The American blitz in Venezuela – the military operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his transfer to the United States to stand trial – was sold by the White House as an act of ‘justice’ against a narco-regime. But in the US domestic and international debate, the crux immediately became another: without an international mandate, without congressional approval and without a clear title of self-defence, the action is read by many as a violation of sovereignty and a precedent that wears down the norms of co-existence between states.

The precedent, however, does not remain confined to power relations (or dominance, we should say) between the United States and the rest of the Americas. In the space of a few hours Donald Trump has done what every ‘revisionist power’ (to use a category that the 2017 US National Security Strategy, during Trump’s first term, used to classify Russia and China) does when it feels wind in its sails: he has broadened the horizon. At a press conference yesterday, 4 January 2026, he reiterated that the US ‘needs’ Greenland ‘for defence reasons’, going so far as to link the request to the Venezuelan show of force. In Copenhagen and Nuuk the reply was blunt: no more threats, Greenland is not for sale.

The connection between Caracas and Nuuk is political before being geographical. If a Western ally normalises the unilateral use of force to ‘correct’ an undesirable regime, with what authority will it ask Beijing not to ‘solve’ the Taiwan issue, or Moscow not to ‘put in order’ the European borders? International law, when it becomes optional, does not punish the wicked: it weakens the just. And Europe is the first potential collateral target.

This is why Greenland is not an Arctic oddity. It is a test of European maturity. If the Europeans want to maintain political and strategic control over that piece of the world – Arctic corridor, radar platform, reserve of critical minerals – they must do what France proposed months ago: a European military presence on the island, even a symbolic one, deployed alongside Denmark.

It is not a question of ‘challenging’ the United States, but of making credible the European unwillingness to submit to Trump’s mindless Arctic appetite. A small European contingent, with the French, Germans, Italians and Danes, and with a key British component, would have an effect out of all proportion to numbers: it would raise the political cost of any pressure, turn any ambiguity into a confrontation with Europe as a whole, and remove oxygen from the narrative that only the US can guarantee security in the Arctic.

APPROACH: Read the French Arctic Defence Strategy of 19 July 2025 here

There is also a deeper, and more uncomfortable, reason. A European contingent in Greenland would be a curb not only on territorial pressures, but on a political temptation: that of treating Europe as a patchwork to be divided, bargained with and disciplined, turning the Union into a collection of client states – useful as a market, irrelevant as a subject. The common presence would change the game: it would make any pressure on Copenhagen a pressure on the whole of Europe, and remove the space for bilateral diplomacy as an instrument of disunity. In other words: it is not just military deterrence, it is political immunity.

In the end, the Venezuelan lesson is not that force works. We already knew that. It is that force, when uncontained, creates new appetites. If Europe wants to avoid the next ‘brilliant operation’ being imagined on its maps, it must stop merely deploring. It must preside.