It says a lot about the moment Europe is experiencing that the leader who has had the most echo this turbulent week defending its future is that of Canada. At the emergency summit yesterday in Brussels there was unity, yes, but no concrete measures. And the words of the Canadian Prime Minister in Davos still resonated, whose name we should have already learned: Mark Carney.
Maybe his name doesn’t resonate, but his words do. Carney said that this is not a phase, it is a breakup. The end of an era. That nostalgia is not a good strategy and there is no turning back. Even if Trump backs down on his threats to Greenland, or removes the latest threat of tariffs, what is taking time to become clear is that Trump can change his mind at any time about anything and even threaten his allies with military force to get his way. And that is not only not a reliable ally, it is a dangerous ally. What’s more, he’s not even an ally.
Europe is slow to accept that the United States has gone from being an ally to being a threat. Now Trump says that he is not going to want force in Greenland, but it sounds more like a warning. A kind of ‘it’s going to hurt me more than it hurts you’.
In Brussels they are starting to fall out of favor. And it was time. We must treat the world as it is now, not as we Europeans would like it to be. And this is a world in which the president of the United States says that he doesn’t mind being called a dictator, that being a dictator from time to time is not such a bad idea (that’s what he said in Davos).
To all this, Trump has announced an agreement for Greenland with NATO, but it is not clear what it consists of. Not even the Prime Minister of Greenland yet knows what is in the agreement. Whether or not the Greenland crisis subsides, this week has made it clear to us what Trump’s limits are: he has none.
Moral?
Europe needs to stop complaining
And hurry up to emancipate yourself
