To Greenland and Back

Does NATO carry on as before?

Is the great transatlantic crisis of 2026 already over when it had barely got started? NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s proposal for a Greenland ‘framework’ found favour with Donald Trump not long after he had spoken to a bemused audience at Davos about the absolute necessity of the United States acquiring the island. The deal brought to a conclusion some anguished discussion about the end of NATO, at least for now. But it left lingering some hard questions about how to keep the alliance going in the age of Trump and whether alternatives are necessary.

That there was compromise was not surprising. The problem acquiring Greenland was supposed to solve was always unclear. Was it really the case that without an American intervention, Russia and China would take Greenland, given that it was still part of NATO? If its security needed a boost, or facilities were required for the ‘Golden Dome’ defence shield, why not simply agree appropriate measures with the Danes and Greenlanders, and other allies? Was it not odd, they might note, to insist that acts justified as essential for western security involved undermining the most important western security institution?

And then there was the question of what any of this had to do with the Nobel Peace Prize? Somehow this whole crisis seemed to have emerged out of the president’s instinctive belief that world geography could be treated as if it were New York real estate combined with his fixation that he deserved the peace prize. The link was made directly by Trump in his letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre on 18 January 2026:

‘Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.’

How strange to demand a prize to which you are not entitled from a government that does not award it and then use this to demand the territory of yet another sovereign country. How strange too to accept the certificate from the actual winner of the 2025 prize, the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. His fury at her award had led him to pass over Machado as the potential leader of the new Venezuela in favour of a member of the old regime. So the same fixation was present in the handling of two quite different states of affairs.

The fact that the president of the United States was behaving strangely was the key feature of this crisis. Is that a reason to raise questions about NATO’s future? To what extent is this about Trump’s mental state or broader global trends? Is this still a moment of permanent “rupture” in the transatlantic alliance, as Mark Carney described it or is this just part of a transition to a different kind of relationship?

Trump Whispering