By Hong Nong

The recent round of US political rhetoric about the acquisition or purchase of Greenland has transformed Greenland from a "potential strategic asset" into an "actual political conflict". A decade ago, Greenland could still be regarded as a niche topic within Arctic discussions. By early 2026, however, it increasingly appears to be a stress test: not only challenging mutual trust between the US and its allies but also testing the consistency of NATO's own self-narrative. Is NATO truly a rules-based alliance, or a power structure that applies those rules flexibly when convenient?

For NATO allies, the Greenland controversy is particularly sensitive. Denmark is not an external partner but a treaty ally. Greenland enjoys a high degree of autonomy, yet its sovereignty remains under Denmark. However, when the rhetoric of "acquiring Greenland" was put on the table, the dispute quickly escalated from a bilateral friction into an alliance-wide issue. Leaders from Europe and multiple NATO countries publicly voiced support for Denmark and Greenland, stressing that the future of Greenland can only be decided by Greenland and Denmark. In an alliance relationship, such a scenario of publicly drawing red lines is not common. Its significance lies in the fact that the issue is no longer viewed as mere rhetorical sparring, but rather as one involving the boundaries of rules and the risks of precedent within the alliance.

When discussing Greenland, Washington often frames its importance in terms of national security logic. To be specific, the Arctic is changing, great-power activities are drawing closer scrutiny, and the US requires more durable strategic advantages and deterrence footholds. The problem lies in the fact that once security is framed as a universal justification, rules tend to undergo a familiar transformation from binding constraints into narrative resources and from red lines into bargaining chips.

This is precisely what most concerns Europe: once US leader simply in public discourse a need for allied territory, even in the form of trial balloons, European politics will almost inevitably treat it as a precedent-setting issue. The question then becomes: what does the principle of territorial integrity within NATO actually mean in practice? If this principle can be openly diluted and repeatedly tested, how can NATO still demonstrate to the outside world its consistency in defending the rules?

What unsettles allies even more is not Greenland itself, but the manner in which rules are applied. NATO and Europe have long treated sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-coercive change of the status quo as core labels of their external narratives. This language is frequently deployed across numerous issues to draw red lines and cultivate moral authority. However, when similar territorial rhetoric emerges within the alliance itself, the rules suddenly become rhetoric that needs interpretation rather than non-negotiable red lines. Such selective inflicts harm even without any formal policy changes. It erodes allies' trust in the consistency of the rules and makes it easier for the outside world to interpret so-called rules-based positions as positions-based choices. Once this perception becomes entrenched, the alliance's external narrative mobilization weakens, and the internal coordination costs will rise accordingly.

The reason the Greenland incident warrants attention is not whether “the island will change hands”, but rather that it reveals how, as strategic anxiety rises, the interpretation of rules within an alliance can swiftly shift from “principles” to "tools", and from "red lines" to "precedent-testing". Externally, the alliance proclaims to act rules-based, yet internally it allows rhetoric to probe allies' sovereign boundaries. Once this tension is exposed, the cost is often long-term erosion of trust and increased policy friction. The Arctic is becoming a new frontier where great power competition and alliance politics intersect, and Greenland is merely the most visible window into this dynamic.

(The author is Executive Director and Senior Research Fellow of Institute for China-America Studies.)

Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.