Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Donald Trump wants to seize the country – and through NATO we are bound tightly to the USA. Photo Quintin Soloviev.
Britain needs to be out of NATO and out of the grip of US foreign policy. The alternative is to be dragged into wars of America’s – and the EU’s – making…
As long as Britain is in NATO, our foreign policy is at the mercy of whoever becomes president of the USA. The nature of the current president makes it especially obvious how unacceptable it is for Britain to depend on other states for our security.
NATO membership ties Britain into its aggressive policies. For example, it broke up Yugoslavia, it tried and failed for 20 years to impose a pro-NATO government in Afghanistan, it overthrew the Libyan and Syrian governments, and it ruinously interfered in Ukraine. And always it maintained its longstanding policy of first use of nuclear weapons. NATO is the threat it warns us against.
President Trump insulted his most servile ally when he called the Labour government’s May 2025 agreement with Mauritius “an act of great stupidity”. Apparently the government agreed with the president, and in obedience withdrew the proposed agreement. But then Trump in a capricious switch said the deal could go ahead anyway!
Realpolitik
In reality this was a familiar piece of colonialist realpolitik. Formal sovereignty over the Chagos Islands was given back while the crucial military base was secured. The deal was very like the Macmillan government’s deal with Cyprus – the 1960 Treaty of Establishment for the Republic of Cyprus. The British government kept 99 square miles of land for its military bases, the Akrotiri Sovereign Base Area and the Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area.
In the agreement with Mauritius, the government agreed to transfer sovereignty over the islands back to Mauritius, while maintaining an initial 99-year lease of Diego Garcia, the site of a key US base.
Starmer had committed the British taxpayer to paying Mauritius £120 million a year, adding up to £35 billion over 99 years, for the privilege of hosting this US base. The treaty, by maintaining the US and British military presence, would also prevent Chagossians from returning to the island.
The British government had consulted the US government on the final treaty prior to its approval. The US government stated that, following a “comprehensive interagency review”, it had determined that the agreement “secures the long-term, stable, and effective operation of the joint US-UK military facility at Diego Garcia.”
Master and servant
Trump, and his enthusiasts here, were trying to bully Starmer into dropping the agreement – not because it would fail to secure the military base, but just to assert US dominance. This is not so much an alliance as a master/servant relationship.
‘Trump’s unprecedented threat to seize Greenland…brings further into question Britain’s membership of NATO…’
President Trump’s threat to seize Greenland has united virtually the whole world against him. His unprecedented threats to use force against Denmark, a fellow NATO member, have called NATO’s whole reason for existence into doubt. Crucially, for us, it also brings further into question Britain’s membership of NATO.
Trump threatened to impose 10 per cent tariffs on Britain and on seven other NATO member countries from 1 February, rising to 25 per cent on 1 June, until the USA got control of Greenland. What real ally threatens a destructive trade war against its allies?
The EU has responded by pledging to further militarise its members’ presence in Greenland and the Arctic. This does what Trump wants under the guise of standing up to him. On 14 February Starmer announced the deployment of a navy carrier strike group to the Arctic, alongside forces from other NATO member countries including the USA.
Starmer says, “Arctic security matters for the whole of NATO and allies should all do more together to address the threat from Russia across different parts of the Arctic.”
But it is the USA that is threatening Greenland and the Arctic, nobody else is doing that. And why? Because Greenland is rich in rare earths, tungsten, uranium, titanium, iron ore, copper, nickel, diamonds, and gold.
Trump’s aggressive foreign policy is worldwide. US forces attacked Venezuela on 3 January capturing the country’s president. And on 29 January, Trump signed an executive order tightening the US decades-long sanctions on Cuba.
This order threatened severe tariffs on any country supplying Cuba with fuel. It named Cuba as “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States, a flagrant reversal of the truth. It is the US government which threatens the people of Cuba, and threatens their independence and sovereignty.
Starmer said that the UK-US relationship “matters profoundly – not just to our security, but to the prosperity and the stability that people here at home depend on.” He claims that our defence, security, nuclear and intelligence ties with the USA are crucial to our defence. But how are we safer when our NATO membership ties us to every act of every US president?
Starmer wants to support Greenland, and Europe, without upsetting the reckless and unreliable US president. Starmer is trying to combine supine support of the US government with supine support of the EU. He talked big at the Munich Security Conference on 14 February, but can’t escape problems in Britain. No wonder he is panicking.
On 22 January, the US government reached an agreement with NATO’s secretary general Mark Rutte, conceding President Trump’s key demands of Greenland. This deal was made over the heads of all the NATO member governments. What self-respecting independent country allows its foreign policy to be made by an unelected official of an undemocratic foreign body?
The proposed deal, agreed at the plutocrats’ cabal in Davos, far away from any parliamentary scrutiny, would allow the USA to carry out military and intelligence operations in Greenland. US bases in Greenland would become sovereign US territory. The deal would also make it easier for US corporations to seize Greenland’s mineral wealth.
As with Britain’s colonial agreement with Cyprus, and as with the USA’s one-sided agreement with Britain over all the US bases here, local sovereignty is retained in name, while its substance – real control – goes to the dominant power.
Control
NATO exists to enable the USA to control its members’ foreign and defence policies and its military forces and structures. President Trump has ordered all NATO member governments to spend 5 per cent of their GDP on the military.
So they have all tamely endorsed his “Hague Commitment” last year which pledges NATO countries to do this. For Britain, this would mean doubling military spending.
But polling last year found that most Britons are not willing to accept cuts to other kinds of spending in order to spend more on the military. This puts into question the government’s desire to deliver even 3.5 per cent of our GDP on defence spending by 2035.
Another poll, conducted by YouGov on 20 January, found that 55 per cent of Britons would be prepared to kick American bases out of Britain if the USA attacked Greenland. 22 per cent were opposed, 23 per cent said they didn’t know.
This all raises the question of Britain’s NATO membership. How does being a member of NATO make us safer? How does housing over a hundred US military bases and over 10,000 US military personnel make us safer?
Opposition to NATO here in Britain remains muted. But in the interests of our own safety and security, Britain should leave NATO and expel the US military from its bases here.