The American coup de force in Caracas and the Maduro kidnapping marked yet another step in the Republican-MAGA party’s post-democratic roadmap. Naturally, as has become customary since January 20, 2025, the prerogatives of Congress were trampled, the pacifist will of the American people violated, the so-called promises of a new American isolationism reneged upon, and the democratic legitimacy of the military—once again deployed for illegal ends—shaken to its core.
One might have hoped to find a shred of comfort by dipping into the rich neoconservative tradition of messianic interventionism. Indeed, it was seemingly Marco Rubio—that vestige of the old Republican Party— who led and encouraged the American President into this Caribbean escalation, while Lindsey Graham must have been elated as well. Within that matrix of thought, after all, the Maduro regime was a cancer on its own people. An old, non-inclusive pseudo-democracy, subject to the whims of predatory elites, was replaced after Chavez’s rise by a Bolivarian republic that was every bit as corrupt, but with the added paramilitarization of institutions and an epic level of managerial decay, all leading to the decomposition of the oil industry. Such a cocktail was bound to explode at the first economic downturn.
And when that downturn hit in late 2014 as Saudi Arabia opened the oil valves, the disaster was unprecedented in Latin American history: more than 8 million Venezuelans fled a failed, bankrupt state in an economic and humanitarian catastrophe seldom seen in the absence of war. It created countless long-term repercussions, from the explosion of human trafficking to the return to power in Chile of Pinochet-admirers who exploited anti-migrant sentiment. One could, therefore, have held one’s nose and told oneself that if all this resulted in a political transition, at least the Venezuelans would come out winners.
The problem, obviously—one that a 7-year-old could spot—is the following: why would an administration hellbent on dismantling at home a 250-year-old democratic regime suddenly pine for the principles of popular sovereignty abroad? Trump, vulgarly honest for once —a sign of dementia, perhaps?—, cleared things up immediately: this is a neocolonial power grab, nothing more. As long as the hated socialist militias agree to kick their cut back to Chevron and Republican donors, everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. As for the Venezuelan Miss Piggy who dared steal the Nobel Peace Prize promised to His Highness The Donald, let her rot in Oslo eating Surströmming.
Drunk on his own power, and all giddy at having played with his favorite toy—the US military—Trump then announced point-blank that he was going to “take care of the cartels in Mexico,” that deposing Colombia’s democratically elected leftist President Gustavo Petro (”that drug addict”) was “a good idea,” that “Cuba was next on the list,” and that he would “deal with Greenland in two months.”
Obviously, throwing Mexico and Colombia—democracies, however imperfect—into the same sentence as a demonetized, autocratic post-Castro regime is appalling. However, it is the question of Greenland that is the most critical. Beyond our perspective as Europeans, I consider this to be, by far, the most crucial immediate question for the future of international relations; for the implications it holds regarding China, Taiwan, Europe, and Ukraine. But also for the future of the United States. Because if the Rubicon is crossed on this occasion, it will likely be a point of no return.
Unlike Cuba or Venezuela - hostile regimes - or Colombia and Mexico - imperfect democracies partially aligned with the USA -, and as everyone knows by now, Greenland is an allied territorial entity on which the US Military has been allowed to operate ever since 1941. An autonomous territory associated with the Kingdom of Denmark. It is no longer a member of the European Union but remains a stakeholder in NATO. It is, therefore, a territory covered by the Washington Treaty, under the sovereignty of a US ally—historically, a stalwart one, at that.
Any American aggression on this territory—whether grotesquely made up as a so-called “police operation”, Russian-style with an American rendition of the “Little Green Men” playbook, or openly declared—is liable to trigger an invocation of Article 5 by Denmark. At that moment, and although this famous Article 5 is written in far vaguer terms than popular belief imagines, there are three framework scenarios (and very few intermediate alternatives, I fear):
1. European countries answer the Article 5 call and are now in a state of potential belligerence with the United States. NATO is thus activated against its principal member—a net loss, of course. The extent of this belligerence depends on the terms of Denmark’s activation. The most likely case is a call for solidarity against an aggressive external power without a call for kinetic retaliation: sanctions, asset freezes, boycotts, perhaps symbolic maneuvers in Greenlandic territorial waters. In exchange for European powerlessness regarding the fait accompli, the USA is henceforth considered an ENEMY country by the majority of European public opinion (and no longer just on discussion forums or in the editorials of Le Monde Diplomatique), and political pressure to expel Americans from their European bases becomes overwhelming. It is a dizzying leap into the unknown, and the greatest upheaval in international relations since 1989.
2. Paralyzed by their powerlessness, the EU states do not answer Denmark’s call, or content themselves with stiff diplomatic statements. NATO collapses like a house of cards and is consequently de facto dead. But this is also a violation of the mutual defense clause of Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union. This denial of solidarity at the most critical moment deals a possibly fatal blow to the EU. The “every man for himself” mentality and general panic benefit nationalists who sweep the board everywhere, dismantling the EU in a succession of power plays ranging from institutional boycotts to unconstitutional unilateral exits. Major economic and financial chaos ensues. Taking advantage of the shock, far-right regimes denounce the Human Rights Convention en masse, opening the door to an unimaginable regression of civil liberties. Paranoia wins out—between Germany and Poland, Hungary and Romania, the UK and Ireland. It is a dizzying leap into the unknown, and the greatest upheaval in international relations since 1989, once again. The ultranationalists and American techno-fascists rejoice: their plan has been executed to perfection.
Such a scenario is no longer theoretical. It is no longer merely conceivable. It is now probable. Democrats in all countries continue to judge the European far-right through the lens of rationality and shock, pretending to believe that there is a limit, a red line, a moment where responsibility and a semblance of morality will reclaim their rights and where, finally, compromise can be reached. This is false. It is astounding to see so many top-tier officials still failing to take Trump’s threats—and the hate-factory that is the MAGA movement—literally, believing it is possible to appease them. If Trump says he wants Greenland, he will make sure he gets it. And this is precisely the wish of Stephen Miller, the regime’s Vichyite ghoul, who is maneuvering on this crucial issue while Rubio pilots imperialism in Latin America. Unless the American Congress suddenly remembers, at the 11th hour, the reason for its election.
3. Denmark finally relents, and settles for a transfer of power to the USA, perhaps kindly and covertly advised by its fellow EU members despite public showings of solidarity. It gives another imperialist win to the Trumpist regime and even more fuel to continue to strike against the EU in all possible ways, in what is already shaping into one more hybrid war. Discouraged and demoralized by the magnitude of its impotence, the EU finishes engulfed in the same nationalist fire aforementioned anyway, and ends up not that far from the catastrophic scenario envisioned. Of course, NATO is all but dead in this scenario as well —and for real this time— since, there is no concious possibility for coordination on part of the European nations with a rogue state as the United States.
The US Constitution has been straw breathing since the beginning of 2025. Violations of the separation of powers have been innumerable; Congress has liquidated itself, proving that the Republican Party’s true project behind the deluge of propaganda and oligarch money was indeed compliant with a reactionary and neo-Vichyite agenda all along. However, the acute phase of the constitutional crisis has been delayed by several factors, both positive and negative.
First, the American federal system acts as an antibody. The centralization of power essential for tipping into a repressive state cannot be completed just yet, though MAGA forces are pushing to nullify the rights of recalcitrant States on everything from public order to abortion to election organization; not forgetting, of course, the Sword of Damocles that is the Insurrection Act. Second, the courts have almost unanimously played their role in defending the Rule of Law at this stage—including Republican judges appointed during Trump I—although their judgments are barely, if at all, executed by the administration. Alternative sources of legitimacy therefore remain. Finally, the Supreme Court has bent itself over backwards in order to avoid the dreaded “Test Case” that would frontally oppose the legal branch and the executive on a fundamental policy question. By wallowing in the pseudo-theory of the Unitary Executive and abusing the Shadow Docket, the Supreme Court, contrary to lower court rulings, has been handing numerous victories to the regime. And, in doing so, seeking to delay the “litmus case” moment where pretenses can no longer be maintained.
An attack on Greenland would represent one of such potential litmus tests.
The North Atlantic Treaty holds immense symbolic status, making it a prime target for post-democrats. In response to Trump’s increasing transgressions during his first term, the United States Senate took steps to bolster legislative safeguards regarding this treaty. Indeed, unlike European legal systems—where a treaty holds a status superior to domestic law, or is even equivalent or indeed superior (as in the Netherlands) to the Constitution, and generally cannot be easily revoked—in the US, a treaty holds a status equivalent to federal statute, and nothing more. Furthermore, ambiguity exists regarding the power to denounce these treaties, lying between the Senate (where a law repudiating the treaty passed by a simple majority supersedes said treaty, regardless of international law) and the President (who possesses a discretionary power of withdrawal developed since the 1970s).
The Senate, fearing a future unilateral act in the event of Trump’s return, conferred special protection upon the North Atlantic Treaty, stripping the President of the power of denunciation and placing any revocation behind the barrier of a two-thirds Senate vote—analogous to the threshold required to convict the occupant of the White House in an Impeachment trial. This lock of 66 votes required to denounce the treaty, passed by an overwhelming majority in the Senate (85-15), explicitly aimed to make NATO an object whose value rises far above common federal law, making it quasi-assimilable, in the current context of political polarization, to a de facto constitutional law.
An attack on Greenland would force this lock and shatter it into a thousand pieces, placing the will of Congress and that of the Executive in frontal opposition. If, in such a scenario, Senators decided once again to let the fait accompli unfold, then one could conclude:
1. That the pro-Atlantic consensus—which ran through the Senate, all branches of the military, intelligence services, and media—was eventually incapable, for all its grand pledges of allegiance, of protecting American institutions from a handful of vandals committed to destroying American ties based on alliances and shared values in favor of a logic of predation, domination and scorched earth. There would be no hope left for reconciliation for European countries; the United States alliance would have to be considered irretrievably lost due to the inconsequence of its elites, even if civil society absolutely do not wish for this separation, from both sides of the Atlantic. We must not forget that the hatred of Europe screamed by the current power is the work of a noisy minority, but a minority nonetheless. That they might succeed despite everything, through pure threat, intimidation, and coercion, would be a historic embolism of the system.
2. That if the President is capable of ignoring with impunity such a strong act of the US Senate—barely two years old and marked by rare bipartisan consensus—the consequences would be dizzying. Beyond its singular, “supra-legal” value explained above, this North Atlantic Treaty, even protected by a two-thirds majority, remains... a law. If the Executive arrogates to itself the power to declare null, or violate through action, any text submitted to a vote and approved by the legislature, then nothing remains of a functional democracy. Such an act would mark, in reality, an irreversible step forward in the ongoing crime against the Constitution undertaken by the current administration. This is the slope desired by proponents of the famous Unitary Executive, who want a universal executive power and a total presidential regime—riggable at will, authoritarian if not outright autocratic, analogous to Azerbaijan, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, and perhaps soon enough, France, whose political woes do not bode well for the health of its institutions after 2027.
3. That the US Army is moribund and can no longer be considered a guardrail for American freedoms. Like any mafioso and malignant narcissist individual, Trump is obsessed with isolating his victims and submitting them through loyalty tests, eventually making them complicit in his crimes. The famous “rupture test,” which aims to break institutional (or spiritual, in the case of the individual) resistance by making them commit an irreparable crime. The loyalty of the armed forces is sworn to the Constitution and the Republic, not the Head of State. By ordering it to participate in aggression against an allied State under American law, the MAGA regime would force it to choose between insubordination (which Mark Kelly is desperately trying to remind high-ranking officers of), and to cross the Rubicon once and for all of the decisive crime against US law. How does one return from this point of no return regarding martial law? How many purges are to come (on top of those already carried out in deafening silence), of officers refusing to betray their oath?
The resulting outbreak of European hostility is also welcome for American ultranationalists. It would allow them to further enrage their sectarian base, multiply sanctions and restrictions targeting a mix of politicians and European companies, and sever as brutally as possible any link between the civil societies of the two regions, in order to isolate the American population from the rest of the “free” world and render it more vulnerable. The terminus is clearly specified in Project 2025: the establishment of an authoritarian regime based on a state of exception, and as Russell Vought threatened in August 2024, the recourse to violence in case of dissent.
To avoid brinkmanship, there is a solution aimed at stripping Trump of the ability to once again outpace institutions and present them with a fait accompli. The Senate could vote to preemptively prohibit any military action, open or covert, against a member of the alliance, unless expressly authorized by the country in question or by the Senate itself—which, until proven otherwise, holds the constitutional right to declare war. That such legislation is necessary gives an idea of the absurd situation in which a pro-Atlantic consensus —once again, representing an OVERWHELMING majority both the political personel and the population—, finds itself. However, this is no accident: this escalation of tension around Greenland is precisely sought after by the architects of chaos since they know that through this pressure point, they can deliver a battering ram blow to the two adversaries they have sworn to dismantle : the European Union and the democracy of the United States. It creates an instant political crisis between the Senate and the White House, with all the usual threats, anathemas, and insults. But better a politico-media maelstrom allowing, in the heart of winter, to slow down or even block the march of the administration’s Vichy faction in a context where polls show clear unpopularity for the Trump II term— than a civilizational crisis at the turn of spring.
It seems, then, that Europe has two months to prepare for a crisis of vertigo, or for the US Congress to grasp the gravity of what is being played out here. Backing down is no longer possible; the stakes are no longer about dropping one’s trousers on tariffs or the liquidation of the multilateral trade regime. We are arriving at the edge of the cliff— precisely where the most enraged among the American far-right, the neo-Nazi flirters (the likes of Stephen Miller, Curtis Yarvin, Steve Bannon, joined along the way by Elon Musk), have been trying to take us for 10 years, against the deep will of the people. If this ultimate red line, after so many others opportunely forgotten, is also abandoned, then Pandora’s box will be definitively opened, on both sides of the Atlantic.