Europe and Rest of World Try to Come to Terms With Trump the Imperialist

 

News Analysis

Europe and Rest of World Try to Come to Terms With Trump the Imperialist

 

Needing U.S. support to fend off Russia in Ukraine, European leaders have been cautious about criticizing President Trump on Greenland, Iran, Venezuela and much else.

 

Steven Erlanger

By Steven Erlanger

Steven Erlanger, who is based in Berlin, covers European diplomacy and NATO.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/world/europe/trump-venezuela-greenland-ukraine-europe.html

Jan. 7, 2026

Updated 10:50 a.m. ET

 

It had the makings of one of the most awkward trans-Atlantic meetings in a long time.

 

European leaders are said to be privately angry and even panicky about President Trump’s new threats to seize Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, after his military intervention in Venezuela. But they need the United States to ensure credible security for postwar Ukraine against any further aggression by Russia — a vital strategic interest for Europe.

 

With that backdrop, European leaders met in Paris on Tuesday with senior American negotiators to discuss how to secure a peace settlement in Ukraine. They jointly announced progress on security assurances for a postwar Ukraine, but any cease-fire seems distant, given that Russia is not part of the talks.

 

Earlier in the day, some of the same countries had issued a joint statement of solidarity with Denmark, calling for collective NATO security in the Arctic, including the United States. It had no explicit criticism of Washington, and the Ukraine meeting was all about keeping the Trump administration on board.

 

Even with those outward displays of European-American unity, underlying everything is Mr. Trump’s sudden return to a more imperialist era. Europeans who consider the American intervention in Venezuela a violation of international law see a U.S. president newly empowered and enthralled by military action, which he compared to watching a television show. He comes across as a largely unpredictable force capable of causing enormous disruption — in NATO, in Ukraine, in Iran, in Gaza — as his eye swings from one imagined prize to another.

 

After the Ukraine meeting, asked about Greenland and Venezuela alongside American envoys, President Emmanuel Macron of France declined to answer, calling them “not really connected with today’s matters.” He said later to French television, “I cannot imagine a scenario in which the United States of America would be placed in a position to violate Danish sovereignty.”

 

For the most part, European leaders have said little, making collective statements that shy away from criticism of their most important and now most disruptive ally, the United States.

 

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Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, said, “There is a massive gap between public and private reactions from European leaders.”

 

“Privately, they are panicking about what happens next, especially in Greenland and what they might do about it,” he added. “But publicly on Venezuela, they are desperate not to say anything critical or invoke international law on Trump at a time of maximum peril for Ukraine. They want to use the influence they have for Ukraine.”

 

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark has been blunt in telling Washington to lay off. A move on Greenland and Denmark, she has said, will finish NATO. “If the United States were to choose to attack another NATO country, then everything would come to an end,” Ms. Frederiksen told a Danish broadcaster on Monday. That would include, she added, the termination of “the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War.”

 

There is still a wide belief in Denmark that Mr. Trump is increasing the pressure as a negotiating tactic but would not use force against a NATO ally willing to work with him on both security enhancements and business opportunities.

 

By comparison, American-Venezuelan relations have been “horrible for decades,” said Mikkel Runge Olesen of the Danish Institute for International Studies, a research organization in Copenhagen. “It’s a completely different ballgame to go and invade a NATO ally,” with considerable unknown costs, he added. Pressure from Washington will continue, he predicted, but, “I just don’t see military invasion as the most likely tool that the U.S. is going to use.”

 

But no one really knows, especially after Mr. Trump told reporters, apparently in a joking manner, that the issue would be resolved in 20 days.

 

Europe collectively, through the European Union, has been divided in its response. On Venezuela, it has called for monitoring the situation and a democratic transition. It has reiterated its support for Greenland’s and Denmark’s territorial integrity and has said that any change must be decided by the citizens themselves. But it has so far threatened no action if Mr. Trump acts.

 

There is global confusion and anxiety about where Mr. Trump, who promised to curtail American involvement in foreign wars, is heading, only a year into his current term. Sowing that confusion may even be characterized as an American strategy, Mr. Leonard said.

 

“The way they operate is they like to keep people guessing,” he said.

 

There does seem to be one organizing principle, however, said Nathalie Tocci, director of an Italy-based think tank, the Institute of International Affairs. “U.S. foreign policy now is imperial, and consistently imperial,” she said. “It’s not simply pursuing an American empire in the Western Hemisphere, but Trump accepts the very notion of empire, which is why other empires can exist.”

 

Such a worldview allows for not only an American empire, but also Russian and Chinese ones, she said. They can manage their own regions as they see fit, “and they can coexist without stepping on each other’s toes” or even choose to cooperate, Ms. Tocci said. “Certainly,” she added, “it’s more comfortable for Putin and Xi Jinping to be their imperial selves where that’s the new norm.”

 

It is extremely uncomfortable for Europeans, who long ago abandoned empire-building, to be caught between the United States and Russia.

 

François Heisbourg, a French defense analyst, said Mr. Trump’s foreign policy was “highly consistent, but extremely dangerous.” Mr. Trump, he noted, “does what he says,” having already confronted Ms. Frederiksen over Greenland in 2019.

 

“It’s a world of power, of correlation of forces, and the Europeans still haven’t taken that on board,” Mr. Heisbourg added.

 

European leaders have typically acquiesced to Mr. Trump’s demands in his latest term, choosing, for example, not to go after American tech firms in the first round of tariff negotiations. Mr. Heisbourg, referring to a Trump administration document issued last month that portrayed the Europeans as weak and in decline, said, “They took our measure, and that measure was described in the National Security Strategy with some accuracy, unfortunately.”

 

Similarly, Europe missed an important moment in December to show both Moscow and Washington that it was prepared to aid Ukraine aggressively, refusing to use frozen Russian assets and instead compromising on a far smaller collective loan.

 

Some, like Bruno Maçães, a Portuguese former secretary of state for European affairs, have been outspoken in urging the European Union to come up with a possible counteroffensive should Mr. Trump move on Greenland, including sanctions on American companies, the expulsion of American military personnel and restrictions on American travel to Europe. Raphaël Glucksmann, a French member of the European Parliament, has suggested establishing a European military base on Greenland, as a signal to Washington and a commitment to the island’s security.

 

Amanda Sloat, a former national security official in the Biden administration, said that world leaders should take note of what undergirds Mr. Trump’s interest in Venezuela as they respond to his Greenland threat. Mr. Trump said that Venezuela was about drugs, but now talks mostly about seizing the oil industry, she noted.

 

Similarly, she said, Mr. Trump talks of Greenland in terms of security, which the Danes and Greenlanders understand. “They would be open to an enhanced American presence in Greenland,” she said. “But is the real motivation related to profiting from the rare minerals there, or is it just falling into the Monroe doctrine thing of U.S. expanding its regional power?”

 

Europeans and others keep trying to put Mr. Trump into a known strategic box, but in a second term, “We should have understood that he doesn’t fit into a box,” said Claudia Major, a defense expert with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “He seems ready to do what he says, but what and when? Europeans still try to make sense of it when there isn’t a lot of coherence.”

 

Ms. Major noted that Europeans did increasingly understand that “Trump is in some areas acting antagonistically” and that the liberal, rules-based order is in tatters. “But,” she added, “given their dependency in security, Europeans feel they can’t speak up or speak their minds. We can’t afford it.”

 

Amelia Nierenberg contributed reporting.

 

Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.