O Canada!
European leaders launch salvos as Davos awaits America's mad king. The stakes may be too high for all but the mildest retaliation but the long term consequences are dire.
As European leaders prepare for Donald Trump’s arrival at Davos, they are trying, at least, to set the terms of engagement. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made what may turn out to be this particular era’s most historic speech.
Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.
But I also submit to you that other countries, particularly middle powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.
The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.
Carney was not alone. French president Emmanuel Macron spoke of “a shift to a time without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest.”
For a long, no doubt painful year, European heads of state have been jollying Trump along, talking him down from the tariff cliff, kindly requesting that he not hang the Ukrainians out to dry.
The compromise? The U.S. no longer is supplying arms to Ukraine. Instead, U.S. arm manufacturers are making bank, selling our weapons to European countries.
Classic Trump, right? Making bank. Yet the U.S. is still providing key intelligence to Ukraine, intel crucial to the country’s military. The fear is that if Trump invades Greenland and Europe retaliates, Trump will cut off that intelligence. He did it once before, and there’s no reason not to expect he’s capable of doing it again.
There’s more. With sanctions on Russia, Europe has become dependent on U.S. natural gas. According to a study cited by The Guardian, imports to the European Economic Area, the 27 EU states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, of US LNG – natural gas that is supercooled to make it easier to transport – increased by 61% in 2025. The author of the study noted that Trump’s 2025 National Security statement cited energy as a way to project power - in other words, the administration has already considered the leverage it possesses over Europe.
Nobody can find a rationale in Trump’s obsession with Greenland. He appears to be in full-blown frontal lobe dementia, as we’ve talked about here at the Journal. Not that it means anything to the history-averse real estate developer, but Greenland is part of Denmark, a NATO country, and therefore bound by a common defense pact.
Nonetheless, it’s unlikely that European countries declare war on the U.S. if the Real Estate Rapist invades Greenland. But knowledgeable observers believe the damage to the alliance that kept world war at bay for 75 years will be, if not irreparable, certainly long-lasting. That damage may already have been done.
One source at Davos told Katty Kay that the world might have understood Trump getting elected once. But this second term, after we all thought sanity was restored with Biden’s victory in 2020, reveals deeper problems in the United States
We don’t disagree.
You know, when we met with members of Parliament from Greenland, they spoke about the children in Greenland, that they go to bed at night fearful. They are worried. Some planes came in to the single base that is there, and they panicked, worrying they were Americans coming to get them. We must interrupt that. Children fearful of the United States of America.
— Pennsylvania congresswoman Madeleine Dean
Let us take a moment to learn something about Greenland, where it’s been reported that children are now fearful of Americans, the way Jewish children once feared Cossacks and later Nazis. At Davos, Kay interviewed Pennsylvania congresswoman Madeleine Dean, who had just returned from Copenhagen. What Dean learned about Greenland on her trip is remarkable. Long ago, the great American environmental thinker Aldo Leopold wrote about land as community, not commodity. Dean’s account of how the people of Greenland regard their land is a striking illustration of that aspirational maxim.
Dean repeated what a young member of Greenland’s Parliament said:
Let me tell you what our idea of land is. She said, we don’t possess the land. We are there and we are caretakers of the land.
They literally don’t take title. They give it over generation after generation after generation. Of course, that’s in grave conflict with the president’s concept of land, of titles, of possession.
But Donald Trump, like the vulgar real estate developer he is, says it’s not enough to work with the Danes on mutual defense. He needs to own Greenland. He’s compared it to a real estate deal.
Disgust is the word that comes to mind.
Dean believes that congressional Republicans will be able to talk Trump down from his mad idea. I’m not sure. Trump has a consistent record of destroying anything of grace, starting with the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue, after he promised to give its historic friezes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art - and then didn’t. Destroying Greenland’s culture is nothing to him. He wouldn’t even understand it if it were shown to him in a picture book.
It is also worth noting that Denmark stood by us in our ill-advised Iraq war, losing per capita as many soldiers as the U.S.
Take a look at the transcript of Katty Kay’s interview with Dean, just below Carney’s speech. And check out The Rest is Politics US, along with the original The Rest is Politics, hosted by the brilliant Brits Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. They make up for what we’re missing as our media implodes.
Some of you have asked me to give you more information on books that provide insight on the times we’re living through. I’ll be doing that this weekend, along with recommended media sources. And I have a new collection of memes…even though none of this is funny.
— Susan Zakin with help from assistant editor Jamil Bakar
Katty Kay interview Rep. Madeleine Dean at Davos
So after we finished recording this episode, Anthony and I, I found out that Congresswoman Madeline Dean from Pennsylvania has come to Davos and had been part of the delegation that has just flown to Copenhagen to visit officials from Denmark and Greenland. And I wanted to grab her to get her impressions of what the Danes are thinking and what the Greenland people are thinking. And also what she is thinking as an American member of Congress.
She is a Democrat from the great state of Pennsylvania. And I wanted to just grab that opportunity to speak to her while she’s here and fresh off the plane from Copenhagen. Congresswoman Dean, you’ve just come from Copenhagen, where you were talking to Danish officials about the situation with Greenland.
I can’t quite believe I’m going to ask you this question, but is America going to invade Greenland?
I hope not. And I believe not. We did just come.
A very good delegation from the United States, both House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, came to Copenhagen, met with members of Parliament from both Greenland and Denmark, as well as both Prime Ministers, to say we are your ally. We are” “your friend. We do not want this threat from the President.
And we are here to do whatever we can to let you know of our friendship and how we want to help solve this problem. After all, Congress has an important role to play. And noteworthy was that we had Republicans with us.
You had two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Tom Tillis. They’ve been pretty outspoken, but not a huge number of Republicans have followed suit. Why are they not saying more when my understanding is there’s very little appetite in the Senate and in the House for military action against Greenland.
And in America. In fact, most Americans don’t want this, don’t understand why we would do it. Part of what we are here to do also was to educate ourselves so that we can take that back to our colleagues in the House and in the Senate.
To say that this is Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. They are our ally and friend for the past 75 years, one of the founding members of NATO, just like us. And also they have been our partner and friend for a historic 225 years.
And what I tell my colleagues at home is, do you remember that after 9-11 when Article 5 was triggered, came and fought alongside us and sadly died alongside us? Denmark. We had the chance.
It was one of the saddest, most poignant moments. We laid a wreath at the memorial for the 50 Danish service members who died.
On your trip just now to Copenhagen?
Yes. And it’s remarkable. There were obviously senior officers and very young soldiers who died standing and fighting next to us in some of the hardest missions.
Because per capita, Denmark lost as many people as the United States, per capita.
You’ve done a lot of delegations in your work on foreign affairs around the world. Does this feel like a different moment? Anthony was asking me when we were taping the podcast whether I thought this felt like a different moment and whether there’s any going back from Europe’s point of view to its relationship with America.
Having just come from Denmark, does it feel different to you? Does this feel different from previous delegations you’ve been on?
It does. I was actually saying that to some of our members. We traveled with Gregory Meeks, who’s a ranking member of Foreign Affairs.
I served with him on Foreign Affairs and I was saying to him and he to me, this feels so consequential. This feels so important. For those back home, this is not simply about a threat by the president of the United States to take Greenland.
This is about our NATO alliance. This is about trust and respect around the world. And any kind of military involvement in Greenland would be a breach of our NATO treaties and a breach of our friendship.
That’s what’s one of the most damaging things. You know, when we met with members of Parliament from Greenland, they spoke about the children in Greenland, that they go to bed at night fearful. They are worried.
Some planes came in to the single base that is there, and they panicked, worrying they were Americans coming to get them. We must interrupt that. Children fearful of the United States of America.
And on the flow side of this, what I want to convince the Americans of, I think most know, Denmark would love our greater involvement, as they have told us over and over again. We had as”“many as 20 bases on Greenland, for this very reason, or strategic importance of that region, whether it’s Russia or China, we’re down to one. They welcome us to come back.
Great, invest in a greater way in strategy, strategic alliances, as a partner.
You said that this is consequential, this feels like, and I apologize for all the noise, because we’re sitting recording this in a corridor, and there are people walking past, but you said this is consequential. To your voters, and I’ve been to your wonderful district just outside Philadelphia, on the outskirts of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, why should they care? Why should they care whether America launches some kind of military action or uses some kind of force or coercion to take Greenland?
My constituents care. They have a sense of history and gravity. It would be a fool’s errand to take military force into an ally and into the territory that is Greenland.
This is a sovereign territory. That is so un-American that we would do that. And it is a fool’s errand because it would be a very costly possession. As I said, they welcome our input. Many of my constituents, you remember, are people my age and older. They recognize the power of our NATO alliance. That since World War II, 75 plus years, it has helped keep us safe before Ukraine, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, kept us at relative peace with Europe and of course with our NATO partners. My constituents are gravely concerned.
They think this is a mad idea. They don’t understand it. Not to mention that they want the president to focus on the United States and their concerns, their cost of living, their cost of groceries, their cost of utilities, housing, their senior issues.
You’re a member of Congress. You sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Do you feel as if you have any power to stop this from happening?
I do. I do because I think cooler heads, pro-American heads will prevail. So when we go back, both on Foreign Affairs and over on the Senate side, I believe we will be able to be persuasive.
But where are your Republican colleagues? I don’t hear them speaking up.
I haven’t heard them enough either. But that is partly the way this administration operates with great distraction, with great chaos. I just really want to impress them on the president that they are our ally.
Greenland is not an asset to be taken. These are really wonderful people. You know what, Katty, one of the things that a very young member of Parliament from Greenland said to us in our joint open meeting, well, not open, but not classified meeting.
She said, let me tell you what our idea of land is. She said, we don’t possess the land. We are there and we are caretakers of the land.
They don’t literally take title. They give it over generation after generation after generation. Of course, that’s in grave conflict with the president’s concept of land, of titles, of possession.
I can just purchase it. They don’t want to be purchased. They want to continue their beautiful, cultural existence in an incredibly difficult place.
I’ve not yet been to Greenland. I look forward to going. I don’t think the president and his people are really thinking about the extraordinary lengths that you have to go to survive there and to thrive there.
But again, they are not a possession. I really hope that the”“people around the president and members of Congress will exert our authority. One last thing I want to make sure I mention to you is, we wanted to make sure that we heard from Greenlandic people as well as the Danes.
What is the current threat assessment from Russia and China? They are not under immediate threat of an invasion from Russia or China. And so what I hope we will do is invest more in Greenland so that for that strategic north, we are a much better partner and ally, and that we protect our Native Alliance.
I showed you that letter that President Trump wrote to the Prime Minister of Norway. I thought it was a spoof when I read it. I don’t know what your reaction was to it.
Looks like it, but sadly we have seen that the President is very keen on the Nobel Prize, very offended that he didn’t get it, then he received it. Again, I would go back to the President and say, you want to be a president of peace, why would you threaten military invasion of a NATO ally? It doesn’t make any sense, and it puts NATO on its”“head.
80 years of peace and prosperity. The other thing is he wants prosperity around the world. That would bring negative prosperity.
Some of the crazy estimates to purchase would be $700 billion. How about investing in America and in Americans? But there is no strategic threat currently.
We wanted, as members of Congress, to be sure to analyze that, to get the best information. But meeting with the foreign ministers, members of parliament, and both prime ministers, Greenland and Denmark, they said, we don’t understand this. We’re baffled.
They used this expression, which I hadn’t really understood. They said, we look up to you as our big brother, and we do not understand our big brother turning on us like this. Members of the business community, but we met with them, used the exact same expression.
We do not understand our big brother turning on us. I hope we could turn it around.
Congresswoman Dean, thank you.
Thank you. Thanks.”
From The Rest Is Politics: US: Greenland, Rogan, and The Dawn of Putin’s America, Jan 19, 2026
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