Cue France, Britain or Germany sending troops to do “symbolic” military exercises with Denmark, to “discourage” Donald Trump from annexing Greenland. Symbolic being the key word. Because let’s be serious for half a second—just half. Europe is already under American military occupation. The main army stationed on European soil is not French, not German, not Danish. It’s American. And it operates under NATO, that famous “alliance” where everyone salutes and one country gives the orders.

So when Trump says he wants Greenland, he isn’t announcing a rupture. He’s reading the minutes out loud. Greenland is already militarily occupied by the United States. The biggest base there is American. The Americans could arrest French soldiers on Greenland before Macron finishes his press conference. This isn’t provocation. It’s disclosure.

What panics Europe isn’t Greenland. It’s precedent.

For exemple France knows how this story goes—because it wrote half the earlier chapters. A state stitched together by slavery, colonial conquest, and overseas micro-territories suddenly realizes the imperial big brother might start shopping in its backyard. If Greenland can be taken—or “negotiated,” or “economically aligned,” or whatever euphemism is trending—why not Martinique? Réunion? New Caledonia? When Trump knocks on Denmark’s door, French elites hear footsteps in their own hallway.

This is the real late awakening: the realization that neocolonialism does not come with loyalty rewards. Vassals don’t get insurance policies.

And let’s not pretend Trump is improvising. This is a well-rehearsed strategy: manufacture a crisis, then sell the compromise. We’ve seen it with tariffs—threaten 100%, settle at 15%, declare victory. Europe protests, then signs. With Greenland, the playbook is identical. Loud threat. Moral outrage. Symbolic troop movements. Then economic pressure. No war. No rupture. Happy ending—American style. Greenland stays “Danish,” but its resources suddenly speak fluent English.

Meanwhile, Europe clutches international law like a comfort blanket it only remembers when convenient. Threatening to buy or seize territory violates the “rules-based order” the West claims to uphold—except when it doesn’t. Except when it’s Iraq. Or Libya. Or Palestine. Or Congo. Or Haiti. Or, inconveniently, Greenland itself.

And speaking of colonial amnesia: watching European leaders rush to “defend Denmark” over Greenland is surreal. Denmark’s record in Greenland includes forced sterilizations of Inuit women, the removal of children from their families, and decades of social engineering so brutal that elderly women today still say, “I never understood why I couldn’t have children.” Supporting Denmark’s “ownership” of Greenland without centering Inuit voices is not anti-imperialism. It’s colonialism with better PR.

Remembering and paraphrasing my friend and elder Tété-Michel Kpomassie, (as it appears in different translations of An African in Greenland): “I did not go to Greenland to discover a land, but to meet a people—and I found human beings where others had only seen ice.”
The real question is not whether Greenland should be Danish, European, or American. The real question—conveniently avoided—is: What do the Inuit want? Independence? Continued association? Something else entirely? And if Trump “buys” Greenland, who gets the money? The Danish state? That would be colonialism squared.

As Tété-Michel said it again well again and repeated to me: “The cold was not the hardest thing in Greenland. The hardest thing was realizing how invisible its people were to the world.”

But here’s the twist; when Greenland stops being European, some of us won’t cry. Because Europe’s sudden moral outrage is less about justice and more about losing exclusive access.

Trump, of course, doesn’t stop at Greenland. In the same breath, he proposes ethnic cleansing in Gaza—two million people displaced to create a Riviera for investors—and blames plane crashes on diversity. No evidence. No shame. Just noise. This isn’t madness. It’s strategy.

Steve Bannon explained it back in 2018: flood the zone. Three scandals a day. Overwhelm the public. Kill critical thinking by saturation. By the time you process the last outrage, the next one is already law, policy, or profit.

So yes, feeling stunned is normal. That’s the point.

Greenland isn’t a scandal. It’s a stress test. It reveals structural racism, colonial continuity, and the hierarchy of power that Europe pretends ended in 1945. Trump isn’t breaking the system. He’s saying the quiet parts out loud.

And Europe doesn’t know whether to laugh, protest, or salute—because for the first time in a long time, the mirror is facing the right direction.