NUUK, Greenland — The notion that Denmark alone, or Europe together, could defend Greenland against an American force had become the source of relentless mockery within the White House. The Danish were dismissed as “irrelevant,” while Europe was portrayed as a shadow of its former self. If President Trump chose to take control of this Arctic island, the administration said, it would be his for the taking.
And yet, Europe did defend Greenland last week. Plans for a forceful economic response from the European Union spooked U.S. markets. Trump backed down from his years-long pursuit to take over the territory — and little Denmark succeeded, securing relief from an American pressure campaign that had challenged its basic sovereignty.
“We’ll get by with a little help from our friends,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, wrote in a guest book at Chequers on Thursday, referencing the Beatles lyric while visiting her British counterpart.
The specter of conflict has not disappeared. In Nuuk on Friday, after visiting with local leaders at a government office on the main boulevard of Greenland’s capital, Frederiksen embraced locals fearful of an imperialist United States. She declined to answer questions on whether tensions had been defused with Washington.
The Greenland crisis has proved to be an inflection point for U.S. allies, whose leaders, gathered last week in Davos, Switzerland, shed the pretense that all is well with Washington as they confront a new order. “The middle powers must act together,” said Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, in a speech widely shared in foreign capitals, “because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
Within Europe, disagreements still persist on how to handle Trump on an interpersonal basis. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have bristled at French President Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic dualities, standing up to Trump in public while courting him in private with obsequious texts.
But they all agreed that a firm stance against a U.S. ploy to seize Greenland was required to prevent disastrous escalation — even at risk of jeopardizing the NATO alliance itself.
Markets rallied after Trump reversed course, rebounding to previous highs. U.S. relations with its partners will take longer to recover, experts said.
“Trump’s retreat, and the skillful European handling of him, avoided an immediate crisis, but not the longer-term damage,” said Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as under Trump in his first term. “An unpredictable and unfriendly United States threatening to use force against a fellow NATO ally was unthinkable. Now it is thinkable — because it just happened.”
“Leaders of allies will be pondering this for the next three years and figuring out what works with Trump, whom he listens to, and how much of the problem is Trump,” Abrams added, “as opposed to deeper currents in American politics that will outlast him.”
Over the course of just a week,