Greenland, Reheated: The “Big, Beautiful Piece of Ice” That Could Freeze the West
In Davos, Trump revives the annexation drumbeat - and forces Europe and Canada to decide whether this is theatre… or doctrine.
🔥 World Briefing Hot Take
For anyone hoping the Greenland saga would melt away, today’s Davos performance did the opposite. Trump didn’t just hint at buying the island again - he framed it as a strategic entitlement: the U.S. “needs” Greenland for “international security,” and even talked about “right, title and ownership,” language that sounds less like diplomacy and more like a property transfer. The U.S. president, in a rambling history lecture, warned that the U.S. “will remember” if it is blocked from acquiring Greenland.
What makes this moment bigger than another Trump riff is the signal it sends to allies. When Washington starts describing an autonomous territory of a NATO partner as “our territory,” it drags the alliance into a dilemma it was never designed for: what happens when the pressure isn’t coming from Moscow or Beijing - but from inside the club?
And here’s the real twist: even if you don’t take the “ownership” talk literally, the impact is already real. It pushes Denmark and the EU toward a tougher posture, spooks markets with tariff threats, and leaves Canada caught in the crossfire of America’s new grievance diplomacy - where gratitude is demanded, and disagreement is treated like betrayal.
Greenland is the symbol - but the message is broader: the U.S. is stress-testing alliances as if they’re contracts, not partnerships. And the rest of the West is being forced to answer a question it hasn’t faced in generations: what do you do when the security guarantor starts acting like a claimant?
The Golden Dome is going to be defending Canada. Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful but they're not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful. But they should be grateful to us. Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements - Donald Trump
With European leaders scrambling at Davos to persuade Donald Trump to drop his ambition to own Greenland, Ukraine is increasingly being pushed into the background. That’s prompted Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider whether it’s even worth his while to attend the World Economic Forum, according to a senior Ukrainian official and a foreign adviser familiar with the thinking in Kyiv. Europe’s leaders had planned to focus on Ukraine this week and to use a scheduled meeting with Trump to secure the U.S. president’s personal endorsement of security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine — measures Kyiv says are necessary to deter the Kremlin from restarting the conflict. But as diplomatic priorities shift, Kyiv is increasingly at risk of being forgotten, to rising frustration in Ukraine and Europe, while Trump steps up threats to seize mineral-rich Greenland — including the possibility of punitive tariffs on eight European countries that oppose his bid to annex the world’s largest island. “There’s a real war with the Russians going on in Ukraine,” said Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide. “Greenland is taking energy away from what we should be talking about.” - Politico
The US is reportedly planning to partly reduce its participation in NATO, exacerbating worry among alliance members already grappling with Washington’s threats towards Greenland. The shifts will be gradual and have been planned for months, The Washington Post and Financial Times reported. However, their symbolic impact — coming amid a transatlantic crisis over US President Donald Trump’s call to annex Greenland, and disagreement over supporting Ukraine — is significant. A senior Time journalist contrasted the Trump administration’s approach with that of George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks: “Unlike that stretch of norm testing, Washington is not leaning on the decades-old alliance of NATO but rather seems intent on destroying it from within.”
Police in Germany have arrested two suspected supporters of the pro-Russian “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” in Brandenburg, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Wednesday. The men are accused of supporting foreign terrorist organisations, authorities in Karlsruhe said. It is alleged that not only supplies and medical products were delivered, but also drones in favour of militiamen from the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian forces. At the same time, a German-Ukrainian woman was arrested in Berlin on suspicion of spying for Russia, including by passing on information on military aid to Ukraine, prosecutors said. The suspect, named only as Ilona W. in line with German privacy laws, had allegedly maintained intelligence contacts with the Russian embassy in Berlin since November 2023 or earlier, prosecutors said in a statement - Euronews
European Union lawmakers on Wednesday voted to block a major free trade agreement with the Mercosur group of South American countries over concerns about the legality of the deal. In a vote in Strasbourg, France, the lawmakers narrowly approved sending the EU-Mercosur agreement to Europe’s top court to rule on whether it is in line with the bloc’s treaties. The lawmakers voted by 334 votes in favor to 324 against, with 11 abstentions. Twenty-five years in the making, the long sought-after free trade agreement was just signed into effect to great fanfare on Saturday. It aimed to strengthen commercial ties in the face of rising protectionism and trade tensions around the world. Supported by South America’s cattle-raising countries and European industrial interests, the accord is aimed at gradually eliminating more than 90% of tariffs on goods ranging from Argentine beef to German cars, creating one of the world’s largest free trade zones and making shopping cheaper for more than 700 million consumers - AP
At least 11 Palestinians, including two children and three journalists, have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since dawn, with six others injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Munir al-Bursh, director-general of the ministry, told Al Jazeera that the photojournalists killed when their vehicle was struck on Wednesday worked for the Egyptian Committee for Gaza Relief, which supervises Egypt’s relief work in Gaza. Anas Ghunaim, Abdul Ra’ouf and Shaath Mohammad Qeshta were documenting developments on the ground in central Gaza near the so-called Netzarim Corridor when they were hit in an Israeli strike, colleagues and medical officials told Al Jazeera. A fourth person was also killed in the attack, an Al Jazeera team on the ground reported. Video footage circulating online showed their charred, bombed-out vehicle by the roadside, smoke still rising from the wreckage - Al Jazeera
The number of Americans being scammed by entities operating out of Southeast Asia is far higher than most people realize, a former Bangkok-based FBI agent said. John Schachnovsky told the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand on Wednesday evening that the U.S. government has allocated additional resources to track down the perpetrators, especially through a joint task force. Given China’s exposure to the scam centers, he said it would be surprising if Beijing didn’t have “men on the ground” in Thailand helping to crack down on the operations. Schachnovsky praised Thai police for doing “a one hundred and eighty degree turn” in their approach to tackling human trafficking, though he noted they still tend to be more reactive than proactive. He was speaking about his newly published book, Beyond the Badge, billed as a “behind-the-scenes look into the untold operations of American law enforcement in Southeast Asia.”
The journals…….
