On 26 January in Brussels NATO secretary‑general Mark Rutte delivered a blunt message to members of the European Parliament: without American military backing, Europe cannot reliably defend itself. He warned that any European attempt at independent defence would require a dramatic rise in spending — to roughly 10 percent of GDP, by his estimate — and that Europe would forfeit the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
Rutte’s remarks come amid renewed public tensions between Washington and its NATO allies over the strategic future of Greenland and pointed comments by U.S. president Donald Trump about allied performance in the Afghanistan war. Trump has complained that some NATO partners “stayed off the front lines,” while he and Rutte met in Davos last week and discussed a framework for Arctic cooperation that drew immediate rebukes from Copenhagen.
Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, publicly insisted Rutte had no authority to negotiate on behalf of Denmark or Greenland, underscoring how delicate territory and sovereignty questions are in the high north. The dispute has amplified long‑standing anxieties in European capitals about an unpredictable American president and about whether transatlantic security can be taken for granted.
Rutte also moved to reassure Washington: he told Trump he could expect allies to stand by the United States if it were attacked. Yet his public counsel to European politicians — “keep dreaming” if you think Europe can go it alone — hardened the debate over strategic autonomy and served as a reminder that defence industrialisation and force generation would be politically and economically painful.
The immediate significance is twofold. First, NATO cohesion comes under pressure whenever allied leaders appear closer to one another than to their own electorates; perceptions that Rutte and Trump are unusually aligned have fuelled domestic criticism across Europe. Second, the Greenland row spotlights the Arctic’s increasing geopolitical value as warming seas and new shipping routes attract great‑power interest and complicate allied diplomacy.
Longer term, the episode exposes an awkward strategic arithmetic for Europe: national defence budgets, procurement pipelines and deterrent capabilities are a generation of work away from substituting for U.S. power. That reality will either push European states toward deeper defence integration and higher spending, with all the political headaches that entails, or toward a pragmatic acceptance that NATO — warts and all — remains the linchpin of continental security.