The 2030 Countdown: Alliance & Sovereignty

What might partly be a political whim, is not entirely so. The Pentagon’s "Multi-Domain Operations" timeline (ready by 2030s) and statutory deadlines (US rare earth independence should be achieved by 2035 according to NDAA) have collided with the reality of European legal slowness (and the insufficiency of territorial militarization on a regional transatlantic scale). Here is the (probable) structural logic behind the current Alliance crisis.

If European elites are already fully integrated into US structures, through e.g. NATO, the F-35 program, and organizations like the Atlantik-Brücke, why does Washington need to perform this brutal show of force over Greenland?

What is currently happening is (partly) about the collision between US Doctrine (which has hard deadlines) and European Structure (which has hard veto points).

I’ve spent the last months analyzing US think tank papers, the NDAA statutory requirements, and the "Multi-Domain Operations" (MDO) literature. And according to these documents, this recent escalation is partly a Trumpian move, yes, but, it’s also a Bunker State facing a material deadline it cannot miss.

The Think Tank Paradox: "Don't Do It"

First, interestingly, the US security establishment is not united on this. In fact, the major strategy papers from 2025 have a consensus that is overwhelmingly against annexation.

Brookings Institution (June 2025) argued that the "status quo is sufficiently beneficial" and that upending it would cost "reputation, treasure, and potentially blood."

CSIS (Jan 2026) explicitly recommended a "collaborative coordination with European allies" rather than a unilateral approach.

The Atlantic Council (Feb 2025) stressed that the US already enjoys "extensive access" through existing defense agreements.

So, if the intellectual apparatus of the US empire said "cooperate," why is the Pentagon apparently and rhethorically (for now) choosing "annex"?

The answer is that "cooperation" fails the Time Test.

The Strategic Clock: MDO 2030 and the Material Constraint

If we want to understand the ferocity and urgency of this move, we have to look at the clocks running in the Pentagon. "Speed" is a doctrinal requirement tied to Multi-Domain Operations (MDO).

US Army doctrine is built around being "MDO-ready" by 2030. This means the ability to integrate fires, cyber, space, and sensors against a peer competitor (specifically, China, but also Russia).

However, MDO assumes a functioning defense-industrial base capable of churning out precision guidance systems, advanced sensors, and autonomous platforms. The problem for the Pentagon is that all of those systems run on rare earths. You cannot fight an MDO war in 2030 if your guidance chips are stuck in a Chinese export embargo in 2026.

There’s also a statutory deadline (2035). The 2024 NDAA mandates that by 2035, US defense supply chains must be independent of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. As CSIS noted in "Deterrence Runs on Rare Earths": "The question is not whether to act, but how quickly... demand immediate action beyond statutory deadlines."

Lastly, in April 2025, China imposed export restrictions on seven rare earths. By June, Pentagon procurement costs for gallium and antimony spiked 6%.

The US system is facing a triple squeeze: A doctrinal deadline (2030), a legal deadline (2035), and a supply shock (2025). The "Alliance" approach is simply too slow to survive this timeline.

Why Territorial Control could become the "Emergency Valve"

Washington is pursuing multiple tracks to solve this, but they all crash against the reality of time. One of them is domestic reshoring which, however, is too slow. In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) finalized an unprecedented $400 million equity investment in MP Materials, the owner of Mountain Pass, the only active rare earth mine in the United States. The Army is leasing bases for processing plants. And, agreements with Australia and others aim to build alternative supply nodes.

Nonetheless, building a full "mine-to-magnet" chain takes 5-10 years. That misses the MDO 2030 window. The other traack is allied cooperation which is too weak. This relies on the EU and NATO. But NATO documents (like the IDB-80 survey) admit that becoming MDO-enabled is a "long process of negotiation...."

This leaves the last option of sovereignty override. When tracks A and B fail to deliver speed, the logical consequence would be to reach for track c. This is the "Emergency Valve": using territorial control to bypass the veto points of foreign law.

The Playbook: Resource & Infrastructure Denial (Venezuela, Mexico, Greenland)

We tend to see these as separate events but they are three iterations of the same contextual logic. The US is trying to lock down the Western Hemisphere as a so-called resource denial zone.

Venezuela is the currently failed attempt. The goal is resource denial (oil) through military and sanctions coercion, and attempts at “regime” change. Mexico is an “emerging threat” in the waiting phase. The goal would be strategic denial (ports and logistics). Here, the idea is to frame commercial presence in ports as a military threat. CSIS analysis ("No Safe Harbor") defines Chinese commercial operations in ports like Manzanillo and Veracruz as "strategic vulnerabilities" because they could deny US naval access in a crisis. The solution is to pressure Mexico to purge these operators, overriding Mexican sovereignty for US security.

Greenland is the current crisis. Here the goal is resource denial (rare earths) through territorial annexation since Greenland is in relative proximity to the US and has beyond its geographical proximity, resource signficance for the US strategic plans. It is crucially not about simply mining Greenland tomorrow. The point is to ensure that China never does. Under Danish sovereignty, Greenland could theoretically accept Chinese investment. Under US control, that door would be slammed shut.

The "Speed" of Sovereignty

The EU is structurally incapable of "speed." To open a mine in Greenland under current rules, Danish approval, Greenlandic parliamentary consent, environmental impact assessments, and compliance with EU state aid rules is needed.

US “sovereignty” would remove those constraints. If Greenland is US territory, the President can invoke the Defense Production Act. He can issue a National Security Exemption to bypass environmental review. So, the problem from the US power elites is the tension between the slowness of the European system that is consensus-based and rights-protective, no matter how submissive European allies are, and the US system that is executive-led, fast, and “near abroad” focused.

Maybe, but hopefully not, the US securitocratic planners looked at the MDO 2030 deadline, looked at the 5-year timeline for EU consultation, and decided to break the glass.

Conclusion: The Bunker State and the Hollow Ally

The European elites are fully integrated into transatlantic and US-led structures: SACEUR is a US General, USEUCOM is in Stuttgart. They want to help.

The tragedy (well, one of the tragedies) for the EU is that European Institutions (Law, Sovereignty, Democracy) are structurally incompatible with the material ruthlessness required by the US Bunker State.

Ultimatey, European elites cannot deliver the "speed" the US elites demand without destroying their own legitimacy at home. So, the US might act unilaterally (if not now, then later unless some type of web of trade and investments agreements help. Still, they would only serve for risk reduction, not risk elimination for US-led plans). Meanwhile, European elites symbolically resist for domestic political cover, declaring support for Denmark and international law while structurally and deeply remaining within the U.S.-led system, adjusting to the new reality after the fact, because they have no autonomous power project that can match it. (And the question would also be: Do most European transatlantic elites even want autonomy? Isn’t the civilizing manichean mission the unifying goal?)

The show of force in Greenland creates a new imperial reality: Integration & submission is no shield. You can be the perfect NATO ally, but if you sit on a critical resource or strategic location that the Pentagon needs for 2030, and your laws are too "slow" to extract or use it, your sovereignty will be overridden. The Alliance is for politics; the Bunker is for survival.

NATO militarization is happening now (2026) as interim compromise, but when 2030-2035 deadlines approach and rare earth access remains blocked, US will likely revert to annexation logic because material substrate (resource control) determines political superstructure (sovereignty arrangements).

Thus, the twin deadline (MDO & rare earth independence) is the engine driving a campaign to override sovereignty, destroy international law, and secure resources, territory & infrastructure, by any means necessary. The only response to a closing window of time seems to be to break down the door.