US 22-01-2026 | 12:55

Between Davos and Greenland: Europe faces America alone

As Donald Trump reopens old files and new fault lines at Davos, Europe confronts a reality it long postponed: the Atlantic guarantee may no longer hold.

Georges Issa

Between Davos and Greenland: Europe faces America alone

President Donald Trump speaks during a Board of Peace charter announcement during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“If you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.”

The American president Donald Trump appears to be acting on this advice, regardless of whether he knows it is attributed to one of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan.

Europe’s headache stems from the fact that Trump resembles Reagan in many traits, such as their non-Republican pasts and their non-political beginnings, with the exception of the most important point: belief in the transatlantic relationship, meaning ties between Europe and North America.

Historians may one day remember Davos as yet another key episode foreshadowing the end of this relationship, even though some of Donald Trump’s remarks, such as his statement that he would not use force to obtain Greenland, were reassuring. It remains unclear whether economic pressure is excluded from the available options, or whether this pledge is meant to last. In any case, his recent warning that “we will not forget” if Denmark refuses to sell Greenland reinforces the legitimacy of these concerns. This is without mentioning Trump’s remark to Europeans that, were it not for his country, they would be speaking German and Japanese.

There is a belief that NATO effectively ended with the disappearance of the West’s common threat, the Soviet Union. Europe, however, views Russia as the heir to the Soviet Union in its expansionist outlook, while Trump sees Russia as a counterbalancing force to what he calls “woke” Europe. From this perspective, if the policy of Ronald Reagan helped bring about the end of the Soviet Union after it became bogged down in Afghanistan, Trump’s policy may help throw Russia a lifeline after it became bogged down in Ukraine. Even so, the war in Ukraine may slip to second place among European priorities.

The specter of Abdel Nasser

The famous line of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, “We expected them from the east and the north, but they came from the west,” may well apply to leaders in Brussels. They expected the enemy to come from the east, only to be surprised by the emergence of an enemy, or at least a rival for now, from the west. Donald Trump has not backed away from reopening the Greenland file, and Davos provided a prominent occasion to renew the demand.

Yet just as Abdel Nasser did not escape criticism for justifying the military defeat of 1967, meaning the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel, the same is likely to apply to Europeans who failed to anticipate Trump’s appetite for the island.

The history of the president’s bid to purchase the island dates back to his first term, when he also entered into a public clash with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, specifically in August 2019, after she refused to sell Greenland. This took place at a time when the so-called “adults in the room”, meaning senior advisers seen as moderating influences, were still around him. Consequently, Greenland has long ranked high on the president’s list of interests. Less than two weeks before his inauguration for a second term, he sent his son Donald Trump Jr. to the island. It is not as though Europe had not received plenty of warning signals before the present moment.

Davos and the Suez moment

Tom Switzer of the Center for Independent Studies likens the Greenland issue to the pivotal Suez moment, when Britain realized it was no longer a major global power, referring to the 1956 Suez Crisis. Today, Trump’s demands over the island mark the opening of a moment signaling the end of the United States’ claim that it protects the Old Continent, a common expression meaning Europe. But Switzer’s article in The Spectator goes further, arguing that the alliance between Americans and Europeans was almost the exception in history rather than the rule. In that sense, the issue is larger than Trump himself, and this view is easy to understand.

Nearly a year ago, under the headline “Between American MAGA and European MEGA… Fire Beneath the Ashes,” Annahar explained that the rift between Americans and Europeans has nothing to do solely with the divide between conservative and progressive visions but also affects conservatives themselves on both sides of the Atlantic. The split between American and European conservatives is historical, cultural, and commercial. It is now possible to add a volatile geographic element to this mix. The remarks of Nigel Farage, one of Donald Trump’s closest European allies, are telling.

Speaking days ago to US House Speaker Mike Johnson, he said: “Friends can disagree in private rooms, and that is fine. But to have an American president threatening tariffs so that we agree on the possibility that he might take control of Greenland, in some way, without apparently even taking the consent of the Greenlandic people. That is a very aggressive act.”

Thus, the American European rift is flaring faster than expected. The US president has become the greatest source of fear for Europeans, but he is certainly not the only one.

“Churchill’s Bet” is not the solution

Europe finds itself in a losing race with events. Recent developments in the Middle East have overtaken it, and before that it stood by as Armenia lost to Azerbaijan in their conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Its position in Africa is no better. In addition, Europe struggles to reach agreement even in areas far removed from conflict zones and great power intervention, as seen recently during the renewal of the Mercosur agreement. It turns out that Charles de Gaulle, as a French symbol, is not displeased only with the Americans. This time, the displeasure is not, as some say, based on the modified Cartesian rule “I oppose, therefore I exist.” France differs from many of its European friends over the agreement with Mercosur countries. But relations between Europe and most Latin American states are secondary to pressing international issues.

According to Walter Russell Mead of The Wall Street Journal, today’s geopolitical turmoil reminds most Europeans of the dark century that stretched from 1850 to 1945.

The difference today is that rescue will not come from across the Atlantic. There is a saying attributed to Winston Churchill that “you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.” The Churchill Project at Hillsdale College has found no source for this quote, but did not rule out that such a sentiment may have crossed the mind of the former British prime minister at certain moments during World War II.

The same cannot be said of Europeans’ feelings today about a return of America to “doing the right thing.” Most of them feel that help will not come, except perhaps in the form of the American president being constrained by midterm elections, or the military refusing to carry out presidential orders, should he change his mind and order the seizure of Greenland by military means.

But even if Trump were to forget the island, Europeans will still have to confront, ironically from Davos itself, Vladimir Lenin’s old question: “What is to be done?”