What Europe learned from the Greenland crisis

As if the Europeans needed another wake-up call about the contempt in which President Donald Trump holds them, his mocking antipathy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was a good reminder. But Davos presented another lesson to Europe. Standing together on the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty, while warning of severe economic countermeasures, the Europeans achieved an apparent retreat from Trump over Greenland.
Sovereignty and the inviolability of borders are fundamental tenets of the European project, built out of the ruins of World War II, when the aggressive imperialism of big powers led to millions of deaths. The lesson was clear: Defending borders collectively is the only way small states are protected from the predations of larger ones.
Now Europe finds itself again confronted by big powers with expansionist goals. Russia continues its effort to conquer Ukraine, whose sovereignty it had recognised in numerous treaties. And the United States has been demanding that Denmark, an EU and Nato ally, hand over Greenland. But preserving territorial integrity and sovereignty is the red line, expressed both in the European Union, a collective of 27 nations, and in Nato, a military alliance of 32 nations. It can seem quixotic in the current world to be defending international law, the UN Charter and the Helsinki Accords, which all insist on the inviolability of borders, but in a sense, that is Europe’s fate.
“That borders can be challenged by force, and the threat of force threatens the core tenets of European security and aspirations since the end of World War II,” said Ian Lesser, the head of the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund. “The war in Ukraine brought it to the fore,” he continued, “but the idea that the United States, the principal guarantor of European security, should be challenging the concept of sovereignty and territorial integrity is a serious concern.”
Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, argued that the Continent has been rediscovering the importance of sovereignty in the face of challenges from the “great powers” of China, Russia and the United States. “Most of European history since World War II has been about taming sovereignty and pooling it” in multilateral institutions, he said. But the new world is “fundamentally changing the nature of the EU,” he said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada won praise for a speech in Davos in which he said that the old international order was dead. “Middle powers” like Canada and Europe, he said, must form new alliances as the great powers abandon postwar international norms and treaties and rely instead on “economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” There is a rupture in the old order, Carney said: “When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.”
Europeans have resisted Trump’s demands that Ukraine hand over to Russia territory that Moscow has not conquered. And the Europeans have insisted that even if a peace deal left Russian troops occupying 20% of Ukraine, the occupation would never be recognised as permanent, not even in Crimea. The Europeans have come up with more money and military aid for Ukraine than the United States, and they have largely picked up the slack after Trump cut off funding for Ukraine. They recently agreed to another 90 billion euros ($106 billion) in economic and military aid to Kyiv.
The second Trump presidency has taught Europe that its initial policy of flattering Trump has been a failure, and that standing up for core principles is vital, said a senior European official, speaking anonymously given the sensitivity of the US-European relationship. In essence, he agreed, Europe has learned that a little flattery is fine, so long as you have a gun in your pocket.
That was the case with Denmark and Greenland. For many weeks, European leaders and officials hoped that Trump would back down over his intention to take Greenland “the easy way” or “the hard way.” Instead, he threatened even more punitive tariffs. So the European Union scheduled an emergency summit meeting right after Davos.
After the EU summit meeting early on Friday, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said the latest tariff threats offered a tactical lesson for dealing with the United States. “Firmness, outreach, preparedness and unity” had been effective, she said. “So, going forward we should maintain this very approach.”