The end of the European Union is nigh: Greenland proves it

LET us dispense with euphemisms. If the United States can openly contemplate—and operationally coerce—the acquisition of Greenland, and the European Union can do little more than issue statements, then the end of the European Union as a serious political project is not approaching.

It is already here.

Greenland is not an abstraction. It is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a member of the European Union.

When a superpower treats a European territory as a strategic commodity—rare earths, Arctic routes, missile defence—and Europe responds with procedural caution and legalese, the verdict is clear: sovereignty inside the EU is conditional, not guaranteed.

This is not a failure of capacity alone. It is a failure of will, imagination, and courage.

The EU has spent decades perfecting regulation while subcontracting power.

It outsourced its ultimate security to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which in practice means outsourcing it to Washington.

When the patron turns predator, the client has no recourse.

Denmark, faced with American pressure over Greenland, stands essentially alone.

The rest of Europe hides behind the comforting fiction that this is a bilateral matter, or worse, a misunderstanding. There is no misunderstanding.

The message from Washington—under President Donald Trump—is brutally simple: territory matters again, power decides, and alliances are transactional.

Europe hears this message and pretends not to understand it.

This is why the EU is finished as a geopolitical actor.

A union that cannot defend one of its members from coercion by its own ally is not a union. It is a marketplace with a flag.

Strategic autonomy has been reduced to a conference theme, while European leaders continue to behave as if history has ended and force is an embarrassment best left to others.

The Greenland episode exposes the EU’s fatal contradiction.

It wants the moral authority of a civilizational project without paying the costs of power.

It wants rules without enforcement, norms without deterrence, solidarity without sacrifice. In a world reverting to spheres of influence, this is not idealism—it is negligence.

What follows is fragmentation. If Greenland can be bargained over, why should the Baltics feel secure?

Why should southern Europe trust northern Europe? Why should any member believe that article-like solidarity exists outside paper declarations? Once coercion succeeds at the margins, the centre cannot hold.

The end of the EU will not come with a treaty collapse or a dramatic exit. It will come quietly, through irrelevance.

Europe will remain rich, regulated, and well-intentioned—but strategically mute.

Greenland will be remembered as the moment when it became undeniable that Europe could neither say no to America nor protect its own.

In that sense, the American acquisition of Greenland—whether formal or de facto—is not just a territorial shift.

It is the obituary of the European Union as a meaningful political entity in a world that has returned, unapologetically, to power, force, and maps.

Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is Professor of ASEAN Studies and Director of the Institute of Internationaliation and ASEAN Studies (IINTAS) at the International Islamic University Malaysia.

Luthfy Hamzah is Senior Research Fellow at IINTAS and a specialist in trade, political economy, and strategic diplomacy in Northeast Asia.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.