The Most Startling Line From Trump's Davos Speech

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. President Donald Trump assured nervous European allies on Wednesday he “won’t use force” to take Greenland while adding with a mob-like menace that the world’s largest island will eventually be under the U.S. flag, one way or another.  “All the U.S. is asking for is a place called Greenland,” Trump said in a wide-reaching appearance that hopscotched from Somali fraud to former President Joe Biden’s mental acumen to his Treasury Secretary’s football draft potential. Peppered throughout his stemwinder was a stunning arrogance from an American leader who has conflated fealty to his agenda with dodging “World War 3” in the Arctic orbit. He accused Denmark, which controls Greenland as a semi-autonomous part of its kingdom, of being “ungrateful,” branded NATO a lopsided ally for the United States, and repeatedly painted Greenland as a de facto part of North America dating back to the Nazi era. Still, one line stood out, as if it were a cutting-room-floor discard from Goodfellas: “We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it,” Trump said. “You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.”  Another way to read that familiar frame? We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It was a flummoxing flex to Trump’s frenemies who are low on patience for his bellicose language. Amid the World Economic Forum’s confab in Davos, Switzerland—where coalition building and global cooperation are usually central themes—Trump unfurled a Western Hemisphere First school of thought that has roots in a Cold War understanding of geopolitical stasis.  He also sometimes confused Iceland for Greenland. “I’m helping Europe, I’m helping NATO, and until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me,” Trump said. But he did tell them—about Greenland, not Iceland—and the response from those allies has been anything but positive. In fact, they greeted Trump with near-unanimous animus. “Greenland is a vast, almost entirely uninhabited and undeveloped territory that’s sitting undefended in a key strategic location between the United States, Russia and China,” Trump said. “It’s exactly where it is right smack in the middle. It wasn’t important nearly when we gave it back. We need it for strategic national security and international security.” At the same time, Trump said force was not on the table. “We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable,” Trump said. “But I won’t do that. That’s probably the biggest statement, 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.” Yet it was hard to square that promise of pacifism with his repeated vows that the U.S. would end up with Greenland, one way or another. It was exactly the style of ping-pong messaging that left some diplomats gnashing as they watched the American imperialist threaten their gates. When he wasn’t brandishing the overwhelming power of America’s military and economy, Trump was denigrating virtually all of the allies in the room with him. “Without us, most of the countries don’t even work,” Trump told the elites in that Swiss ski town. Americans might like the idea of controlling an Arctic neighbor, but the idea of mob-like negotiations is a tougher sell. Trump knows it, but still took a stab from his privileged bully pulpit in Switzerland with the zeal of neocolonialism. Trump says he won’t storm Greenland but that does not mean it is safe from his gangster-like whims. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.