Greenland Will Be Red, White, and Blueland

Dear all,

We welcome you to the Greater Caribbean Monitor (GCaM).

Last week, I stumbled upon a great paper. One which I believe is more relevant today than it ever was, 39 years after it was published. It is John Lewis Gaddis' ”The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System.” This is a good weekend read for whenever you are feeling overwhelmed by how much geopolitics is changing under Trump. But I have to warn you, because after reading it, you will be wondering if it is, in fact, changing at all.

It becomes especially relevant given the current situation with Greenland. So far, after Maduro’s downfall, it will be a second major hit by Trump to assert hemispheric dominance in less than a month. Sheinbaum has certainly gotten the memo. We will explore this and more in today's GCaM edition. Regardless of the chaos, remember, international relations, after all, rely on realpolitik. They always have, and they always will. It is the discursive framework that makes us dizzy, but not much has really changed.

In this issue, you will find:

• Sheinbaum Has Understood The Cost of Defiance in the America First Hemisphere

• What's in Store for Greenland’s Future?

• Hostility at Davos: Westphalia Has Fallen

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Kind regards,

For months, Venezuela dominated Washington’s hemispheric agenda. Today, Mexico is moving uncomfortably closer to the center of it.

In perspective. These circumstances surge not because Claudia Sheinbaum governs like Nicolás Maduro, nor because Mexico resembles a failed petrostate, but because, in Trump’s strategic worldview, Mexico now represents a different kind of threat: a powerful, proximate state whose political direction could either stabilize or undermine U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

• The question is no longer whether Mexico disagrees with Washington. Sheinbaum has done so already, to some degree. The real issue is whether disagreement itself has become intolerable.

• Trump’s return to the White House has been defined by a blunt doctrine where allies are conditional, neutrality is suspicious, and ideological ambiguity is a liability.

• Venezuela was the first test case. Cuba is the next. Mexico, increasingly, sits in between.

Between the lines. Recent reporting that Sheinbaum’s government is reviewing whether to halt oil shipments to Cuba is revealing. Publicly, Mexico insists the transfers are humanitarian, contractual, and sovereign, but senior officials fear retaliation from Washington. That fear followed the U.S. naval blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers, the capture of Maduro, and Trump’s explicit warning that there would be “no more oil or money” flowing to Havana.

• For decades, Mexico supplied Cuba while avoiding direct confrontation with the United States. That equilibrium no longer exists.

Why it—Mexico—matters. From Trump’s perspective, Mexico is not a simple peripheral actor. Mexico is economically integrated into the U.S. system through the USMCA, structurally essential for migration control, and geographically inseparable from American security. That makes Mexico far more consequential than Venezuela ever was. But Morena’s government complicates that equation. While Sheinbaum has carefully avoided open defiance, her administration inherits a movement that is ideologically aligned with many of Washington’s adversaries, particularly Cuba. That alignment has always been rhetorical, until now.

• With Venezuela removed as Cuba’s primary energy lifeline, Mexico has become the island’s largest remaining oil supplier. Between January and September last year alone, Pemex shipped roughly 17 000 barrels per day of crude and refined products to Cuba, worth around USD 400 million.

• Cutting Cuba’s energy access accelerates internal collapse, increases humanitarian pressure, and raises the cost of resistance for Havana’s leadership. Allowing Mexico to replace Venezuela as Cuba’s sponsor undermines that strategy.

• Washington watches this closely, to figure out whether Morena's administration is willing to align or will function as a backstop for regimes the U.S. is actively trying to dismantle.

A Mexican Roulette. Sheinbaum’s response has been a study in calibrated ambiguity. She speaks the language of sovereignty for domestic audiences while signaling cooperation behind closed doors. Her government has already approved unprecedented extraditions of cartel leaders, expanded security coordination, and tolerated increased U.S. surveillance in the Gulf of Mexico—or Gulf of America, depending on whom you’re talking to. These are not symbolic concessions.

• At the same time, Sheinbaum has publicly drawn red lines. She rejects unilateral U.S. military action on Mexican soil and frames oil shipments to Cuba as humanitarian aid rather than ideological alignment.

• The internal review of Cuba policy, however, suggests those red lines may be flexible. Within her cabinet, there is growing concern that defying Trump on Cuba could trigger a cascade of pressure.

• Consequences may go from trade retaliation during USMCA renegotiations to increased scrutiny of Mexico’s energy sector, or expanded U.S. security operations justified under new legal frameworks targeting narcoterrorism. Venezuela proved that, under the NSS-25, the U.S. is willing to escalate rapidly.

The real threat. But is Mexico at risk of a “Venezuela moment”? The short answer is no, at least not in the conventional sense. Mexico is too large, too integrated, and too valuable to be treated like Venezuela. There will be no sudden decapitation strike or naval blockade of Mexican ports. The longer answer is more uncomfortable. Trump’s strategy relies more on selective pressure than symmetry. Where Venezuela required force, Mexico can be managed through trade, security cooperation, and economic exposure.

• The legal and rhetorical groundwork already exists. Drug cartels have been labeled terrorist organizations. Migration is framed as a national security threat. Energy flows are increasingly securitized.

• If Sheinbaum ultimately cuts or reduces shipments, it will confirm that her administration understands the cost of defiance. It will also signal that ideological alliances within the Latin American left are subordinate to survival under Trump’s order.

• If she does not, Mexico risks becoming a test case for how far Washington is willing to go against a formally allied government that refuses to fall in line.

It’s realpolitik. Has Sheinbaum already folded? Not publicly. But strategically, the signs point toward accommodation. Reviewing oil shipments, tolerating U.S. surveillance, accelerating cartel extraditions, and avoiding confrontation all suggest a government trying to stay off Trump’s target list. This is not weakness per se; it is realpolitik, one where Trump has reminded the hemisphere under whose sphere of influence they lie.

• Morena may frame its posture as dignity and sovereignty, but Washington will only judge it by outcomes.

• Venezuela demonstrated the cost of miscalculation. Cuba illustrates the next pressure point. Mexico now stands at the edge of a choice it hoped to avoid: maintain ideological consistency or accept that, under Trump, neutrality is no longer an option.

• The real risk for Mexico is discovering that, in this hemispheric order, compliance is the price of stability—and that the room to negotiate is far narrower than it once was.

Greenland’s sudden prominence in U.S. strategic discourse is the logical outcome of a decade-long transformation in the Arctic that has quietly converted the island from a peripheral territory into a core asset in great-power competition.

• The recent framework agreement reached with NATO, and openly embraced by the Trump administration, should be read as a signal that Washington has already positioned itself as the indispensable actor in Greenland’s future.

Between the lines. At the center of this shift is geography. Greenland sits astride the emerging Arctic transit routes that link the North Atlantic to the Pacific. As ice coverage retreats, those routes cease to be hypothetical. Control over airspace, ports, surveillance infrastructure, and undersea cables in and around Greenland increasingly determines who can monitor, regulate, or deny access to these corridors.

• From a U.S. perspective, allowing that space to drift into strategic ambiguity would be equivalent to ceding initiative to Russia and China before competition fully materializes.

Why it matters. The long-term decline in Arctic sea ice, visible over nearly five decades, underpins Washington’s urgency. This is, after all, a military and commercial argument. As navigability increases, the Arctic transitions from buffer to theater. Russia has already acted accordingly, investing heavily in icebreaker fleets, Arctic bases, and missile coverage along its northern coast. China, despite lacking Arctic geography, has framed itself as a “near-Arctic state” and embedded itself through infrastructure investment and research missions.

• The United States, by contrast, entered this phase underprepared and late.

• Greenland offers a partial solution to that deficit. Militarily, it anchors early-warning systems and extends U.S. reach deep into the Arctic basin. Economically, it provides access to critical minerals, including rare earths essential for defense, energy storage, and advanced manufacturing.

• Politically, it allows Washington to consolidate Arctic leadership through formal agreements rather than unilateral force, preserving legitimacy while securing dominance.

Defrosted negotiations. The framework agreement announced with NATO partners reinforces this logic. Rather than challenging Danish sovereignty outright, the United States is reshaping Greenland’s dependency structure. Financial support, infrastructure investment, and defense integration will likey gradually replace Copenhagen as the island’s primary external guarantor. In this sense, autonomy increases on paper, but strategic alignment narrows in practice.

• For Europe, this is an accommodation driven by capability gaps. After all, without U.S. assets, NATO’s Arctic posture is largely symbolic.

• Trump’s role in this process is often mischaracterized as impulsive. In reality, his blunt rhetoric accelerates outcomes that institutional Washington has pursued more discreetly for years.

• The difference lies in framing. Where previous administrations emphasized multilateral processes, Trump emphasizes hierarchy, which is coherent with his overall America First stance. The result, in the end, is the same: Greenland shifts decisively into the American strategic orbit.

In the radar. For Greenland itself, the future points toward managed transformation rather than independence. Economic diversification through mining and logistics will expand, but under regulatory frameworks shaped by U.S. security priorities. Environmental concerns will remain, though increasingly subordinated to strategic imperatives. The island will gain leverage, but not autonomy in the classical sense.

• In that context, the real losers are not Greenlanders, but European illusions of Arctic sovereignty detached from hard power.

• This is yet another occasion where Europe’s relaxed military posture, shaped by its dependence on the United States, comes back to bite it.

• The deal does not ask whether the United States will dominate Greenland’s future. At this point, due to Europe’s long-prolonged negligence, it simply clarifies how.

The recent World Economic Forum in Davos has shaken the foundations of the international order.

The mercantilist pivot. The illusion of a unified West has collapsed, and the rules of the game are being rewritten. Allies are no longer friends but temporary commercial partners operating under transactional terms. Westphalian principles have given way to a new era of coercive mercantilism. The liberal international order has been formally replaced by a transactional game in which security and trade balances are the main axes.

• The United States has ceased to distinguish between strategic competitors and historical allies in its use of economic statecraft. The securitization of commerce has transformed tariffs from economic adjustment tools into political weapons, deployed even against friends to force alignment, effectively treating European trade surpluses as national security threats.

• The new doctrine replaces the stable rules of the past with uncertainty. The objective is to establish dominance, forcing partners to operate under constant risk management to ensure compliance with Washington’s priorities.

• The United States has shifted from refereeing the global system to actively playing it, bypassing traditional norms to reshape value chains and influence the internal governance of other states.

Financial strain. The United States now poses a significant risk to the European Union’s financial stability, particularly given Washington’s push toward accelerated militarization. Caught between American protectionism and the Russian threat, Europe faces a dilemma: retaliating against U.S. tariffs risks undermining the security umbrella just as Russia expands its influence.

• The continent cannot afford to lose the American military as the ultimate guarantor against existential threats. The Union’s inability to issue unified debt instruments, such as Eurobonds, paralyzes its capacity to finance large-scale militarization.

• Without a deep, liquid bond market comparable to that of the United States, Europe remains structurally incapable of projecting hard power into strategic theaters like the Arctic. To compensate for the weakness of its fragmented financial architecture, Europe may increasingly resort to institutional coercion.

• Qualified Majority Voting could be used to force the creation of a Eurobond market, mirroring the mechanism employed to advance the Mercosur agreement and bypass vetoes from fiscally conservative states such as the Netherlands or Germany.

The vassals’ alignment. Latin America’s role at Davos reflected broad alignment with, and deference to, the U.S.-led reordering of the international system. For segments of the Latin American right, political survival increasingly depends on overt alignment with the new Rome. Javier Milei presented Argentina as a strategic U.S. ally to secure political cover and effectively “pay” for his legislative success.

• By contrast, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s absence from Davos was telling. His response to Trump’s assertive posture has been to hedge by strengthening a rules-based alternative through deeper trade integration with Europe via the Mercosur agreement.

• The absence of other leftist leaders, including Claudia Sheinbaum and Gustavo Petro, only amplified Milei’s narrative on the Davos stage. The result is a region divided along geoeconomic lines.

• Lula-aligned states seek value-chain positioning under lower-risk frameworks, while Milei-aligned governments tie their internal governance and financial stability to direct alignment with U.S. power, despite its growing unpredictability.

In conclusion. Davos hints that the West is no longer a political alliance but a fractured marketplace of survival strategies. As Washington replaces predictability with permanent risk management, Europe is forced to break its taboos, including abandoning consensus to fund its defense.

• Latin America’s sharp divide between submission and hedging underscores the new global reality.

• In a world without permanent friends, sovereignty has become a function of leverage.