DAVOS, Switzerland — President Donald Trump flew home from an international conference here Thursday with a parting message: “It was an incredible time in Davos.”
For him, perhaps. For many of the country's European allies, it was a sign of global "rupture" that could reverberate for years.
Trump has appeared to back off his maximalist demand that the U.S. take ownership of Greenland, moving instead toward a deal that would allow the U.S. to place more troops, bases and military hardware on the island, a territory of Denmark.
In an interview with Fox Business, he said, “We’re getting everything we wanted — total security, total access to everything.”
Yet all of that was available to Trump from the start, without the drama that sent the NATO alliance barreling toward an internal crisis, a Danish official told NBC News on Thursday.
The only nonnegotiable point for Denmark was that Greenland shouldn’t be absorbed by the U.S., the person added.
"We can discuss increased military presence and more troops. You name it, basically, you can have it" under existing treaties, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Trump’s reassurance that America’s military won’t seize Greenland at gunpoint settled the financial markets, as did his pledge to forgo tariffs on Europe as a prod to relinquish Greenland.
But his Greenland gambit clawed away some of the trust that underpins a successful alliance, said diplomats, government officials and foreign policy experts.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, told NBC News, “As an American, as an Alaskan, I was concerned that in this global forum the relationships that have been built up with so many, perhaps, were fractured.”
Trump’s announcement at Davos that he won’t use force helped ease tensions, though some foreign policy experts and officials said his bid to swallow up Greenland sowed distrust in European capitals that won’t soon dissipate.
“The damage has already been done,” said Aurel Sari, a professor of international law at the University of Exeter in England. “NATO is based on shared values and trust. What is becoming very clear to European leaders, and to Canada, as well, is that those values are not shared anymore. And the trust is simply not there.”
Coming out of World War II, the U.S. reshaped the international landscape, creating a web of institutions meant to resolve conflicts peacefully and apply rules fairly.
As a superpower protective of its own interests, the U.S. has breached international norms at various times. Yet the structure that evolved over the past 80 years averted a third world war while creating broad prosperity in the West.
Now, democratic leaders warn that America is destabilizing the very order it birthed.
Before Trump touched down in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned in a speech that geopolitical relations are undergoing a “rupture.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz echoed Carney’s point in his own speech in Davos on Thursday. He warned that the “international order of the past three decades — anchored in international law — has always been imperfect. Today, its very foundations have been shaken.”
“The new world of great powers is being built on power, on strength and, when it comes to it, on force,” Merz said. “It’s not a cozy place.”
Before the conference, Trump was coy about how far he would go to acquire Greenland. Asked whether he would use force, he told NBC News in an interview Monday, “No comment.”
He said at a news conference Tuesday at the White House “you’ll find out” when he was asked about the extent to which he’d push.
He trolled European leaders with a social media post that showed him planting an American flag on Greenland territory, near a sign that read, “Greenland, US Territory, Est. 2026.”
If it was a joke, Europeans don’t like the punch line.
About 10,000 Danes took part in a demonstration in Copenhagen, their nation's capital, this week, protesting Trump’s attempt to annex Greenland. People in the crowd wore hats that read, “Make America Go Away,” a play on Trump’s campaign slogan.
A puzzling subplot in the Greenland saga was Trump’s climbdown. In his speech Wednesday, he insisted that the U.S. needs ownership of Greenland. Trump, a onetime real estate developer, said a “lease” wouldn’t suffice. He issued an ominous warning to America’s European allies.
“You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no, and we will remember,” he said.
Within a few hours, he instead sounded ready to compromise. He posted on social media about a meeting he’d had with NATO’s secretary general and said he’d agreed to the “framework of a future deal” on Greenland. Gone was the notion of owning it outright.
Still, the damage is lasting, said Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank.
“By attacking the sovereignty of a NATO ally, he has rattled the markets and shaken the confidence of allies," Berzina said. "He had to backpedal from his ill-advised wording that he wanted to own a different country’s territory. Now he has to be on cleanup duty to wind up in the same place.”
Watching from a distance is Russian President Vladimir Putin. One of Putin’s strategic goals is to disrupt the NATO alliance, which has been a bulwark against Russian territorial ambitions in the West.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee who attended the Davos conference, told NBC News: “Putin is celebrating this misguided effort to extract meaningless concessions that were more about Trump’s needs for an abstract win than American national interests.”
