Europeans Plan To Lobby Trump at Davos To Save NATO

As more Danish and other European Union soldiers fly into Greenland, European leaders plan to meet President Trump tomorrow at Davos, Switzerland. They hope to dissuade him from seizing the Arctic territory from Denmark. For Mr. Trump, it would be a feather in his cap in an election year: an expansion of American territory greater than the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.For the North Atlantic Treaty, the transatlantic alliance that has bound Europe and America together since World War II, it would be a disaster. “If the United States were to use force, it would be the death knell for NATO,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain on Sunday told La Vanguardia newspaper. He added that an American invasion of Greenland “would make Putin the happiest man on earth.”Bloomberg Opinion columnist Marc Champion writes: “An American seizure of Greenland would likely destroy the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a net win for Putin that he could only have dreamed of a year ago.”The prospect of European militaries swiveling gun sites to west from east helps explain the Kremlin’s tolerance of a possible land grab by the United States. Traditionally vigilant over its claims to the far north, Russia long has considered itself the world’s dominant Arctic power. A military vessel, Ejnar Mikkelsen of the Royal Danish Navy, patrols near Nuuk, Greenland. AP/Evgeniy MaloletkaOf the world’s eight Arctic nations, Russia claims half of the Arctic. Russia has 57 icebreakers, more than the 48 owned by the rest of the world. However, seven of the eight Arctic nations are NATO members. Confounding Mr. Trump’s claims that Greenland is poorly defended, Moscow long ago wrote off the island as part of NATO’s defenses. During World War II, America had 17 bases on the island. After the war, Denmark rejected an American offer to buy the island. As a compromise, the Greenland Defense Agreement of 1951 in effect allows Washington to establish bases where and when it pleases.If Mr. Trump tries to formally take control of the lightly-populated land mass, it would dovetail with President Vladimir Putin’s sphere-of-influence worldview. In short, you get Greenland and Venezuela; I get Ukraine. Mr. Sanchez adds: “It would legitimize his attempted invasion of Ukraine.”Already, European friends of Ukraine worry that attention is shifting 3,000 miles west — to Nuuk, capital of Greenland, from Kyiv. At Davos this week, Greenland is downgrading Ukraine to a lesser plane.President Trump with leaders of European nations and NATO at the White House on August 18, 2025. Win McNamee/Getty Images“If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside NATO,” the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, tweeted. A former prime minister of Estonia, Ms. Kallas added: “We also cannot let our dispute distract us from our core task of helping to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.”However, military strategists who wrote last week on Ukraine now study the defensibility of a land mass three times the size of Texas and with a population of only 57,000.“It shouldn’t be hard to anticipate American moves. Given preparation and political will, it’s possible to defeat an American invasion,” American analyst David Axe wrote yesterday in a blog post titled: “Greenland’s geography could help the Danes defend the island from invading Americans.” However, he added: “Assuming the attack comes soon and comes by air, the Americans may try to keep things simple and fly directly to Nuuk. They could land or parachute into the town and capture its airport and seaport, its newly established military storage area and its administrative buildings.” Indeed, with 14 major airports and 47 heliports — some of them built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers — Greenland seems indefensible to an attack from the west. For now, the top two Danish officers on the ground — Major General Peter H. Boysen, chief of the Danish Army Command, and Major General Søren Andersen, head of Denmark’s Arctic Command — say their troops are bivouacking with soldiers from France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway in standard maneuvers to practice for a Russian incursion.The mountains above the village of Davos, where the annual meeting of World Economic Forum is held, in 2024. AP/Markus SchreiberMeanwhile at Davos and Brussels, diplomats and politicians discuss Plan B — the defense of Europe without America. Thanks in part to Mr. Trump, they have a one-year head start. After Mr. Trump cut off almost all military aid to Ukraine last year, European nations stepped up to the challenge, replacing America as Ukraine’s main backer. By browbeating European nations to pay more for their own defense, Mr. Trump helped to spark a surge in European arms production. Last week, President Emmanuel Macron claimed that France is supplying two-thirds of the satellite intelligence used by Ukraine to combat Russia. In a speech to the French military, he said: “Where Ukraine was extremely dependent on American intelligence capacity,” a year ago, “two-thirds is today provided by France.”Last year, a “coalition of the willing” of about 35 European countries was formed to aid Ukraine. If America under Mr. Trump is no longer deemed reliable, this coalition could become the basis of an all-European defense organization. Last week, Europe’s defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, a Lithuanian, proposed a standing EU army of 100,000 and a European Security Council of the dozen largest countries.German soldiers at Vilnius, Lithuania, May 22, 2025. AP/Mindaugas KulbisAt Washington and Moscow government officials routinely disparage Europe. However, Europe’s economy, with Britain, is 90 percent as large as the American economy. Europe’s economy is 11 times larger than Russia’s.European confidence was further shaken last week when Mr. Trump’s new nominee to be ambassador to Iceland joked that he could become governor of the 52nd state. Iceland, the historic jumping off point for Scandinavian colonization of Greenland, is 185 miles east of Greenland. So far, 5,341 people in Iceland have signed a petition urging the nation’s foreign minister, Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, to reject the Trump nominee, Billy Long, a former representative from Missouri.“It goes without saying that this is extremely serious for a small country like Iceland,” a member of its parliament, Sigmar Guðmundsson, told Morgunblaðið news site. “We must realize that all the security arguments that the Americans make against Greenland also apply to Iceland.”Such comments also increase jitters in Canada, a northern nation that Mr. Trump also has proposed annexing.“President Donald Trump’s pursuit of Greenland may be a dress rehearsal for taking over Canada,” Canadian-American journalist Diane Francis wrote yesterday. “A takeover artist occupies the White House, and we are in his crosshairs.”Canada’s best defense, she argues, is its largely liberal population. “Polling shows that Canadians don’t want a merger, but neither do Americans nor Republicans,” writes Ms. Francis, who is a citizen of both countries. “The Grand Old Party would not want 40 million Democrats from the north suddenly participating in America’s political system.”

Europeans Plan To Lobby Trump at Davos To Save NATO

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