Donald Trump’s antics over the past week have put paid to the refrain, often heard in Europe, that the president should be taken “seriously but not literally”. It turns out that Trump literally wants Greenland. He doubled down on his aggressive rhetoric in a raging 45-minute call with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, a few days ago, threatening crippling tariffs unless she agreed to sell the autonomous territory to the US. In response to Denmark’s sharp increase in military spending for the Arctic, including ships and drones, he derided Copenhagen’s “dog-sled” defences for Greenland, the world’s largest non-continental island, which pale in comparison with the strength of the US military base there.
The threat to take over the territory of a European country by force is something that Europeans now know all too well. Russia has repeatedly threatened east European countries, making good on those threats by invading Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014. Yet many Europeans are gobsmacked that such a threat is now coming from its greatest ally.
That said, the reaction has been muted. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the European Council president, António Costa, have said nothing, while the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, while speaking out initially, have joined in the collective silence. What’s going on?
It would be naïve to fully rely on the old way of diplomacy, but it would mean certain defeat to do business on the terms of authoritarians. Trump wants unilateral, flashy diplomacy, because that’s where he wins. Small countries like Denmark need to work to bolster multilateral large-alliance rules based diplomacy, because that’s where they win.
By not rising to the bait, but instead presenting a calm, unified European response that there is no way Trump can buy Greenland, but that they’re happy to help him achieve whatever policy he’s using to justify this invasion talk, they at least have a chance of staving him off long enough that the whole thing fizzles out.
This approach also makes it a lot harder for Trump to actually make good on his threats. He’ll have to start a conflict with the whole EU, and he’ll end up looking like a guy who pisses on a cooperative ally rather than the strong man who beats down uppity foreigners.
And yes, that’s probably also fine by him, but it at least doesn’t play into his hand.