US allies won’t soon forget crisis triggered by Trump

What the hell has the last fortnight been like?

Following a successful military operation in Venezuela earlier this month, a reinvigorated Donald Trump began to step up his rhetoric on Greenland.

Day after day, the world faced property claims, threats of military action and tariffs against traditional allies in Europe.

Now, in a seeming puff of smoke, all of that may have vanished.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, arguably Trump’s whisperer-in-chief, appears to have dissuaded the president from straying from his dangerously high horse.

The ground may have been laid last week during a visit to Washington by the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland. The visit ended with an agreement to create a “working group” to discuss the future of Greenland.

But Rutte appears to have resolved a problem that threatened to shatter the North Atlantic alliance.

We don’t yet know the details of the deal, but many will wonder why it took a frenzied two-week crisis to get to this point.

Denmark has long said it is only too happy to see an increased U.S. military presence in Greenland.

If NATO has now committed to strengthening its presence on and around the island, this will go some way to reassuring Donald Trump that the alliance is finally paying due attention to Greenland.

The New York Times cites unnamed officials as saying that one idea under discussion would be for Denmark to cede sovereignty over small areas of Greenland where the United States would build military bases – an arrangement similar to the agreement by which the United Kingdom maintains sovereign bases in Cyprus.

Trump said the deal would involve access to Greenland’s mineral resources.

Neither Denmark nor NATO have confirmed this or any other information.

NATO said the discussions would “focus on ensuring security in the Arctic through the collective efforts, particularly of the seven Arctic allies” (the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland) and aimed to prevent Russia and China from gaining a foothold, economic or military, in Greenland.

It won’t be long before details of the deal are revealed. But the fact that Donald Trump triggered fifteen dramas and a feeling of existential crisis within NATO to get to this point will not be easy to forget.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it a “breakdown,” saying the old order “will not return.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke of “seismic change” and called for greater European independence.

It is difficult to envisage a rapid return to business as usual.