LONDON (AP) — No more fawning praise. No more polite solutions and old-fashioned diplomacy. No one calls Donald Trump “Dad” these days.
European leaders have spent a year figuring out how to deal with an audacious second-term U.S. president, but they are close to saying “no,” or some such diplomatic parlance, to his disregard for international law and claims to European territory. Trump’s vow to take over Greenland and punish any country that resists appears to be a serious test.
This year, when Trump suddenly demanded again that the United States “absolutely” must rule Greenland, a “red line” was thought to have been crossed. Greenland is a semi-autonomous region that is part of NATO ally Denmark. That forced even the most moderate diplomats, who had courted him with royal treatment and fawning praise, to issue sharp warnings about Trump.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said “Britain will not give up” its support for Greenland’s sovereignty. “Europe will not be held to blackmail over Greenland,” several continental leaders said.
“There should be no threats between allies,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gall Storr said.
Tough diplomatic talks surrounding the showdown in Davos, Switzerland, last week were not the only factor weighing on Trump. Amid falling stock markets and sluggish approval ratings, the U.S. congressional elections are approaching in November. European leaders are also not the first to thwart Trump during his second term — see Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
But the dramatic shift among European elites from “appeasing” Trump to defying him offers clues to ongoing efforts in some countries to say “no” to a president who hates hearing “no” and is known to retaliate.
“We want a piece of ice to protect the world, but they won’t give it,” Trump told an audience at the World Economic Forum. “You can say yes and we’ll appreciate it. Or you can say no and we’ll remember it.”
Lesson 1: Speak as a whole
Europe has repeatedly refused to cooperate with Trump in recent days, from his Greenland demands to joining his new peace council and even to what Canada’s Mark Carney called the “fiction” that the alliance is run in the interests of any country other than the most powerful. The moment marked a year of unity that European leaders have struggled to achieve.
“When Europe does not divide, when we stand together, when we assert our will clearly and firmly, the results will show,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. “I think we learned something.”
Federiksen himself exemplifies the learning curve. She and other leaders followed suit a year ago, mostly in response to the Trump administration. In February 2025, she found it necessary to tell reporters, “We are not a bad ally,” after Vice President J.D. Vance said Denmark was “not a bad ally.”
Trump is a transactional person. He told The New York Times this month that he had little use for diplomacy and had “no need for international law.” There is a disconnect between the typically cooperative European leaders and the Republican president as he lashes back at the White House for saying it wants the United States to take over Greenland, Panama and even Canada.
Mark Shanahan, associate professor of political engagement at the University of Surrey, said: “During Trump’s first term, Europe didn’t know what to expect and tried to use the old diplomatic rules against him in the hope that if they continued to talk to him in a cautious way, he would change his behavior and join the club.”
“It’s very difficult for other leaders to deal with each other through the rules-based system and the minutiae of diplomatic dialogue,” Shanahan said. “It’s very difficult for them to change.”
Five months after Trump took office last year, European leaders were well aware of Trump’s administration and convened a meeting of NATO countries in the Netherlands as threats to Greenland emerged. NATO members agreed to contribute more and widely praised Trump for forcing them to modernize.
Secretary-General Mark Rutte, known as the coalition’s “Trump whisperer,” likened the president’s role in quelling the war between Israel and the United States to that of a “dad” intervening in a school fight.
Lesson 2: Consider saying “no” and choose accordingly
Traditional diplomacy exists to preserve the possibility of cooperation. This usually means avoiding saying “no” outright as much as possible. But Trump’s Greenland strategy is such a serious threat from one NATO member to another that Greenland’s prime minister actually said it.
“Enough is enough,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a statement shortly after Trump’s speech on January 5. “No more pressure. No more hints. No more fantasies of annexation.”
This plays a role in setting the tone. The Danish leader said any invasion of Greenland would mark the end of NATO and urged alliance members to take the threat seriously.
And they did, issuing statement after statement rejecting new threats. Trump responded at a golf course in Florida last weekend by threatening to impose a 10% import tax within a month on goods from eight European countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland. He wrote that if the United States did not reach an agreement to “completely purchase Greenland,” the ratio would climb to 25% on June 1.
Lesson 3: Reject Trump’s Great Power Paradigm
Trump’s militant rhetoric ignited a fire among leaders arriving in Davos. But they also seem to recognize that the broader Trump world leaves him vulnerable.
“Trump is in a pretty weak position because he has so many other pressing issues” at home, including an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling on his tariffs and backlash against immigration raids in Minnesota, said Duncan Snidal, an emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the University of Chicago.
Canada’s Carney said no, reframing the question as not about Greenland but about whether European countries should work together to build strength against “bullies” – and his answer was a resounding yes.
Carney did not name the United States or Trump, but said it bluntly: Europe should reject “coercion” and “exploitation” by major powers. He said it was time to accept that the alliance had experienced a “fracture” rather than a transition.
What is unspoken, Snyder noted, is that this rift is new and, while it may be difficult to repair in the future, it remains in the interests of the United States and Europe to do so under adjusted rules beyond a Trump presidency. “This is a great deal for all of them,” Snyder said.
Lesson 4: Proceed with caution
Before Trump even walked off the podium in Davos, he was already making concessions.
He dropped his threat to use “force” to take over Greenland. Soon after, he completely reversed his stance, announcing a “framework” for a deal that would make his tariff threats unnecessary.
Trump told Fox Business Channel that under the “Framework,” “we will go fully into Greenland,” without revealing what that might mean.
Frederiksen hit the warning button again. “We cannot negotiate our sovereignty,” she said in a statement.
In other words: “No.”
