President Donald Trump has told the Davos gathering of the great and economically powerful that he would not “take Greenland by force” but wanted “immediate negotiations” for American control of the world’s largest island. Unfortunately, in his ramble of an hour or so, he seemed to get confused between the islands of Greenland and its smaller cousin, Iceland. Still, both are under the flags of sovereign Nato allies, Denmark and Iceland itself.
So is a deal in the making? The answer here is almost certainly yes, and that a compromise is in the works about condominium and creating several sovereign bases – bits of Greenland that are under American governance and command.
The speech betrayed something else, too. There were the usual swipes about Europe being “unrecognisable” under waves of immigration. There were doubts aplenty about the future of Nato, and the reliability of allies. The rhetoric of incivility, the hallmark of the second Trump presidency, is as strong as ever – denigrating allies, including the UK, in detail, while speaking softly about actual and potential foes.
The change in tone is the sense that the 47th President no longer feels master of all he surveys, despite the midnight bluster on Truth Social. Despite the successful capture of Venezuela’s de facto leader, Maduro, and the more qualified success of the 12-day bombing campaign on Iran last June, America’s military capabilities are limited. They are likely to be tested severely this weekend as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard appears to be manoeuvring missile forces for a final showdown against Israel and its allies.
At the Davos summit we could be witnessing the moment of peak Trump. He probably knows he hasn’t got the forces configured for taking Greenland. They are currently stretched to manage Venezuela, let alone the other Caribbean neighbours he has threatened with action if they don’t get into line – namely Colombia, Panama and Cuba.
Deprived of Venezuela’s oil, Cuba is on its uppers, with pervasive power cuts, affecting water supplies and sewerage badly. Cuba consumes around 100,000 barrels of Venezuelan oil per day. There is little the US can do in the short term to remedy the situation – the forces just aren’t available. No wonder, that the most famous scion of Cuban expats in America, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suddenly gone silent.
The lifting of Nicolás Maduro was a brilliant exercise of military precision – but it is very much looking like a one-off, which would be very difficult to repeat. From British military and intelligence sources, I have learnt that something like an operation to fix the illegal mafioso leadership in Venezuela had been in the works for ten years and more. It was considered even in the Obama presidency – and at some point British intelligence and tactical input were involved. The operation took some 150 aircraft and the arrest operation on the Maduro stronghold took 150 minutes in all. It nearly didn’t come off. Maduro was halfway to the door in the steel inner bunker when he was grabbed – 32 Cuban close protection special forces guards were killed on the way.
The US Navy now has three major aircraft carrier groups at sea, plus one amphibious assault group with its light carrier. They are in the Caribbean, Pacific and approaching the Middle East – which means they are very stretched. China now has a much larger fleet in the Pacific. Militarily, they can match the US in hypersonic and space weapons, in which they may be ahead in the race. If Xi intends to take Taiwan by force, he is likely to do it within the next year, possibly round the US mid-term elections.
The claim to dominate the Americas from Arctic to Antarctica as “Our Hemisphere” declared in the Trump National Security Strategy of last November is now looking distinctly hollow. Already the neighbours are pushing back – Canada, Mexico and Brazil, who together outnumber the population of the United States. In the past two days, the core Mercosur coalition of South American countries, led by Brazil and Argentina, have signed a key trade deal with the EU. Negotiations had been going on for 25 years; Trump’s latest antics persuaded them to sign in two days.
The deal includes precious minerals, rare earths and their refinement – assets Trump prizes beyond rubies.
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The big question from Davos now is whither Nato and Europe? The answer is not favourable to the Trump hegemon. Ursula Von der Leyen told the European parliament this Wednesday that “Europe now has to face the new reality” of reshaping its alliances in the face of American, meaning Trumpian, unreliability. She immediately took a four-hour car ride back to Davos to face Trump himself with her conclusions.
Europe is already forging, de facto, a new practical military coalition, led by the E3: France, Germany and the UK. The reality of the passing of peak Trump is beginning to dawn on the Starmer administration. He boasts about Britain’s nuclear deterrent, which in reality is annexed to American interests and support. It’s the UK’s defence capacity in conventional deterrence that now seems mending.
Conspicuously, Starmer has stayed away from Davos. Last minute he sent the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, the best strategic thinker in his cabinet – and no doubt she is working out what the UK needs to do just as Trump has peaked.
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