Trump burning bridges security experts spent decades building: ex-Army commander

According to former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Miles Taylor — who served in the first Trump Administration but is now a full-fledged Never Trumper — President Donald Trump first proposed buying Greenland in 2017. Trump's idea, Taylor said, was to "swap" Puerto Rico for Greenland.

Traditional conservatives serving in the first Trump Administration, according to Taylor, thought the idea was ridiculous. But now, a year into his second presidency, Trump continues to double down on his push to make Greenland a U.S. territory — and he isn't ruling out the possibility of taking Greenland from Denmark by force if European leaders continue to oppose his proposal.

In a biting article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on January 20, retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling — who served as commander of U.S. Army Europe under former President Barack Obama — stresses that Trump is damaging military and national security alliances that U.S. officials spent many years building and nurturing.

"I agree that Trump's campaign of sustained belligerence and implied threats of military action against Denmark, Greenland, and NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is wrong, and so do the overwhelming majority of Americans," Hertling explains. "Over the course of my career, I worked closely with all 32 NATO nations — commanding multinational formations in combat, training and exercising side by side in peacetime, planning contingencies, and learning, humbly, how much American security depends on the partnership, competence, and resolve of our allies. I came to deeply respect these nations for what they contribute, how seriously they take their responsibilities, and how they admire our military."

Hertling continues, "I also learned that true alliances are sustained not by fear or coercion, but by mutual respect, shared sacrifice, and trust built over time. Trust among allies is never automatic. It is earned exercise by exercise, deployment by deployment, and even disagreement by disagreement, provided those disagreements are resolved within a shared framework. We had just such a framework, and it rested on a simple operating principle — one we used as a mantra in European Command: We are stronger together."

But in 2026, the former U.S. Army Europe commander warns, that "foundation" is "being strained to a point of cracking" because the U.S., under Trump, "is growing more and more hostile and insulting toward our partners."

"If, hypothetically, commanders of the U.S. military were directed to conduct offensive operations against Greenland — territory governed by Denmark, a NATO ally under a treaty to which the United States is a party and which was invested with the force of law by Congress — that order would raise first-order moral, legal, and constitutional questions," Hertling warns. "Senior military commanders would be required to raise those questions. In doing so, they would not be insubordinate."

Mark Hertling's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.