After the Trump Tornado

In the end, he did not fire. As in the famous film by Sergio Leone, where Clint Eastwood delivered his well-known line: “The world is divided into two: those who hold the gun and those who dig,” in Davos it was Trump who held the rifle, and Denmark and its European allies who held the shovel. Yet after proclaiming in every possible way that he needed that “block of ice,” after repeating again and again that he would not back down and would accept nothing less than “full ownership” of Greenland, Donald Trump suddenly declared, before a stunned audience, that he “would not use force.” Even more striking: a few hours later, following a meeting with the Secretary General of NATO, it was announced that a solution had been found, with Trump even abandoning the customs surcharges he had intended to impose as early as February 1 on the eight European nations that had dared to dispatch a few dozen soldiers to Nuuk.

Relieved, the whole of Europe breathed a massive sigh of relief. But everyone understood that the Atlantic world of yesterday was definitively dead, and that European capitals will have to decide to invent something other than perpetual voluntary submission to an America now clearly determined to turn its back.

Curiously, the forward-looking thinking one might have expected from Paris or Berlin came instead from Ottawa and Canada’s new Prime Minister, Mark Carney. Carney knows Trump well. Ironically, he even owes him his election in March 2025, having vigorously opposed Trump’s annexation ambitions toward Canada.

In a speech that will be remembered, Carney announces the end of so-called “happy” globalization under American dominance. He denounces the cowardice of allied governments which, for decades, prospered “under what we called the ‘rules-based international order,’” “joined its institutions and praised its principles,” while fully aware that “the rules were partly false, applied asymmetrically, and that international law was enforced with varying strictness depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.” Carney adds: “Because American hegemonism guaranteed us a stable financial system and collective security, we put the sign in the shop window… We took part in the ritual and generally avoided pointing out the gaps between rhetoric and reality… This compromise no longer works.” He advises middle powers, like Canada, “to lower taxes… to invest in energy, artificial intelligence, and critical minerals (1 trillion dollars!), to double defense spending, and to favor flexible coalitions to solve global problems by joining different alliances for different issues.”

Such a strategy is hard to see emerging in Europe. In France, Macron endlessly declaims speeches about our indispensable rearmament, yet he is unable to pass a budget except by invoking Article 49.3 — and a budget with ever more deficit and taxes; while in Germany, deep confusion prevails regarding the country’s energy and strategic choices.

It is Zelensky, somewhat ungrateful (after benefiting from 250 billion euros provided by Europe!), yet unfortunately lucid, who sums up Europe’s tragedy: “a fragmented kaleidoscope of small and medium-sized powers”… which, “instead of taking leadership in defending freedom while America looks elsewhere, gives the impression of being lost.”

Meanwhile, Trump has already moved on to new ventures. His Peace Council, also announced in Davos, aims at nothing less than organizing a second UN — this time under his own presidency — Trump heading a “board” composed of seven members: six Americans and one Briton, Tony Blair… His envoys are heading to Moscow, then Gaza. Trump himself wants to see Putin and refuses Macron’s dinner invitation — an invitation he himself posted on his Truth Social account. Yet another humiliation for his friend “Emmanuel”…

Pierre Lellouche
January 23, 2026