Justin Crump, the chief executive of risk analysis firm Sibylline, said Mr Trump was “likely weighing the unity and resolve of European nations” over Greenland.
He said allies could “call Trump’s bluff” by proposing a Nato force in Greenland, suggesting security wasn’t the president’s real reason for wanting the island.
It came as a former RAF chief cast doubt over Britain’s ability to protect the Arctic, saying the nation’s defences had become “a flimsy facade”.
Air Marshal Edward Stringer said that the gap between the perception of the UK’s military strength and its actual capabilities had become cavernous.
‘Our defences are a facade’
In a report for Policy Exchange, he warned that not a single formation in the British military was currently sustainable in combat in its own right.
He wrote: “Now the USA is signalling strongly that it is putting ‘America First’ and the rest of Nato will have to look after its own defences.
“This fundamentally challenges the model that we had semi-accidentally slipped into – our national defences have been revealed to be a flimsy facade.
“The ‘Say-Do’ gap between the image of ourselves we have come to believe, and the reality of the hard power we can project in practice, is stark.
“The first necessary step is to recognise that, and recognise that the methods that got us into this mess have to be discarded ruthlessly.”
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: “The UK is committed to working with Nato allies to strengthen Nato’s Arctic deterrence and defence.”
