When U.S. President Donald Trump floated the possibility of taking Greenland by force, European leaders reacted with outrage—and then, almost immediately, with relief once he backed down. Wolfgang Ischinger, the doyen of the Munich Security Conference, expressed similar relief when he described Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech there—chock full of conditionality on immigration and culture war tropes—as “reassuring.”
That sentiment may prove far more dangerous than any threats from Washington.
The trans-Atlantic partnership of days past no longer exists. After decades of considering aligned interests and close collaboration a fact of life, the relationship between Washington and what it long enthusiastically referred to as its “allies and partners” in Europe today bears little resemblance to what it once was. The recent episode surrounding Trump’s declared intent to acquire Greenland, by means of a military invasion if necessary, especially signaled to the world that a genuine geopolitical rift separating the two sides has emerged and shows no sign of going away anytime soon.
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