Nina Haase
DW Chief Political Correspondent
So, William, you did work at NATO for a couple of years. You were in Brussels. Did you ever think that we would ever reach a situation where we would, in all earnestness, all seriousness, discuss the possibility of one NATO ally as big as the US invading another ally?
William Alberque
Security Analyst, Pacific Forum
Well, I have to say, part of my time there — I was there from 2012 to 2020 — so I was there for the first Trump administration. And the bigger fear was that Trump was going to withdraw from NATO. He had said that out loud, and one of the things about when he came back for the second term was he was going to settle scores. And so, you know, a lot of us thought that that was part of the unfinished business. And looking at the situation with Greenland, it was hard not to look at that as potentially Trump trying to force the issue, trying to force, because if he did take Greenland by force, it would be the end of NATO. And so maybe this was sort of a passive way, because he knew that if he just told Congress he was going to withdraw, they would… even the Republicans would slow him down or stop him. So, this was probably a backdoor way of doing it. And so, you know, with at least the temporary news of the prevention of that happening, that’s very good news. But there have been conflicts between NATO allies before. There was the fisheries war, where allies did shoot at each other. There was Greece versus Turkey over Cyprus, and that was a brutal war of conquest, you know, between NATO allies that caused a huge rift, but managed to, you know, NATO managed to survive that. So, on the one hand, I did expect strange things to happen with NATO during this term, never over Greenland. That was a real surprise. But, unfortunately, we are just in this era of complete uncertainty with where the US is going, and so we have to continue to watch it really carefully. And it’s an important game of diplomacy that’s happening right now.
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