Trump’s Greenland play is a step too far for Europe’s far right

Summary

• European far-right parties are reassessing ties with Trump due to actions like threatening Greenland and military force in Venezuela.
• AfD's Alice Weidel criticised Trump for breaching international law, similar to Putin, and violating his promise of non-intervention.
• France's National Rally leader Jordan Bardella described Trump's actions as "a return to imperial ambitions," challenging European sovereignty.

BERLIN – Europe’s far-right parties are reassessing their ties to President Donald Trump after he used military force to oust Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and threatened to annex Greenland.   

Ms Alice Weidel, co-leader of the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party – which German authorities have classified as a far-right extremist movement and which has developed close ties with the US administration – said Mr Trump was acting no differently from Russia’s Vladimir Putin in breaching international law in Venezuela and threatening to do so in Greenland. 

“Trump has violated a fundamental campaign promise – namely not to interfere in other countries,” Ms Weidel said this week.

She added that the US president will have to explain his actions to the American voters in the upcoming mid-term elections. 

The Trump administration has sought to reassert American dominance globally and has been developing relationships with like-minded movements on the continent. In its recent national security strategy, the US said it would cultivate “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” widely interpreted as a tacit offer of support for Europe’s far-right parties.   

Ms Weidel, whose party has moved closer to Mr Trump and his MAGA movement since he took office and is leading in some national polls in Germany, said the recent moves showed that neither international law nor “constructs like NATO” can be relied upon anymore. 

AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla, who is considered pro-Russian within the far-right party, rejected such “Wild West methods” at the same press conference. 

Mr Trump’s ideological national security document
accused European leaders of censorship and said the European Union faced “civilizational erasure” due to mass migration and economic decline. 

Since Mr Trump took office in January, dozens of AfD officials have travelled to the US for meetings with lawmakers and administration officials, and many in and out of the party see Washington’s new national security strategy as a milestone.

US officials have pressed Germany – through the Foreign Ministry – not to outlaw the party, Bloomberg reported earlier. AfD members have lobbied the Trump administration to prevent German authorities from initiating a ban.

France’s far right has also levelled criticism aimed at Mr Trump.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella on Jan 12 described the US capture of Mr Maduro
as “a return to imperial ambitions” and a world in which “the law of the strongest trumps respect of international rules”.

“By President Trump’s own admission, this intervention paves the way for the economic interests of American oil companies,” Mr Bardella said, distancing himself from President Emmanuel Macron’s tepid condemnation of the US action against Mr Maduro.

Mr Bardella also said Mr Trump’s threat to seize Greenland amounts to “a direct challenge to the sovereignty of a European country.”

The remarks highlight the National Rally’s uneasy stance towards Mr Trump.

While the party shares common ground with the US president on immigration and tough law enforcement, it has long been wary of aligning too closely with a bombastic American leader who has vowed to impose punitive tariffs on Europe. 

Polls consistently show a majority of French voters hold an unfavourable view of Mr Trump.

In Slovakia, the leader of the far-right Republic party, currently third in opinion polls, also condemned Mr Trump’s actions in Venezuela as a violation of international law. 

“Who has ever seen a commando from one country abduct the president of another?” Mr Milan Uhrik said last week in a television interview.

“Where would we end up if international conflicts were resolved this way?” BLOOMBERG