s supposedly a world-class international and human-rights lawyer. Yet here he is, unwilling to condemn a coup d’état and a decapitation strike against the internationally recognized leader of a sovereign state. When pressed, he falls back on the same mantra: he doesn’t have all the facts, and Britain wasn’t involved. Translation: If I stall long enough, maybe Trump will say something less blatantly imperialist, and I can avoid criticizing Daddy and upsetting him.

A British MP tried to argue self-defense. For Trump. Because apparently it’s self-defense when you obsess over someone who poses no real threat to you, march into their house, drag them outside, and kidnap them.

Perhaps because Europe has been so chronically obtuse, Trump now feels emboldened to target it directly – starting with Greenland. Time to grow a spine yet? Not quite, apparently.

The explanation is simple. Every concession that the EU has made to Washington at the expense of its own sovereignty has left it totally dependent on staying in Trump’s good graces – like a tradwife who gave up her career and now depends entirely on her partner, beholden to his moods and whims. What happens when you wake up and realize that you’re married to a jerk, but you long ago sold out your own independence?

The EU wants Washington to act as its bouncer in Ukraine. Russia has made clear that it doesn’t want NATO there, even under a ceasefire. So with Macron and Starmer’s ‘Coalition of the Willing,’ Europe is lining itself up for a near-certain Russian butt-kicking if peace efforts go sideways (which is not a zero-probability scenario) – unless Washington is there to hold their hand and murmur “it’s okay.”

 

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 Trump is not bluffing about Greenland and here’s why

 

 

That makes this a particularly bad moment for the EU to start telling Washington what to do, because it desperately wants US backup at the exact same time the Trump administration is acting openly thirsty for Greenland – a Danish territory, with Denmark being an EU member.

Instead of marching up the block and giving Trump a piece of its collective mind, the EU did what it always does with Daddy Trump. It issued a joint statement, bravely dodging the elephant in the room: American belligerence, now turbocharged by the fresh smash-and-grab on Venezuela. And it was all done for oil, a fact Trump spent 90 minutes on TV rubbing in, just in case anyone was confused or watching on mute. That apparently included his own aptly named “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth, who kept insisting it was about drugs, and his top diplomat, Marco Rubio, who at least pretended that it was about democracy.

European “leaders” keep emphasizing that Denmark and Greenland should decide Greenland’s future – as if anyone was confused about that part, rather than the US invasion part they keep trying to avoid referencing. Talking points in hand, they did what they do best: repeat themselves. As if a “my body, my choice” argument is going to work on a guy who brags about grabbing countries by the assets.

Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller went further, openly questioning by what right Denmark even has a claim to Greenland over the US – like we’re talking about hotel stationary that’s assumed to be complimentary. It conveniently ignores the fact that in 1916, the US acquired the Danish West Indies – now the US Virgin Islands – as part of the deal that recognized Denmark’s rights to Greenland. But sure, that was over a century ago. Times change. Trump wants Greenland for national security. Just like he wanted Venezuela for national security – against drugs – until he got what he wanted and dropped the pretext entirely.

 

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 ‘Iran, Venezuela, and Greenland have what Trump wants’ – retired US Air Force Command chief master sergeant

 

 

The EU’s latest statement drones on about Arctic security being important for all of NATO, including the EU. Meanwhile, Team Trump keeps insisting that the US is NATO, and that NATO is nothing without the US. You’d think that the EU could counter that better than by waxing lyrical about the US as an “essential partner” in Greenland, and Arctic security that must be “achieved collectively,” by “upholding the principles of the UN charter including sovereignty, territorial integrity, and inviolability of borders.” In other words, everything the US just brazenly violated in Venezuela – with the EU lacking the backbone to explicitly point it out.

At the same time, the Europeans reassure themselves that Washington would never seize territory from a NATO country, because that would be unthinkable. Except that Trump keeps thinking it out loud, repeatedly, insisting that acquiring Greenland is non-negotiable. Rubio claims Trump wants to buy it, so it’s not like they’ll jump straight to invasion, he suggests. Only after negotiations fail, presumably.

And what is the US counting on? The EU blinking. Stephen Miller openly said there won’t be any military confrontation with NATO over Greenland. Why? “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” he said.

They’re starting to sound like the drunk guy at a bar who won’t take no for an answer. And Trump keeps acting this way because none of these European so-called leaders have the nerve to tell him off – even when it’s clearly in their own interest.

Congratulations, Eurobozos. The self-sabotaging strategy you’ve spent years perfecting – cheerfully riding shotgun on Washington’s regime-change superhighway at your own people’s expense – has now spectacularly boomeranged straight into the windshield of the driver’s seat of your own clown car.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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