The Subtext of Trump’s Batshit Speech in Davos
It feels odd to describe a speech as “good news” when it involves the president of the United States rambling incessantly and threatening America’s European allies. But, taken one way, Donald Trump’s stark raving mad speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday was good news.
A day earlier, the stock markets had tumbled, for two related reasons. One was that Trump continued to escalate his threats to seize Greenland by military force, a move that would almost certainly mean the end of the NATO alliance. The second was that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney—whose country has long been one of America’s closest allies, if not its closest—gave a rousing speech at Davos about the need for a new global order without the U.S. as its leader.
“I will talk today about the breaking of the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraint,” he said. “Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” He later added, “The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
This was a potential inflection point. The United States was at risk of losing its hegemonic position in the West, for what may be the dumbest imaginable reason: Trump wants Greenland because it looks very big on a map, and perhaps because the U.S. once temporarily protected it.
Trump’s speech was demented. There were several moments when he talked up American military supremacy in a way that was clearly meant to intimidate those who stood between him and the frozen Danish territory in the North Atlantic. But the speech also was the beginning of a walkback that would continue throughout the day. Trump may have saber-rattled, reminding Europe of America’s big battleships and superior armed forces, but he also pledged not to use the American military to attack Greenland.
“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won’t do that,” he said. “OK, now everyone’s saying, ‘Oh good.’ That’s probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.”
He was right: That was the biggest statement, at least as far as the major news organizations were concerned, as they blasted out breaking-news alerts declaring that Trump promised not to take Greenland by military force—though generally failed to acknowledge the very long history of Trump breaking his supposed promises.
Anyway, later in the day, Trump took an even bigger step back, releasing a statement that more or less said he was forgetting about acquiring the island for the time being and dropping his threat to slap 10 percent tariffs on Europe in retaliation for opposing his demands for Greenland.
“Based upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region,” he posted on Truth Social. “This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations. Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st. Additional discussions are being held concerning The Golden Dome as it pertains to Greenland.”
The stock markets stabilized. Those headlines about Trump promising not to invade Greenland, which understandably irked people given the missing context, seemed to have gotten it right. Yes, the speech was crazy. But it was a crazy speech that marked the start of our crazy president walking back one of his many crazy missteps—for now.
As far as wind-downs go, few have been more Trumpian. He mocked NATO repeatedly and told the visiting dignitaries that they would be “speaking German” if it wasn’t for the United States. (For all the video evidence of Trump’s cognitive decline, the best evidence comes in moments like these—he just isn’t as clever as he was five, or especially 10, years ago.) He still huffed and puffed, talking up the U.S. military in a way that was obviously meant to be intimidating: I’m ruling out invading Greenland now, but if I didn’t, you’d be in real trouble.
“We want a piece of ice for world protection and they won’t give it,” Trump whined later in his speech on Wednesday. “We’ve never asked for anything else … so they have a choice: You can say yes and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no—and we will remember.”
For Trump, losing always requires these bombastic efforts, which are seemingly deployed only to protect his own frail psychology. But make no mistake, Trump backed down because he had to. Though investors have been unfazed by Trump’s belligerence for months, they recognized that an invasion of Greenland—a rather serious and, after the Venezuela invasion, believable threat—would destroy the current international order, causing economic devastation. Trump’s speech was largely aimed at these investors, who are the people who really shackled him. Which is why he was so hostile toward everyone else.
To put it in Axios-ese: Trump touched the hot stove and got burned. But that analogy only goes so far. Children learn from their burns; Trump never does. His face-saving Truth Social statement was by no means definitive. Whether this “future deal” comes to pass is anyone’s guess. But if it does, it will certainly not involve the U.S. owning Greenland, which means this issue will likely flare up again. (For the record, it already did once before, when Trump began his second term by declaring that acquiring Greenland was one of his primary goals.)
This is obviously not a tenable way to conduct American foreign policy, but it’s how America conducts foreign policy under Trump. There’s no changing it. Our allies, meanwhile, are living in the world Carney outlined a day earlier. “The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it,” he said. “Nostalgia is not a strategy.” Their emerging strategy seems to be to band together and concoct ways to mollify the temperamental nincompoop who’s running America.