Trump steps back from the brink on Greenland. But the damage has been done.

 

Trump steps back from the brink on Greenland. But the damage has been done.

 

The president’s effort to acquire Greenland, even with the threat of force off the table, has changed the way allies see the U.S.

 

By Eli Stokols and Diana Nerozzi

01/21/2026 03:34 PM EST

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/21/trump-greenland-military-deal-00739427

 

After two weeks of escalating threats toward Europe, President Donald Trump blinked on Wednesday, backing away from the unthinkable brink of a potential war against a NATO ally during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

 

Trump’s vow not to use military force to seize Greenland from Denmark eased European fears about a worst-case scenario and prompted a rebound on Wall Street. And his declaration hours later after meeting with NATO’s leader that he may back off of his tariff threat having secured the “framework” of an agreement over Greenland continued a day of backpedaling on one of the most daring gambits of his presidency to date.

 

But his continued heckling of allies as “ungrateful” for not simply giving the U.S. “ownership and title” of what he said was just “a piece of ice” did little to reverse a deepening sentiment among NATO leaders and other longtime allies that they can no longer consider the United States — for 80 years the linchpin of the transatlantic alliance — a reliable ally.

 

“The takeaway for Europe is that standing up to him can work. There is relief, of course, that he’s taking military force off the table, but there is also an awareness that he could reverse himself,” said a European official who attended Trump’s speech and, like others interviewed for this report, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Trump’s promises and statements are unreliable but his scorn for Europe is consistent. We will have to continue to show resolve and more independence because we can no longer cling to this illusion that America is still what we thought it was.”

 

Trump’s abrupt about-face after weeks of refusing to take military intervention off the table comes a day after Greenland shock waves sent global markets plunging, wiping out over $1.2 trillion in value on the S&P 500 alone. The president’s policy shift mirrored a similar moment in April, when he quickly reversed sweeping tariffs after a market downfall tied to his policies.

 

If Trump’s refusal to use the military to threaten Greenland and the U.S.’s NATO allies holds, it would represent a win for administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who on Tuesday counseled the Davos set not to overreact or escalate the fight with Trump, assuring concerned Europeans that things would work out soon.

 

The threat of force appeared to have the strong backing of deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who offered the most forceful articulation of those desires in an interview this month where he claimed that America was the rightful owner of Greenland and insisted the “real world” was one “that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”

 

But Miller aside, most saw the threat of force as an attempt to create leverage for an eventual negotiation. If Trump were to have pursued using military force, there could have been pushback from his closest allies like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, said a person close to the administration and granted anonymity to describe the private dynamics.

 

“Do some senior administration people talk to their best friends in conservative world and media and basically say, ‘Yeah, I don’t know why we’re doing this?’ Sure, but I think those are all in confidence,” the person said.

 

Increasingly, Europeans have been voicing their growing fears aloud. When Trump arrived in the snowy Swiss Alps Wednesday afternoon for this annual confab of business and political titans, the West remained on edge after the president announced last weekend that he intended to increase tariffs on several European countries that had sent troops to Greenland for military exercises. As they contemplated the fact that an American president was threatening the territorial sovereignty of one ally and turning to economic coercion tactics against others, European leaders strategized openly about retaliating in kind.

 

That posture marked a major shift from Trump’s first year back in office, when European leaders put up a fight but ultimately and largely accepted his terms — NATO begrudgingly agreeing to spend more on defense, taking on all of the financial burden for Ukraine aid and the European Union accepting a 15 percent tariff on all exports to the U.S. — in order to keep the president from breaking with the alliance and abandoning Ukraine.

 

But the president’s brazen challenge to Denmark over Greenland and shocking disregard for Europe’s territorial sovereignty amounted to a disruption that is orders of magnitude more concerning. Demanding that Denmark, a steadfast NATO ally, allow him to purchase Greenland — and, until Wednesday, holding out the prospect of using military force to seize it — threatened to cross a red line for Europe and effectively shatter 80 years of cooperation, upending an alliance structure that America largely built to avoid the very kind of imperialistic conquest Trump suddenly seems fixated on pursuing.

 

“We’ve gone from uncharted territory to outer space,” said Charles Kupchan, the director of European studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “This is not just strange and hard to understand. It borders on the unthinkable, and that’s why you’re seeing a different response from Europe than before Greenland was center stage.”

 

Trump’s social media posts last weekend announcing that he intended to increase tariffs on the European countries that had sent troops to Greenland for training exercises drew harsh public responses from heads of state across Europe and prompted a flurry of private phone calls and even text messages — some of which the president shared on social media — urging him to work with them more constructively to address security in the Arctic.

 

That didn’t stop Trump on Wednesday from continuing to assert an intention to acquire Greenland through negotiations, despite an overwhelming majority of Greenlanders being opposed to living under U.S. control.

 

“Let’s not be too cheerful on him excluding violence, as that was outrageous in the first place,” said a second European official in Davos. “And his narrative on Greenland is BS. It should be called out.”

 

Trump, who met with European leaders to discuss Greenland on Wednesday afternoon, suggested in his remarks that the U.S. acquiring the massive island between the Arctic and North Atlantic was in the best interests of Europe as well as America’s. “It’s the United States alone that can protect this giant, massive land, this giant piece of ice, develop it and make it so that it’s good for Europe and safe for Europe,” he said.

 

“You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no and we will remember,” Trump continued.

 

Those words did not appear to fully allay the growing anxieties of democratic leaders that the world is spinning in a new and frightening direction, away from decades of relative peace and stability and back to a prewar era of global conquest.

 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, addressing Davos on Tuesday ahead of Trump’s arrival, was emphatic in declaring that there is no going back. “Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry,” Carney said. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

 

Calling for democratic nations to take steps to lessen their reliance on the U.S. and their vulnerability to pressure from this White House, Carney urged other leaders to accept a new reality that, in his view, the longstanding postwar order was already gone. “Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

 

Trump made it clear on Wednesday that he saw Carney’s remarks, alluding to Canada’s reliance on the U.S. and going as far to suggest that its safety continues to depend on American defense technology. “They should be grateful to us,” he said. “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statement.” The implied threat, in a way, may have underscored the Canadian leader’s point.

 

With persistent threats of higher tariffs from the White House even after Trump backed off his saber rattling over annexing the country, Canada has looked to rebalance its trade relationships with other countries, including China, to reduce its economic dependence on the U.S.

 

In Europe, leaders may be following suit. Just last week, Brussels approved a landmark free trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc of South American countries, a long-sought deal that took on greater urgency in recent months to provide Europe with a bulwark against Trump’s protectionism and coercive economic measures.

 

There is still hope in Europe that Trump will eventually accept something less than U.S. ownership of Greenland, especially after his apparent walkbacks Wednesday on the threats of tariffs and military force. That could include accepting a standing offer from Denmark to boost America’s military presence on the island, not to mention economic cooperation agreements to develop natural resources there as climate change makes mineral deposits more accessible.

 

But European leaders increasingly seem to accept that there are limits to their ability to control Trump — and are looking to hedge their reliance on the U.S. as urgently as possible.

 

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister and secretary general of NATO, wrote this week that it’s time for Europe to shift its posture toward the U.S. from one of close allies to a more self-protective stance defined by a stronger military and reciprocal tariffs.

 

“Mr. Trump, like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, believes in power and power only,” he wrote, likening the U.S. president to the leaders of Russia and China. “Europe must be prepared to play by those same rules.”

 

Trump’s threats against Denmark have obliterated the long-held view about the U.S., that after 80 years of standing up to imperialist conquerors from Adolf Hitler’s Germany to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Washington would always be the tip of the spear when it came to enforcing a world order founded on shared democratic ideals.

 

Suddenly, that spear is being turned against its longtime allies.

 

“The jewel in the crown of our power and of our role in the world has always been our alliance system,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a veteran of the State Department under the President Barack Obama administration who is now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

 

Shapiro noted that the U.S. has at times still employed hard power since the end of World War II, especially in its own hemisphere. But overall, American foreign policy has largely been defined by its reliance on soft power, which he said “ is much less expensive, it is much less coercive, it is much more moral and ethical, and it’s more durable.”

 

Returning to the law of the jungle and a world where larger powers gobble up smaller ones, Shapiro continued, will make the U.S. more like Russia and China — the two countries he claims threaten U.S. interests in Greenland — and weaker over the long term.

 

“Moving from our trusted methods to Putin’s methods is worse than a crime,” he said. “It’s an idiocy.”