President Donald Trump said on social media Tuesday morning he had agreed to a meeting “concerning Greenland” at this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but insisted that “Greenland is imperative to National and World Security” and “there can be no going back.” Over the weekend, Trump threatened new tariffs on eight European countries that had sent small military deployments to Greenland, and he tied his escalating threats to seize the semiautonomous Danish territory to his unsuccessful campaign to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
Who said what
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” Trump said in a message Sunday to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store. “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
Store said Monday that Trump was responding to a message in which “we pointed to the need to de-escalate and proposed a telephone conversation” on tariffs and Greenland. “As regards the Nobel Peace Prize,” he added, “I have clearly explained, including to President Trump,” that “the prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee and not the Norwegian government.”
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Trump’s “bid to buy or seize” a NATO ally’s territory and “to unleash a trade war with European leaders who disapprove has sparked the greatest transatlantic crisis in generations,” The Washington Post said. Trump’s nod to the Nobel Peace Prize has also “injected a new level of uncertainty” about his “thinking and his campaign to gain control of the island,” The New York Times said. Europe is taking his threats “extremely seriously,” The Wall Street Journal said. But Store’s “tempered reply points to a difficult reality for European nations: America is too embedded in their collective security” for them to “threaten a quick punch-back.”
What next?
Trump’s speech in Davos on Wednesday “will help determine the tone of Europe’s response” as “leaders desperately search for an off-ramp,” Politico said. If “diplomatic efforts fail,” the Post said, the EU’s “arsenal of trade tools” includes retaliatory tariffs on $100 billion worth of U.S. goods and triggering its never-used anti-coercion trade “bazooka,” allowing the bloc to target U.S. tech services and other lucrative sectors. The leaders of the 27 EU member states will meet Thursday evening in Brussels for an emergency meeting on transatlantic relations.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
