Soon after the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, key officials of the United States President Donald Trump administration stated that Greenland should be part of the US territory. Currently, Greenland belongs to Denmark, which has shown no interest in ceding the territory to the US.
Most analysts believe that a forcible US takeover of Greenland would essentially lead to the breakdown of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) because both Denmark and the US are NATO members.
NATO is arguably the most potent military alliance since its creation in 1949. It has 32 members, including most member nations of the European Union (although not all, such as Ireland), the United Kingdom, Canada, some European countries that are not part of the EU (such as Norway), and the US. There were three central goals of NATO when it was created:
- deterring Soviet expansionism,
- forbidding the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and
- encouraging European political integration.
NATO’s overwhelming economic and military might is a key reason, according to many, why there has not been a third world war. But underneath the overall strength of NATO lies a story of wide disparity in economic and military might — and it is this disparity that the US President is exploiting at present.
The data above show how the US economic and military might makes it stand over the rest of the NATO members like a colossus. Indeed, the US alone outweighs the rest of the NATO members combined.
According to the data, in 2025, the US economy’s annual output exceed the total combined GDP of all the rest of the NATO members. Just over a decade ago, the situation was reversed. In 2014, the US GDP was $17.6 trillion, while the rest of NATO stood at $20.5 trillion. Since then, US GDP has not only equalled the rest of NATO but now exceeds it by more than 13%. In other words, in just over a decade, the US has added about $13 trillion to its GDP, while the rest of NATO together increased their GDP by around $6 trillion.
This shift has happened because not only the US economy, notwithstanding its size, has continued to grow at a robust pace, but also most of the other NATO members, especially the biggest economies such as Germany and the UK, have faced economic stagnation. On GDP per capita terms, too, the US far exceeds the rest of the NATO average. This shows that, on average, a US citizen is twice as prosperous as the citizens from the rest of the NATO countries.
Story continues below this ad
As the US has a bigger economy, citizens who are more capable of paying taxes, and a government more focused on defence, the country’s defence expenditure dwarfs the rest of the NATO members. Notably, the US spends more on defence in absolute terms, as it spends a much higher proportion of its GDP towards defence. This also translates into much higher defence expenditures per capita. The only place where the US does not outstrip the rest of NATO combined is in the number of military personnel. However, the US alone accounts for almost 40% of all personnel in a 32-country grouping.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd