‘We Could Remove All Our Soldiers’: Trump Threatens NATO’s Foundation Over Greenland at Ankara Summit

At the opening of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7, President Trump renewed his demand that Greenland be placed under US control, declaring it “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” and warned that Washington could “remove all of our soldiers out of Europe” if the territorial dispute is not resolved on American terms. The statement put the approximately 80,000 US troops stationed across European soil — the backbone of NATO’s deterrence posture for eight decades — in direct jeopardy over a bilateral land dispute with a fellow alliance member [1].

Trump separately criticized Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain for refusing to allow US forces to use their shared military bases for strikes on Iran, framing the refusals as a loyalty failure [5]. Reports during the summit indicated he had privately floated reducing US troop levels in Europe by one-third as a warning signal to the alliance [3]. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had announced tens of billions in new defense contracts ahead of the gathering — intended to demonstrate that allies were meeting Trump’s burden-sharing demands — but the pledges did not forestall fresh ultimatums from Washington [4].

Why It Sucks:

Conservatives

• NATO’s funding problem is real, and only pressure has produced results. Decades of diplomatic appeals failed to move most NATO members above the agreed 2-percent-of-GDP defense spending threshold. Trump’s pressure campaign — including the credible threat of troop reductions — is the only approach that has produced substantial allied budget movement in a generation [4, 5].
• Allies’ refusal to grant base access for Iran strikes was a genuine solidarity failure. When the United States needed access to jointly maintained military facilities to strike Iran following attacks on American forces and civilian shipping, most major European partners said no. Trump’s demand for accountability on that decision is a reasonable response inside an alliance built on mutual obligation [3, 5].
• Greenland’s strategic value is legitimate, even if the leverage is debatable. The island commands the Arctic corridor used by Russian nuclear submarines to reach the Atlantic. US strategic interest in Greenland is grounded in real long-term defense calculations — even if threatening to remove all European troops over Denmark’s refusal conflates two entirely separate issues [1, 2].

Progressives/Democrats

• Conditional Article 5 is not Article 5. NATO’s deterrent value depends entirely on certainty. Threatening to withdraw 80,000 troops from Europe unless Denmark cedes Greenland tells every adversary — starting with Russia — that US security commitments carry a negotiable price that can change without warning [1, 6].
• Linking defense guarantees to territorial demands is coercion of an ally. Denmark is a founding NATO member whose citizens have served alongside US forces for eight decades. Using their sovereign territory as a bargaining chip introduces a coercive precedent that corrodes the foundational principle of collective, unconditional defense [2, 5].
• Trump’s criticism of allies on Iran defies how alliances actually function. Sovereign nations declining to allow offensive strikes from their territory under domestic political constraints is sovereignty, not disloyalty. Conditioning continued defense guarantees on permission to conduct offensive operations is the logic of a protection arrangement, not a mutual defense alliance [3, 5].

European NATO Members

• New spending commitments have bought no certainty whatsoever. Mark Rutte announced tens of billions in fresh defense contracts hours before Trump renewed withdrawal threats. European governments have substantially increased defense budgets since 2022, yet face the same ultimatums — evidence the demands are open-ended and not tied to any achievable threshold [4, 5].
• The Greenland ultimatum sets a precedent that threatens every member state. If the United States can demand territory from a NATO ally as the price of security guarantees, every European government must now ask whether its own assets or geography could someday be next. The precedent is more alarming than any single troop withdrawal threat [1, 2].
• Defense planning across the continent now has no reliable floor. Trump’s internal discussion of a one-third troop reduction in Europe — alongside his public “remove all soldiers” statement — has injected paralyzing uncertainty into military planning from the Baltic states to Poland to Germany. Countries that share a border with Russia cannot build a credible defense posture on a security guarantee that can evaporate over a Greenland dispute [3, 6].

Sources & Citations:

[1] CNBC: Trump renews Greenland threats at NATO summit, says U.S. could remove troops from Europe
[2] Time: Trump Says Greenland ‘Should Be Controlled by the U.S.’ as He Criticizes NATO Alliance at Summit
[3] CNN: Trump mused about cutting troops in Europe by a third to send a message to NATO
[4] Al Jazeera: Updates: Trump, NATO leaders in Turkiye’s Ankara as defence tops agenda
[5] NPR: Trump’s NATO pressure campaign continues as summit begins
[6] Stars and Stripes: Trump warns US could withdraw troops from Europe over Greenland dispute