US security guarantees for Europe have “dissolved into thin air” amid Trump’s push to acquire Greenland, the AfD’s Kay Gottschalk has said
Germany should become a nuclear power as US President Donald Trump’s push to take over Greenland shows Europe can no longer rely on American protection, right-wing lawmaker Kay Gottschalk has said.
Gottschalk, the Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) parliamentary finance policy spokesman, said the postwar consensus of “outsourcing Europe’s defense” to Washington had “dissolved into thin air” and claimed Trump’s Greenland posture proves “there are no friendships between states, only interests.”
“And the interests of the United States are fundamentally different from ours and from Europe’s. Precisely for this reason, we must once again take the defense and security of Europe into our own hands… Germany needs nuclear weapons,” Gottschalk wrote on X on Sunday.
The MP also called on Germany and EU states to create “the strongest military” and “the best weapons.” “It will be difficult to forge a common defense alliance within the European states. The political differences are great, the rifts of the past deep and wide. But it is the only way away from dependence toward sovereignty,” the MP stressed.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants control of Greenland – an autonomous Danish territory – arguing it is vital to US strategic interests in the Arctic and declining to rule out the use of force. European leaders have rejected any change in Greenland’s status, resulting in a major rift between the US and the rest of NATO.
The standoff has sharpened in recent days after Trump threatened tariffs on eight European countries until the US is allowed to buy the island, prompting a joint European warning of a “dangerous downward spiral.”
Regarding nuclear weapons, Germany is bound by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with officials in Berlin repeatedly saying they have no plans to acquire this type of weapon. According to the Two Plus Four Treaty, which paved the way for the country’s reunification, Berlin is also barred from hosting nukes in the area that made up the former East Germany.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said in July that Germany could build a bomb “in a matter of months,” but stressed the scenario was “purely hypothetical.”
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