Why US Ambitions in Greenland Are Hurting Ukraine
The high stakes security summit in Paris, designed to cement a post war framework for Ukraine, has been destabilized by Washington's sudden and aggressive geopolitical pivots to the Western Hemisphere and the Arctic. While French President Emmanuel Macron successfully convened an unprecedented "coalition of the willing" comprising 27 heads of state to forge "concrete commitments," the American delegation's attention has fractured. The recent US military extraction of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela has pulled key figures like Secretary of State Marco Rubio away from the table, leaving a diplomatic void. Simultaneously, President Trump’s renewed demands for control over Greenland have sparked a diplomatic row with Denmark and the broader EU, forcing European leaders to defend their own territorial sovereignty at the very moment they are pleading for US backing to defend Ukraine’s.
Inside the Elysée Palace, the operational reality of the proposed security guarantees is facing severe headwinds. With the US distracted, the burden of deterring future Russian aggression falls heavily on European powers, specifically nuclear armed states like France and the UK, alongside the economic weight of Germany under Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The summit’s agenda which includes deploying a multinational force to monitor a potential ceasefire is colliding with the Kremlin’s absolute refusal to accept NATO troops on Ukrainian soil. President Zelenskyy has candidly admitted that "not everyone is ready" to commit boots on the ground, a hesitation likely exacerbated by the lack of focused American pressure. Without a unified, singular front, the coalition risks offering only "soft" support (intelligence and weaponry) rather than the hard security guarantees Kyiv deems essential for survival.
This summit illustrates a dangerous new asymmetry in the transatlantic alliance. Europe finds itself in a precarious balancing act: desperate for the US military might required to enforce a peace deal with Russia, yet compelled to publicly rebuke Washington’s expansionist rhetoric regarding Greenland. This geopolitical dissonance weakens the collective bargaining position against Moscow. As long as the US administration treats European sovereignty in the Arctic as negotiable while prioritizing its own "New World Order" in the Americas, the cohesion required to force a comprehensive settlement in Ukraine remains elusive, potentially reducing the Paris talks from a historic treaty event to a mere diplomatic holding pattern.