From Outrage to Agreement: Trump’s Greenland Gambit
Last week this column chastised President Trump for demanding ownership of Greenland and for threatening tariffs on any nation — including the NATO members that didn’t support him in his ambition to own Greenland — and for damaging NATO.
The president can and should calm himself. As Winston Churchill once said, it’s better to fight with allies than without them.
What a difference a week makes. It’s not as if the president took my advice, but in short order he dropped his demand to own Greenland, dropped the tariff threats and — while he’s still justifiably critical of NATO — his actions are more in support of it than not. Trump also disavowed military force to acquire Greenland.
Perhaps the president and his team realized that the Cold War-era 1950 Defense of Greenland agreement with Denmark gave pretty much everything that Mr. Trump wanted. It guarantees us basing rights in support of the NATO Treaty.
Last week, President Trump announced his U-turn on Greenland, saying that his talks with NATO leaders left him close to an agreement. We don’t know how the agreement with Denmark and Greenland will turn out, but it may reportedly include not only basing rights but also a NATO agreement to bolster defenses in the Arctic and possibly a right of first refusal in the U.S. to Greenland’s minerals which are believed to include many of the rare earth metals that China has stopped exporting to the U.S.
I have never read Trump’s “Art of the Deal,” but his international strategy on Greenland apparently stems from its ideas. The book reportedly maintains that going into a negotiation, Trump’s idea is to make outrageous demands and then retreat to the position he really wants to achieve. He certainly did so on Greenland.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (who at an earlier summit called Trump “daddy”) was much in evidence at Davos. (Rutte has taken a lot of abuse by other NATO leaders for that remark.) He and Trump on Wednesday “discussed the critical significance of security in the Arctic region” thus beginning negotiations on both U.S. missile defenses in Greenland and denying China and Russia any economic influence in the Arctic.
California Governor Gavin Nuisance was also in Davos. He claimed that his speech was prevented by the Trump team. If you had any doubt that the 2028 presidential race has already started, Nuisance’s appearance at Davos should end that doubt. He must have planned to castigate Trump and make a play on climate change as Al Gore did in 2024. (Gore, also present, booed a speech by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at this year’s Davos conclave.)
But Trump continues to bash our NATO allies. In remarks to Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, Trump said that he wasn’t sure that NATO would stand by us if we were attacked. He added, “We’ve never needed them [NATO] … We have never really asked anything of them. They’ll say, they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”
Most NATO nations suffered troops’ deaths in backing us in Afghanistan where there were no front lines. The United Kingdom suffered the most — 457 dead — while nations from Canada to Estonia all had troops killed there. One of my British pals said Trump’s remarks were, “outrageous, insensitive and cruel to the many, living and dead, and their families who suffered working alongside and in support of the U.S.”
Trump later sort of apologized. He wrote on Truth Social that, “The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America! In Afghanistan, 457 died, many were badly injured, and they were among the greatest of all warriors,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It’s a bond too strong to ever be broken. The U.K. Military, with tremendous Heart and Soul, is second to none (except for the U.S.A.!). We love you all, and always will!”
I visited Baghdad in December 2005 and the Brits were very much in evidence. About 179 British troops were killed in the Iraq war. They didn’t hang back in that war either.
So what does Trump gain by insulting our allies, especially the Brits? It’s natural for him to dislike UK Prime Minister Sir Keith Starmer who is a quasi-socialist. It’s also natural for him to dislike French President Macron who is also a quasi-socialist. Macron’s government of France is failing, causing even the very liberal The Economist magazine to have a story titled “The Merde Show” in a recent issue.
But Trump’s remarks go beyond negotiations. They go beyond diplomacy and venture into damage to our relations with NATO nations. It may all be part of Trump’s “Art of the Deal,” but the remarks don’t appear to have any positive effect. The president can and should calm himself. As Winston Churchill once said, it’s better to fight with allies than without them.
READ MORE from Jed Babbin:
Trump and Greenland: A NATO Test