{"id":149275,"date":"2026-01-25T21:23:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T21:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/149275\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T21:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T21:23:13","slug":"news-analysis-a-playbook-emerges-to-counter-trump-as-middle-powers-unite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/149275\/","title":{"rendered":"News Analysis: A playbook emerges to counter Trump as ‘middle powers’ unite"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NUUK, Greenland\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The 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 \u201cirrelevant,\u201d<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> from his years-long pursuit to take over the territory \u2014 and little Denmark succeeded, securing relief from an American pressure campaign that had challenged its basic sovereignty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll get by with a little help from our friends,\u201d Denmark\u2019s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, wrote in a guest book at Chequers on Thursday, referencing the Beatles lyric while visiting her British counterpart.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s capital, Frederiksen embraced locals fearful of an imperialist United States. She declined to answer questions on whether tensions had been defused with Washington.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cThe middle powers must act together,\u201d said Mark Carney, Canada\u2019s prime minister, in a speech widely shared<\/a> in foreign capitals, \u201cbecause if we\u2019re not at the table, we\u2019re on the menu.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s diplomatic dualities, standing up to Trump in public while courting him in private with obsequious texts. <\/p>\n

But they all agreed that a firm stance against a U.S. ploy to seize Greenland was required to prevent disastrous escalation \u2014 even at risk of jeopardizing the NATO alliance itself.<\/p>\n

Markets rallied after Trump reversed course, rebounding to previous highs. U.S. relations with its partners will take longer to recover, experts said.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

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\u201cTrump\u2019s retreat, and the skillful European handling of him, avoided an immediate crisis, but not the longer-term damage,\u201d said Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as under Trump in his first term. \u201cAn unpredictable and unfriendly United States threatening to use force against a fellow NATO ally was unthinkable. Now it is thinkable \u2014 because it just happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders 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,\u201d Abrams added, \u201cas opposed to deeper currents in American politics that will outlast him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of just a week, allied leaders who for the last year hadn\u2019t dared criticize Trump began returning fire. \u201cThere\u2019s no point in being soft anymore,\u201d Belgium\u2019s prime minister told the local press.<\/p>\n

After Trump falsely said Thursday that North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners had \u201cstayed a little back, off the front lines\u201d in Afghanistan, despite losing more than 1,000 troops in the war there, Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, called his remarks \u201cinsulting and, frankly, appalling.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Peter Kastor, chair of the history department at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert on the history of U.S. land acquisitions, said that Trump\u2019s efforts to ram through a U.S. acquisition of Greenland were dramatic in the United States \u2014 but \u201ctraumatic in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue in this case is the consequences of this roller-coaster ride are so profound,\u201d Kastor said. \u201cEven if Trump does in fact establish a U.S. military presence, with little difference from what the United States is already entitled to do through prior treaty agreements, the damage to U.S.-European relations are real and potentially long-lasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carney\u2019s speech in Davos struck with particular poignance among foreign leaders \u2014 including Trump, who went off-script in his own remarks to castigate the Canadian leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what\u2019s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating,\u201d Carney said. \u201cThis is not sovereignty. It\u2019s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice \u2014 compete with each other for favor, or to combine to create a third path with impact,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Trump disinvited Carney from joining his \u201cBoard of Peace,\u201d an organization that Trump founded primarily to assist in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. No European nation, other than Hungary, had agreed to join.<\/p>\n

Permanent membership on the board required a $1-billion check. Canada declined, Carney explained in Davos, because he questioned where the money would go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NUUK, Greenland\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The notion that Denmark alone, or Europe together, could defend Greenland against an American force had become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[73995,70744,63658,8077,64017,73993,48,52,51,23151,47,50,49,70129,73996,73994,73992,2429,1519,31867,558],"class_list":["post-149275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-basic-sovereignty","tag-davos","tag-denmark","tag-europe","tag-greenland","tag-imperialist-united-states","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-leader","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mark-carney","tag-mette-frederiksen","tag-middle-power","tag-prime-minister","tag-thursday","tag-trump","tag-u-s-market","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}