Siobhan Robbins<\/a>, Europe correspondent<\/p>\nOn numerous occasions over the last 12 months, Donald Trump’s unexpected actions have surprised, potentially shocked, his European allies.<\/p>\n
But even against that backdrop, the letter he sent to Norway’s prime minister is extraordinary.<\/p>\n
In excerpts from the message to Jonas Gahr Store, the US president bemoans the historic links between Denmark and Greenland.<\/p>\n
The tone is dangerously close to a petulant child stamping its feet, rather than something you’d expect from the most powerful leader on Earth.<\/p>\n
Equally alarming is the section where Trump’s grudge about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize resurfaces.<\/p>\n
The fact the prize isn’t awarded by Norway itself – but by committee members appointed by parliament – is apparently inconsequential to Trump’s tantrum.<\/p>\n
He wanted to win, he didn’t, and now his NATO allies who just a few weeks ago were quickly dismissing the notion that the US may invade Greenland if they couldn’t get it by other means are possibly feeling a little less secure in their opinion.<\/p>\n
Those same allies may feel like they’re banging their heads against a brick wall with his assertion that Denmark can’t protect the territory from Russia or China.<\/p>\n
At numerous news conferences, numerous leaders have repeated the message that Denmark isn’t attempting to ensure Greenland’s security alone.<\/p>\n
They, and their other European counterparts, want to boost security via NATO.<\/p>\n
This isn’t a case of Europe versus the US – they all want America to be a key part of protecting the Arctic by working together in the military alliance.<\/p>\n
After all, it was the United States who decided to reduce their bases in Greenland to just one and cut their troops from thousands to a few hundred.<\/p>\n
If security is so important to the White House, then they would likely see little resistance to boosting these numbers again.<\/p>\n
But the problem is Trump doesn’t seem to want to share.<\/p>\n
He says: “The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland.”<\/p>\n
At Davos, Europe’s Trump whisperers will try to talk him round.<\/p>\n
If they fail and the US goes ahead with fresh tariffs and a potential land grab, the consequences for the transatlantic partnership and NATO will be unprecedented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Analysis: Trump sounds like a petulant child having a tantrum – but his actions are deadly serious By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-416844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}