Politico EU has a dispatch from the Davos train wreck:
European governments have reached a difficult conclusion: The Americans are the baddies now.
As leaders of the EU’s 27 countries assemble in Brussels for an emergency summit Thursday, that assessment is predominant across almost all capitals in Europe, according to nine EU diplomats. These officials come from countries which have varying degrees of historic fondness of the U.S., and they made clear that this way of thinking is particularly stark in places that have previously had the strongest ties to Washington.
The sense of dread and skepticism remains, and the summit will still go ahead, despite Donald Trump declaring late Wednesday that he’s struck a deal on Greenland and won’t impose tariffs on European countries after all — underscoring how the gathering has become more than just about the latest blowup.
The U.S. president’s designs on Greenland, which he set out earlier in the day in Davos, Switzerland, demanding “immediate negotiations” to obtain the island, have come as a last straw for many leaders. Throughout the first year of his second term, they had clung to the hope that their worst fears about the country that has underpinned European security since 1945 wouldn’t be realized.
But the moment for making nice “has ended” and “the time has come to stand up against Trump,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO secretary-general and ex-Danish prime minister, told BBC radio.
Several of the envoys that POLITICO spoke to for this article, all of whom were granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their work, said they felt personally betrayed, some having studied and worked in the U.S. or having advocated for closer transatlantic ties. “Our American Dream is dead,” said an EU diplomat from a country that has been among the bloc’s transatlantic champions. “Donald Trump murdered it.”
I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. The damage done by his antics this time is very serious and I think it is irreparable. If we manage to get through the next three years and can start to reform ourselves, perhaps we can find a way to reestablish a secure world order but it won’t be what it was for the last 80 years. It will probably be a lot more volatile and in the nuclear age that is extremely worrying. But what’s done is done.
Trump’s speech at Davos, during which he called Denmark’s self-governing island “our territory,” did nothing to dial down the temperature 24 hours before the leaders’ hastily arranged gathering in the Belgian capital to discuss their next response to the disintegrating postwar order.
While Trump ruled out the use of military force to seize Greenland, EU governments didn’t regard this as a climbdown because of the harshness of his language about Europe in general and clear confirmation of his intentions, according to two EU diplomats.
Trump did eventually walk back his threat of issuing tariffs on the eight European countries which he considered to be standing in his way on Greenland, but by that point, things were already too far gone.
“After the back and forth of the last few days, we should now wait and see what substantive agreements are reached between [NATO Secretary-General] Mr. Rutte and Mr. Trump,” Germany’s Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil told German broadcaster ZDF. “No matter what solution is now found for Greenland, everyone must understand that we cannot sit back, relax, and be satisfied.”
The moment the U.S. president threatened those tariffs on Saturday was when the schism “became real,” said an EU diplomat.
He thinks he can just threaten and blackmail the whole world and they will automatically capitulate or, if things don’t go as he wished, agree to just forgive and forget and carry on as if nothing happened. And he’s not wrong is thinking that since it’s what happened in his first term and over the course of the last year. That’s no longer the case. It appears that he finally crossed the line.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen summed up the mood during her Davos speech Tuesday.
“The world has changed permanently,” she said. “We need to change with it.”
And get a load of this:
The abrupt decline of U.S. standing has been particularly painful for Denmark, which Trump called “ungrateful” in Davos.
Copenhagen has been shocked by his behavior, having for decades been among America’s most friendly allies. Denmark deployed forces in support of the U.S. to some of the most dangerous combat zones in the Middle East, including Helmand Province in Afghanistan. The country suffered among the worst per-capita losses of life.
How can they ever forgive this kind of insult. It’s absolutely grotesque:
They did not stay off the front lines. Every country that participated suffered casualties. Denmark had more deaths per Capita than the US did. He is a disgusting piece of garbage for saying that.
Speaking to Fox News on Thursday, Trump said he was “not sure” Nato would meet the “ultimate test” of defending the US if it were under threat. “We’ve never needed them … They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan … and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines,” he said, adding the US has been “very good to Europe and to many other countries. It has to be a two-way street.”
Those remarks follow similar comments earlier in the week, when he described the alliance as “overrated” and questioned its members’ willingness to respond to a crisis.“I know we’ll come to [Nato’s] rescue, but I just really do question whether or not they’ll come to ours,” he said before attending the World Economic Forum in Davos.
A total of 3,486 Nato troops died in the 20-year conflict, of which the majority, 2,461, were US service members. Four hundred and fifty-seven British troops died, while another 2,000 military and civilian personnel were wounded in action. Canada, long the US’s closest ally and largest trading partner, suffered 165 deaths, including civilians. Canada’s 12-year deployment was the country’s longest combat mission, with more than 40,000 personnel, and the deadliest since the Korean war in the 1950s.
Other Nato allies, including Italy, Germany and France, also had soldiers who died. Trump has singled out Denmark, which controls Greenland – a territory the US president has said Washington “must” take over” – as being “ungrateful” for US protection during the second world war. Denmark suffering 44 combat deaths iin Afghanistan, the most per capita outside the US.
Unforgiveable.