How Trump Won Davos

DAVOS, Switzerland — This year’s World Economic Forum in Davos had an innocuous theme: “A Spirit of Dialogue.” As one European bank chief executive put it, President Donald Trump’s presence contributed something more like a spirit of monologue.

That was one of the better jokes made at the president’s expense this week. And it aligns with a rapidly forming narrative in the European and liberal media that the Europeans “won Davos”: primarily by getting Trump to “de-escalate” his demand that the United States acquire Greenland from Denmark.

On Thursday, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen thanked her British counterpart Keir Starmer for his “very strong support to the Kingdom of Denmark.” It had, she said, “been quite a difficult time for us.” But she was grateful “to know that [we] have good friends, strong allies, and that Europeans stand together, don’t get divided, and stick to our, as you said, our common values.” Starmer cooed back in that strangulated voice of his: “We’ve got through the last few days with a mix of British pragmatism, common sense, but also that British sense of sticking to our values and our principles.”

Here at Davos, I’ve heard numerous versions of this sentiment: “We Europeans/Canadians stood up to Trump and forced him to retreat. This is a major victory for the rules-based international order.”

This is a very wrong take. The reality is that Trump won Davos, hands down. And not only did he win it; he owned it. I have never before seen a single individual so completely dominate this vast bazaar of the powerful, the wealthy, the famous, and the self-important.

The “Spirit of Dialogue” I kept thinking about all week was the spirit of the Melian Dialogue. The Melian Dialogue is the most famous passage in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, the great conflict between Athens and Sparta that raged between 431 and 404 BCE. Like Greenland, Melos is an island (about 68 miles east of today’s Greek mainland). Like Greenland, it had a relatively small population in the fifth century. Unlike Greenland, it was independent—and indeed wished to remain neutral in the war between Athens and Sparta. But in 416 BCE the Athenians invaded Melos and demanded that the Melians surrender and pay tribute to Athens or face annihilation.

In Thucydides’s account, the Melians defied the Athenians. “We are just men fighting against unjust. . .we put our trust in the fortune by which the gods have preserved it until now.” The Athenians gave an immortal reply. “You know as well as we do,” they said, “that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

This passage has long been seen as the origin of the dichotomy in international relations between idealism and realism.

In case you don’t know, the realists won an emphatic victory. The Athenians besieged the Melians, and on the brink of starvation, the Melians surrendered—whereupon the Athenians executed all the men and enslaved their women and children.

Now, I am not suggesting that the Europeans thought this was what Trump had in mind for the inhabitants of Nuuk, and any Danes sent to defend them from the United States. But I do think they genuinely feared he was contemplating military action to annex Greenland by force.

Davos Man—I should say Davos Person—worries a lot more about such things than he—they—used to. The latest edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, which is based on surveys of business executives and academics, ranks “geoeconomic confrontation” and “state-based armed conflict” as the No. 1 and No. 2 risks most “likely to present a material crisis on a global scale in 2026.” On a two-year time horizon, geoeconomic confrontation remains top of the list. Asked to characterize “the global political environment for cooperation on risks in the next decade,” 68 percent of respondents picked a “multipolar or fragmented order in which middle and great powers contest, set, and enforce regional rules and norms.”

All of this is just a series of Davosy euphemisms for the one big risk that Davos Person fears above all others: Donald Trump. This is funny when you consider last year’s mood, which—in the wake of Trump’s reelection—was very bullish about the United States under Trump 2.0. “Almost everyone at Davos is long U.S., short EU,” I wrote in these pages this time last year. “The new Davos consensus is that Europe cannot get its economic act together and never will, whereas America is rocking and rolling, and if you don’t own the big U.S. tech stocks, then the FOMO may kill you.”

My long-standing contrarian rule is that the Davos consensus is always wrong. In last year’s case, I added, Davos Person should be very careful what they wished for. Sure enough, in 2025 European stocks outperformed U.S. stocks. And, of course, Trump 2.0 has turned out to be every good European’s worst nightmare.

In the run-up to Davos 2026, Trump did his utmost to wind up Europe’s elite, not to mention Canada’s. On social media and in interviews, he insisted that he was determined to get Greenland for the United States. “Greenland has to be acquired,” he wrote on the eve of his arrival in Switzerland. “Denmark and its European allies have to DO THE RIGHT THING.” He did not rule out military action. He threatened to impose new 10 percent tariffs on all countries that resisted. And he posted memes of maps of Denmark (and Canada) cloaked in the Stars and Stripes and an AI-generated image of himself planting an American flag on “Greenland—U.S. Territory Est. 2026.”

To stoke up the crowd ahead of the president’s arrival, Trump’s cabinet members chimed in. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s anti-European trash-talking so enraged the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, that she stormed out of a Davos dinner. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent drolly wondered if European leaders might unleash their “most forceful weapon,” the “dreaded European working group.”

As I’ve argued, the second Trump administration’s allusions to the presidencies of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt lend a historical veneer to his threats of annexation. After all, as assistant secretary of the navy, Roosevelt urged preparation of war with Spain to gain control of Cuba. He sincerely believed that “America’s incorporation of all adjacent lands was the virtually inevitable fulfillment of a moral mission delegated to the nation by Providence itself.” In 1902, as president, Roosevelt threatened to fire on German warships when they blockaded Venezuela after a debt default. In 1903 he fomented a secessionist revolt against the Colombian government to give America control of Panama. And, when Canada laid claim to the Yukon coast, Roosevelt warned that it was “going to be ugly” if Canada did not accept that the coast was part of Alaska. (Look at a map. You’ll notice Roosevelt got his way.)

So the Europeans at Davos, genuinely fearing a Trump coup against Nuuk—or at the very least a fresh round of American tariffs—went all Melian. Trump’s threats, French president Emmanuel Macron lamented on Tuesday, were part of “a shift toward a world without rules. . .where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest.” His peroration was defiant: “Faced with the brutalization of the world, France and Europe must defend an effective multilateralism.”

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, echoed Macron. He called on Davos attendees to face “the rupture in the world order. . .and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.” This was now “an era of great power rivalry.” The “rules-based order” was “fading.” And in this new world, “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

You see? Thucydides got to Davos before Trump did. In a show of force that must have made Bessent reach for the smelling salts, the Baltic states, Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden all called for retaliation if Trump followed through on his tariffs threat.

On Wednesday, Trump landed—and that afternoon regaled the Davos crowd with the stand-up improv routine that has become so familiar to American audiences. “It’s great to be back in beautiful Davos, Switzerland,” he began “and to address so many respected business leaders, so many friends, a few enemies.” He boasted about the U.S. economy (with good reason—it has defied the economists). He boasted about U.S. energy policy and scorned “the Green New Scam—perhaps the greatest hoax in history.” And he restated his desire for outright ownership of Greenland (a “big, beautiful piece of ice. It’s hard to call it land. It’s a big piece of ice.”). “I’m seeking immediate negotiations,” he said, “to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States, just as we have acquired many other territories throughout our history.”

This was vintage Trump, part real-estate pitch, part reality TV. “All we’re asking for is to get Greenland,” he riffed, “including right, title, and ownership, because you need the ownership to defend it. You can’t defend it on a lease. Legally, it’s not defensible that way, totally. And number two, psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease[?]”

As for the haters, “Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump declared. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.” And: “Here’s the story, Emmanuel. The answer is you’re going to do it. You’re going to do it fast. And if you don’t, I’m putting a 25 percent tariff on everything that you sell into the United States. And a 100 percent tariff on your wines and champagnes.”

Except that, almost as an aside, Trump then called the whole Greenland thing off. “We never ask for anything [from NATO],” he rambled, “and we never got anything. We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won’t do that. Okay? Now everyone’s saying, ‘Oh good.’ That’s probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

Later that evening, following a “very productive meeting” with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would not impose the additional tariffs on European countries he had threatened. He and Rutte had “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region.”

The Europeans and Canadians resisted the temptation to high-five, but they certainly were sending one another “TACO” memes on WhatsApp. Some openly claimed a diplomatic victory. Sophisticates said it was the stock market’s adverse reaction to his tariff threats that had caused Trump to “chicken out.” Others pointed to a Quinnipiac University poll, which had found that 55 percent of voters were opposed to the United States trying to buy Greenland and only 10 percent supported taking it by military force.

So, had the Melians won an unexpected victory over the Athenians?

No. The problem with all of this is the premise that Trump ever seriously meant to annex Greenland or to impose new tariffs on the Europeans. Why would he when a) the United States already enjoys (under a 1951 treaty with Denmark and a 2004 agreement with Greenland) all the military access to the frigid island it could every possibly need, while the Danes pay for the heavily subsidized inhabitants of the island; and b) Trump means what he says on Truth Social only about half the time, according to The Wall Street Journal’s recent analysis of 2,700 substantive Truth posts. I’ll say it again: Half the time he’s bluffing. And it was the same when he was on Twitter in series one.

A few recent examples. On May 23, 2025, Trump posted: “I expect [Apple’s] iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.” It never happened. The same goes for other posts threatening tariffs on July 6, August 5, October 25, December 8, and January 12 this year. I hate to tell you, folks: TACO is the wrong way of thinking about a man who habitually bluffs half the time.

Ten years ago, Europeans made the mistake of taking Trump neither seriously nor literally. Now they make the opposite mistake of treating him both seriously and literally. But, as Saleno Zito explained nearly 10 years ago, the correct approach is to take him seriously but not literally. The fact that Trump carries out only around half the threats he makes on social media is a feature, not a bug—and it’s certainly not a sign of weakness. It is a deliberate tactic designed to leave counterparties uncertain. On this occasion, Trump was bluffing, and the administration never had the remotest intention of imposing new tariffs on Europe, much less taking military action to annex Greenland.

But why did he threaten it? Just for the lolz? Certainly, there was much hilarity among U.S. government staffers at Davos as they watched the president’s speech in the USA House at Promenade 95. They certainly were in on the joke. But I am pretty sure there was more going on here than mere presidential trolling.

The reason Trump forced Greenland to be the No. 1 topic at Davos, I suspect, was to keep European leaders from meddling in America’s Middle Eastern and Eastern European policy. It was notable on Wednesday how little the president said about Iran and Ukraine. That is because his administration has plans afoot for both countries.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group are currently in the Indian Ocean en route to the Persian Gulf and are preparing strike package options on Iran for the president’s approval. Meanwhile, presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner left Davos for Moscow on Thursday for talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin on the war in Ukraine. After that they head to Abu Dhabi for three-party talks: U.S., Russia, and Ukraine. Witkoff expressed optimism that morning that he was “near the end of” negotiating peace between Russia and Ukraine. “We’ve got it down to one issue,” he said—likely the issue of territorial cessions by Ukraine to Russia.

Why might the Trump administration prefer the Europeans to be talking about Greenland instead of Iran or Ukraine? Well, maybe because Europe would be bound to make its usual pleas for “de-escalation” with respect to Tehran. And maybe because the Americans think it was European and British diplomats who last year impeded progress toward a peace deal for Ukraine by insisting on modifications to the 28-point plan that Witkoff and Kushner had worked out with Russian representatives.

I therefore offer the hypothesis that all the fuss about Greenland was a classic example of Trumpian maskirovka—a distraction similar to his claim that peace negotiations with Iran were continuing, just one day before the U.S. air strike on the Fordow nuclear facility.

That kind of ruse was also known to the ancient Athenians. But probably not to the Melians.