Europe must now tell Trump that enough is enough – and cut all ties with the US | Alexander Hurst

‘HWe keep encouraging me… to choose between Europe and the United States. It would be a strategic mistake for our country,” Keir Starmer said in response to Ed Davey’s question in the House of Commons last week about whether US action against Greenland would mean the end of NATO.

But what about Europe? As Danish and Greenlandic ministers prepared to face JD Vance at the White House, the question was whether Europe finally choose between Europe and the United States? Will its leaders have the courage to tell the whole truth – that the United States is not just abandoning its allies and destroying the international order, but now finds itself in a position of active and hostile predation by force – and, more importantly, to act accordingly? Offer Denmark moral and material support and Greenland a future of self-determination and membership, rather than submitting to the plunder of American resources?

Donald Trump has already set the tone by asserting that the United States will take Greenland “one way or another,” and no part of the triumvirate surrounding him is trying to hide its imperial intentions anymore. Not the nepotists and swindlers who amass ever-greater private fortunes. It is not the ideologues of white supremacy who are inspired by Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer! to publish “One homeland. One people. One heritage”, via the official social media accounts of the US government. Not the techno-nihilists who salivate at the prospect of exploiting all of Greenland’s mineral resources and ruling their own neofeudal city-states on its coast.

When Trump says that the only constraint on his exercise of power is “my own morality,” he means there is no constraint. Like Vladimir Putin, he will continue to hoard until someone puts a limit on him.

The truth is that Maga’s grand design for a new American empire has never been more hidden. In the final months of the 2024 US presidential election, unknown maps began to go viral in the Magasphere. These maps are all in some way derived from a movement in the 1930s that sought to create what it called the Technate of America, a union of most of North America and part of South America under the power and control of the United States. The “technate” would extend south from Greenland, through Canada, Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela, to French Guiana (a French department in its own right obstructing the “Donroe Doctrine”).

So what can Europe do, as this crazy historical fantasy moves closer to reality? How can we maintain a space of democracy and the rule of law in a world which is rapidly returning to imperialism, oligarchy and the State of power alone? Only by building around it a protective moat of federalism.

If the United States actually attacks Denmark by invading Greenland and declares war on the EU, a treaty-bound defensive alliance, history’s hand will be forced. Europe should both expand and restructure to become a defense and intelligence union that absorbs non-NATO countries. Such a situation would require the seizure of U.S. military bases from Germany to Spain, individual sanctions against a wide range of U.S. government officials, broad sanctions on the U.S. economy, and an unabashed expansion of the “carbon border tax” across all sectors. There would surely be pressure not to stop there, but to use the EU’s anti-coercion instrument to ban X and other major US technology companies and accelerate the replacement of US-controlled payment infrastructure with European systems and a digital euro.

And if the United States does not attack Denmark, Europe’s best chance of surviving as a free and open continent in an imperial world remains to force a break with the United States, suffer the consequences, and impose federalism. anyway. Whatever emerges from today’s meeting at the White House, it is time for Europe to tell the United States to leave its European military bases, throw off the yoke of American tech billionaires, launch concerted action to fund public media as a form of information defense – and perhaps even expand the Erasmus program to a general-purpose European civil service body. Anything short of the actual fight must be considered, because “Annexation of Greenland” is a symptom of American fascism, and more will follow.

A generous interpretation of how Europe’s political leaders spent the past year is that they played for time to prepare. A more critical reading is that they naively tried to avoid the costs of breaking with Trump and now their time is up, and there is no option that is free. We can either choose the crisis and the cost of this historic rupture, or be subject to the crises and costs that the United States will choose for us. But our window of choice is narrowing. Trump, Vance, Steve Bannon and others are explicit that they will propel anti-EU far-right parties into power whenever possible, with the goal (shared with Putin) of blowing up the EU from within.

By boldly detaching itself from the United States now, visibly and decisively, Europe could even provoke a shock of resuscitation within the ailing American democratic body. Only Americans can save their country from a descent into something even uglier and deadlier than what we are already witnessing. But for everyone’s sake, including their own, Europe must cut the cord now and not follow them into the storm.

• Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir, Generation Desperation, is published this month