It had the makings of one of the most awkward trans-Atlantic meetings in a long time.
European leaders are said to be privately angry and even panicky about US President Donald Trump’s new threats to seize Greenland from Denmark, a Nato ally, after his military intervention in Venezuela. But they need the US to ensure credible security for postwar Ukraine against any further aggression by Russia — a vital strategic interest for Europe.
With that backdrop, European leaders met in Paris on Tuesday with senior American negotiators to discuss how to secure a peace settlement in Ukraine. They jointly announced progress on security assurances for a postwar Ukraine, but any ceasefire seems distant, given that Russia is not part of the talks.
Earlier in the day, some of the same countries had issued a joint statement of solidarity with Denmark, calling for collective Nato security in the Arctic, including the US. It had no explicit criticism of Washington, and the Ukraine meeting was all about keeping the Trump administration on board.
Even with those outward displays of European-American unity, underlying everything is Trump’s sudden return to a more imperialist era. Europeans who consider the American intervention in Venezuela a violation of international law see a US President newly empowered and enthralled by military action, which he compared to watching a television show. He comes across as a largely unpredictable force capable of causing enormous disruption — in Nato, in Ukraine, in Iran, in Gaza — as his eye swings from one imagined prize to another.
After the Ukraine meeting, asked about Greenland and Venezuela alongside American envoys, President Emmanuel Macron of France declined to answer, calling them "not really connected with today’s matters". He said later to French television, “I cannot imagine a scenario in which the United States of America would be placed in a position to violate Danish sovereignty.”
For the most part, European leaders have said little, making collective statements that shy away from criticism of their most important and now most disruptive ally, the US.
Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, said, “There is a massive gap between public and private reactions from European leaders.”
“Privately, they are panicking about what happens next, especially in Greenland and what they might do about it,” he added. “But publicly on Venezuela, they are desperate not to say anything critical or invoke international law on Trump at a time of maximum peril for Ukraine. They want to use the influence they have for Ukraine.”
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark has been blunt in telling Washington to lay off. A move on Greenland and Denmark, she has said, will finish Nato. “If the United States were to choose to attack another Nato country, then everything would come to an end,” Frederiksen told a Danish broadcaster on Monday. That would include, she added, the termination of "the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War".
There is still a wide belief in Denmark that Trump is increasing the pressure as a negotiating tactic but would not use force against a Nato ally willing to work with him on both security enhancements and business opportunities.
By comparison, American-Venezuelan relations have been "horrible for decades", said Mikkel Runge Olesen of the Danish Institute for International Studies, a research organisation in Copenhagen. “It’s a completely different ballgame to go and invade a Nato ally,” with considerable unknown costs, he added. Pressure from Washington will continue, he predicted, but, “I just don’t see military invasion as the most likely tool that the US is going to use.”
But no one really knows, especially after Trump told reporters, apparently in a joking manner, that the issue would be resolved in 20 days.
There is global confusion and anxiety about where Trump, who promised to curtail American involvement in foreign wars, is heading, only a year into his current term. Sowing that confusion may even be characterised as an American strategy, Leonard said.
“The way they operate is they like to keep people guessing,” he said.
There does seem to be one organising principle, however, said Nathalie Tocci, director of an Italy-based think tank, the Institute of International Affairs. “US foreign policy now is imperial, and consistently imperial,” she said. “It’s not simply pursuing an American empire in the Western Hemisphere, but Trump accepts the very notion of empire, which is why other empires can exist.”
Europeans and others keep trying to put Trump into a known strategic box, but in a second term, “We should have understood that he doesn’t fit into a box,” said Claudia Major, a defence expert with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “He seems ready to do what he says, but what and when? Europeans still try to make sense of it when there isn’t a lot of coherence.”
François Heisbourg, a French defence analyst, said Trump’s foreign policy was "highly consistent, but extremely dangerous". Trump, he noted, "does what he says", having already confronted Frederiksen over Greenland in 2019.
New York Times News Service