When NATO Threatens Itself
For decades, Greece made a simple but powerful argument during periods of heightened tension with Turkey: it was unacceptable for one NATO member to threaten another. Whatever the disputes, the alliance was supposed to operate under shared rules, mutual restraint and, ultimately, American arbitration. If things ever spiralled out of control, Washington would step in.
That belief rested on a deeper assumption—that Greece belonged to “the West”. Not merely as a geopolitical label, but as part of a rules-based alliance with a shared strategic direction. Even during moments of greater autonomy, such as under Andreas Papandreou’s governments, Western alignment remained a constant.
After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, it seemed that history itself had resolved the question. The world, we were told, had become Western.
Today, that certainty looks dangerously outdated.
We have reached the extraordinary point where a NATO member, Denmark, fears for its territorial integrity—not from an external adversary, but from another NATO member. And not just any member. The threat, at least at the level of presidential rhetoric, comes from the alliance’s hegemonic power: the United States itself, whose president has openly floated the idea of acquiring Greenland.
The fact that this scenario is even discussed as a geopolitical possibility—rather than dismissed as a bad joke—speaks volumes.
A Crisis Larger Than Trump
If the United States were to seize territory belonging to another NATO country, the alliance would not merely face a crisis. It would lose its meaning. NATO cannot survive the normalisation of internal coercion.
This is not, of course, the first—or even the deepest—crisis of the West. The war in Ukraine offers another revealing example. For a long period, the US led the push for sustained support to Kyiv. Then American policy shifted. Washington began negotiating directly with Moscow, on terms more favourable to Russia, while demanding that European allies shoulder a far greater share of the economic burden.
The message was unmistakable: solidarity is conditional.
Nor is the fracture confined to security. Europe narrowly avoided a full-blown trade war with the US, but the fact that it came so close underscores how fragile the alliance has become. Economic interdependence, once a stabilising force, is increasingly weaponised.
These dynamics help explain the growing unease across the Western camp. It manifests either as calls for Europe to assume greater strategic autonomy—or as anxious efforts to secure American favour. Neither response fully addresses the underlying problem.
The West’s Crisis Is Structural, Not Personal
The temptation is to frame this moment as the product of one disruptive US president. That is a comforting illusion.
The real problem is not a single leader or administration. It is that the West has been in crisis for years.
The moment of Western “victory” after the collapse of the USSR was not followed by a serious assumption of responsibility for building a global order governed by shared rules. Instead, after 9/11, the so-called “war on terror” became a pretext for a mix of imperial arrogance and open cynicism. Entire regions were pushed into chaos. In many parts of the world, anti-Western sentiment ceased to be ideological and became almost instinctive.
The West failed to construct an international economic architecture capable of preventing trade wars or offering meaningful opportunities to the Global South. Instead, globalisation became synonymous with asymmetry, dependency and recurring crises.
Institutions that once allowed for de-escalation and dialogue—most notably the United Nations—have been systematically undermined. Multilateralism has been hollowed out, often by the very powers that once championed it.
Western credibility has also eroded through selective morality. The West continues to align itself uncritically with figures such as Benjamin Netanyahu, despite growing global outrage and a clear rupture with international public opinion. Strategic loyalty increasingly trumps normative consistency.
Meanwhile, competition with China is allowed to escalate almost by default, without any serious effort to establish rules, red lines or a stable equilibrium. Rivalry drifts toward confrontation, absent a shared framework to contain it.
From Rules to Raw Power
What unites these failures is a steady abandonment of the idea that power should be constrained by rules. The West increasingly behaves not as a community of norms, but as a loose coalition of interests—sometimes overlapping, often conflicting.
This is why the Greenland episode matters far beyond Denmark. It is not about territory. It is about whether the West still believes in itself as a rules-based project—or whether it has quietly accepted a return to raw power politics, even within its own alliances.
If NATO can no longer guarantee that its strongest member will not coerce its weakest, then it ceases to be an alliance. It becomes a hierarchy.
Can the Decline Be Reversed?
Whether this trajectory can be reversed is an open question. Ending the war in Ukraine, for example, is necessary. But how it ends—and on whose terms—will define the future credibility of the West.
What is certain is that without change, the descent into fragmentation and instability will continue. A West that cannot restrain itself cannot expect the rest of the world to accept its leadership.
The choice is stark: rebuild a rules-based order with real commitments and shared responsibility—or accept that “the West” is no longer a coherent political reality, but merely a fading memory.