Let’s imagine that the United States definitively decide that the Greenland It represents an too important strategic interest to stay Danish. No negotiations: simply, American troops land, occupy key infrastructures and announce that “for global safety” – read: for arctic routes and mining deposits – a “stable garrison” is required.
At that point, someone could remember theArticle 5 of the NATO Treatywhat imposes the mutual defense in the event of an attack on a Member State. Greenland is Danish territory. Denmark is in NATO. An attack on its territory should activate the military solidarity of the allies. But what happens when the attacker is a Member State, given that the rule does not contemplate this hypothesis? In 1939, while Europe was on the edge of the catastrophe, a similar debate agitated the western chancelleries: to die from gdi? Did it really worth entering the war for a “peripheral” city, for a fair cause, but politically uncomfortable?
Today, the question would be similar: to die for Nuk, a semi-autonomous arctic colony, far from everything except from American geostrategic interests? The answer would probably be the same as then and it would be found once again that international law works well until it touches the interests of the strongest. In fact, we did not die from gdi, if not too late, and Today nobody would die for Greenland. Not because the principles are missing, but because even the fundamental one of the mutual defense is, in fact, subject to the internal hierarchy of the alliance. Article 5 protects those who do not disturb the great balances. When it disturbs them, the timeless and hard law of the strongest returns.
Those who thought that NATO was a community of peer, would discover that it is a company where some are members and other simple affiliates, perhaps also considered parasites. And when one of the members who count decides that A piece of the empire must change the flagthe others simply take note of them because the rules of international law, you know, are binding only for those who do not have the power to ignore them.
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