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WASHINGTON (AP) — Barely a month into his presidency, Joe Biden had a message for Europe.
“America is back,” Biden told the Munich Security Conference in 2021. “The transatlantic alliance is back.”
It was a promise Biden delivered often as he sought to cast the disruptions of his predecessor, Donald Trump, as an anomaly. But nearly five years later, Biden’s assurances have proven short-lived.
In his second term, Trump has cast aside alliances forged over seven decades with Europe that helped lead to the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has hectored leaders, making demands and leveling accusations more commonly associated with enemies. In the process, he has rocked the stability that has sustained the relationships and left countries to chart a course without U.S. leadership.
The most stark example of this shift has been Trump’s threat to take over Greenland, dismissing the nation as a large “piece of ice” as he demanded that Denmark cede control to the U.S., a move that could have caused NATO to rupture.
He called Denmark, which had the highest per capita death toll among coalition forces in Afghanistan, “ungrateful” for U.S. protection during World War II. He posted private text messages that showed European leaders trying to court him. Trump shared images of him planting the U.S. flag in Greenland and, in an extraordinary speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said Europe was “not heading in the right direction.” At one point, he said that “sometimes you need a dictator.”
Then, hours later, he announced a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security. Following a long pattern, however, he offered scant details.
An uncertain standing for the US in the world
Though Trump has for now backed away from his most potent threats to obtain Greenland, the episode has left America’s standing in the world uncertain.
NATO leaders already were responding to Trump’s threats by signaling strategies that don’t include the U.S. That could make it much harder for the next president — whether they are a Democrat or Republican — to attempt the same type of reputational repair that Biden sought.
“To an extent, things can be improved,” said Jon Finer, who was Biden’s deputy national security adviser and is now a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “But they will never be the same in large part because I think any country that is behaving rationally in terms of its relationship with the United States will realize that we can only be counted on in four year increments, if at all.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who parried Trump’s gambit to make Canada the 51st state, has already set out on a more independent path. In Davos, Carney was candid that the notion of the longstanding rules-based order was an “illusion.”
“Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said as he called on so-called middle powers to “act together.”
Unable to reach a deal with Trump to cut tariffs, Carney was in Beijing last week meeting with President Xi Jinping and brokering a deal that cut levies on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on certain agricultural and food products including Canadian canola, lobsters and crab. While there, he said ties between Ottawa and Washington were “much more multifaceted” than with Beijing, but added “the way our relationship has progressed in recent months with China, it is more predictable.”
Over the weekend, the European Union and the Mercosur bloc of South American countries formally signed a long-sought free trade agreement, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen portrayed as a bulwark against the Trump administration. EU lawmakers narrowly voted on Wednesday to hold up the deal for now.
Ahead of Trump’s appearance in Davos, European leaders were unsparing, using language that until recently would have been unthinkable in relation to a dispute with the U.S. French President Emmanuel Macron cautioned against colonial adventures, warning of “a shift towards a world without rules.”
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said “so many red lines have been crossed,” adding, “being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else. If you back down now, you’re going to lose your dignity.”
This moment was also notable for the criticism of Trump from longtime allies on the right. In the UK, Nigel Farage said in an interview with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson that he understood the security issues Trump was raising in the Arctic. But he added that Trump’s approach amounted to the “biggest fracture” in the transatlantic relationship in decades.
“To have a U.S. president threatening tariffs unless we agree that he can take over Greenland, by some means, without it seems even getting the consent of the people of Greenland, I mean, this is a very hostile act,” Farage told Johnson.
Jordan Bardella, president of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party in France and a European Parliament lawmaker, posted that the EU should suspend last year’s tariff deal with the U.S., describing Trump’s threats as “commercial blackmail.”
Trump mostly has support from GOP in Congress
Congressional Republicans so far have largely supported Trump — or stayed silent.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast likened the dispute to “a hard conversation” and questioned the long-term consequences. Trump used his 2025 State of the Union address to express a desire to reclaim the Panama Canal.
“If you went back exactly one year, you might say, ‘man the tensions with Panama were the worst they’d ever been,’” said Mast, a Florida Republican. “Panama came in last week, things were the best that they’d ever been because we had some really tough conversations with each other that we needed to have.”
The most pointed concerns from inside the GOP have largely come from those who aren’t running for reelection this year, including Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who said on Wednesday that “all of this has been totally unnecessary.”
“Threatening Greenland with force was absurd,” he said.
For their part, Democrats have encouraged a more robust response — both from Europe and in the U.S.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, was in Davos this week and blasted Europeans for focusing on diplomatic efforts ahead of Trump’s appearance.
“Diplomacy with Donald Trump?” he said. “He’s a T-Rex. You mate with him or he devours you.”
In an interview, Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it “may take some time” for a future president to rebuild trust with allies. But he argued a full recovery in global relationships may require a more lasting shift in U.S. politics.
Allies will “continue to hold their breath until you have two consecutive elections when we know we have a president that is going to stick by our institutions,” he said. “Everybody’s just looking at us now as a nation and trying to see where we will be.”
Associated Press writers Rob Gillies in Toronto, Sam McNeil in Brussels and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.
Malthus1 on January 23rd, 2026 at 00:20 UTC »
I’m posting a comment I posted elsewhere because I think it fits here.
…
I am reminded rather forcefully of something Paul Kennedy wrote in his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (written in the late 1980s) which I found amazingly prescient.
He noted that the relative decline of the US, and transition into a multipolar world, was inevitable. The reason: what raised the US into a new kind of great power was a set of temporary conditions: the inferno of WW2, which had either crushed or beggared literally all of the other great powers. Moreover, China in particular was hit with a triple whammy: it never had a chance to recover from its century of humiliation before it was massacred by the Japanese, followed by civil war and Mao’s incompetence.
Of the great powers, the US alone emerged unscathed, its economy energized after the Great Depression, its territory unscarred by war. So it was uniquely situated.
However, barring a repeat, this uniqueness could not last forever. It could be extended (by the use of alliances and soft power) but eventually the other natural great powers - particularly China, and potentially Western Europe and Japan - were bound to catch up.
The only real issue was how the US was going to manage the transition, from unique and singular power to “mere” “great power, one of a handful”. Would it transition in a way that left it better or worse off?
Kennedy’s concept, if I remember correctly, was that the best outcome would be for the US to support international institutions that benefitted its trade and productivity in such a manner as to convince the other rising great powers and middleweight powers to “buy in” to the system - in other words, to use its current advantages to ensure future benefit for itself in a world in which it is no longer a unique power.
The problem Kennedy foresaw was that US leaders may be tempted, in an era of relative decline, to grab for as much immediate benefit and power as they can, using its temporary advantages while they still can.
The reason why this approach may be preferred is the usual one of short term planning because of their political system (Presidents may rather see hard benefits right now then establish long-term systems that build future success, where that success will be realized by future Presidents; likewise, current Presidents may not care that seizing current advantages create problems for future presidents).
Another reason is psychological: Americans are heavily invested in their uniqueness, and appearance of relative decline makes them annoyed, quite willing to blame it on “unfairness”.
The problem of this situation is that using current systemic advantages to nakedly grab for gains ensures that the other powers will be annoyed and resentful, and is not sustainable. Inevitably it provokes a reaction.
This, unfortunately, is what we are seeing right now. A significant number of Americans, in part annoyed by a sense of relative decline, have become susceptible to the politics of grievance and unfairness; they support a President who is all about grabbing current gains without the slightest concern for reactions to this.
Airurando-jin on January 22nd, 2026 at 23:51 UTC »
Could ? They already have.
AndroidOne1 on January 22nd, 2026 at 23:44 UTC »
Snippet from this article: WASHINGTON (AP) — Barely a month into his presidency, Joe Biden had a message for Europe.
“America is back,” Biden told the Munich Security Conference in 2021. “The transatlantic alliance is back.”
It was a promise Biden delivered often as he sought to cast the disruptions of his predecessor, Donald Trump, as an anomaly. But nearly five years later, Biden’s assurances have proven short-lived.
In his second term, Trump has cast aside alliances forged over seven decades with Europe that helped lead to the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has hectored leaders, making demands and leveling accusations more commonly associated with enemies. In the process, he has rocked the stability that has sustained the relationships and left countries to chart a course without U.S. leadership.
The most stark example of this shift has been Trump’s threat to take over Greenland, dismissing the nation as a large “piece of ice” as he demanded that Denmark cede control to the U.S., a move that could have caused NATO to rupture.