SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
It was a turbulent week for U.S. ties with Europe after a string of comments from President Trump shook markets and angered close allies, prompting reactions from Greenland to Gaza via Davos, Switzerland. As Willem Marx reports, the World Economic Forum crowd in the small ski resort saw the whiplash up close when the president arrived.
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WILLEM MARX: By the time a delayed Donald Trump's helicopter touched down in Davos, the damage, at least diplomatically, had already been done. From Washington, weeks of off-the-cuff comments about a possible U.S. military takeover of Greenland and freshly threatened tariffs had left allies scrambling and markets jittery. There was, among Davos delegates, the strongest sense yet that America's long-standing leadership was no longer reliable, as Mark Carney, Canada's prime minister, argued forcefully.
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PRIME MINISTER MARK CARNEY: Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
MARX: The rules-based international order that for decades helped resolve great-power rivalries was fracturing, Carney said, and midsized economies like Canada could no longer assume America would continue to act as that system's anchor. French President Emmanuel Macron's warning was just as stark.
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PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON: Are reaching a time of unstability, of unbalances, both from the security and defense point of view and the economic point of view.
MARX: He said a shift against democracy and towards autocracy had accompanied an outburst of global conflicts.
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MACRON: It's as well a shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest. And imperial ambitions are resurfacing.
MARX: On that same stage sometime later, President Trump insisted that only such strength among U.S. allies would make them attractive.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We want strong allies, not seriously weakened ones. We want Europe to be strong. Ultimately, these are matters of national security, and perhaps no current issue makes the situation more clear than what's currently going on with Greenland.
MARX: In a surprise twist, Trump did rule out invading Greenland, but he persisted to publicly question Denmark's control of the North Atlantic territory. NATO chief Mark Rutte soon seemed to have soothed an apparently angry president who confirmed a deal, without details, had indeed been struck, even though the Danes said later Rutte did not speak for them. But by that point, Trump's behavior had severely shaken the NATO alliance and underscored a longtime concern for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, almost four full years into his country's devastating conflict with Russia.
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PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: Europe loves to discuss the future but avoids taking action today, action that defines what kind of future we will have. That is the problem.
MARX: For Zelenskyy, the issue isn't just one of strategy but credibility at a time when America's attention seems increasingly distracted. A week that began with diplomatic whiplash and market shocks ended with a complex but unanswered question - can America's allies prepare for disruption that's not temporary but - if their leaders' words this week are an indication - permanent? For NPR News, I'm Willem Marx in Davos, Switzerland.
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