"If you take [Greenland], we take every single base of the Americans from Aviano to Ramstein, from Romania, to all the other military bases will be confiscated, and you will lose it, and the whole position of American power since World War II, if you take Greenland, you have to leave,"

[...]

He then spoke directly to Miller, spelling out what he characterized as Europe's bargaining power. After chuckling to himself, Fehlinger said, "It's very simple, Mrs Miller, this is the leverage we have. You need the spaces for global power projection, you won't have it.

"And we can defend ourselves very well, and we will do that without the U.S. nuclear shield, without the U.S. troops in Europe, without the American bases. We will simply run the spaces ourselves, and we will run your boys home into Chicago and Ohio. And goodbye"

The upcoming address hinted that any aggression from the U.S. would be reciprocated by Europe, with Fehlinger cautioning, "You go extreme, we go extreme as well. Be sure about it."

Trump’s threats to impose economic costs on Denmark to take control of Greenland could also spur the European Union to deploy its trade defense arsenal. Trump has shown no aversion to the prospect of a broader trade war with Europe. But targeting Denmark with economic action likely won’t result in a quick win. Trump could impose tariffs directly targeting Danish exports, but the trade policy response will come from Brussels due to the European Union’s common external trade policy. Among the remedies in the European Commission’s toolbox is an “anti-coercion instrument,” specifically implemented in 2023 to deter and respond to economic coercion against individual member states. The European Union’s response could include targeted retaliatory tariffs and restrictions on foreign direct investment, financial markets, intellectual property rights, export controls, and more.

On Sunday, Paul warned that Trump’s “denigrating” saber-rattling is backfiring by alienating GOP lawmakers in Washington and people in Greenland.

“Let’s say you wanted to buy Greenland—and I’m not disputing that that might be something we might want,” the 63-year-old Kentucky senator said on ABC News’s This Week. “You don’t get there by angering and denigrating the people who live there and saying, ‘We’re going to march the Marines in and take it if you don’t sell it to us.’ It doesn’t make them very willing to sell to us.”

Paul continued, “So really, if your goal is somehow we’re going to rattle the saber, then they’re going to sell it to us, I think it’s having the opposite effect. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in Greenland for it, but you’d also be hard-pressed to find somebody in Washington who’s for a military invasion on either side of the aisle.”