DDonald Trump is threatening to seize Greenland, a NATO ally, possibly by military force, while Vladimir Putin is trying to take control of Ukraine. Even if it does not actually do so, this is a new era: a post-Western world of illiberal international chaos.
The task now facing liberal democracies in general, and Europe in particular, is twofold: to see this world as it is, and to work out what the hell we are going to do about it.
The global public opinion poll published today is a useful starting point. It was conducted last November in 21 countries for the European Council on Foreign Relations, in partnership with our partners. Europe in a changing world A research project at the University of Oxford (and please read Full report(Written with Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard). This is the fourth in A series of surveys We’ve done this every year since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, so we can see how things have evolved from very bad then to critical now.
again in 2022, We found it The West was united across the Atlantic in outrage over the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, but divided with other great and middle powers, such as China, India and Turkey, which were only too happy to continue business as usual with Russia. The Russian economy was surviving unprecedented Western sanctions because those other countries now had enough wealth and power between them to counterbalance a united West. This was indeed a post-Western world, but one in which the West still acted.
Trump 2.0 has changed all that. Now we have a post-Western world, but without a coherent geopolitical West in it. As much as we should attribute any strategic cohesion to Trump’s erratic narcissism, his approach is closer to that of Putin than to that of any American president since 1945. As his right-hand man, Stephen Miller, has said He explains franklyThey believe that the world is “ruled by force… by force… by force.”
The Europeans understood this. Surprisingly, fewer than one in five continental Europeans (taking the average across the 10 EU countries surveyed) and only one in four Britons now see the US as an ally. In Ukraine, the number dropped to 18%. We Europeans still view the United States as a “necessary partner,” but not as an ally.
And the rest of the world is waking up to this too. While in Our first poll60% of Chinese participants believe that the American and European approaches are the same or similar (that is, there is one West), and now only 43% say so, while a clear majority believes that they are different. As of now, the West is history.
So what should we do about it? The worst thing we can do is continue to whine about the missing “rules-based international order,” selectively invoking international law (Ukraine but not Gaza) while continuing to appease a sycophantic Trump. At the same time, it is clear that we do not want to act like him or Putin.
What we need is a new International: faster, more flexible and tougher. Reject the use of force but accept the use of force. Do not focus your attention on existing structures and alliances, but rather look for a broader range of partners, pragmatically, from one issue to another. Less concerned about rules, more concerned about results; Less process, more progress. This is particularly challenging for the institutional European Union, which ultimately represents a slow-moving, rules-based, process-heavy model of the 1990s-style liberal international order.
Yet we have already begun to do this for Ukraine, with a new combination of a coalition of the willing and the EU itself moving at a startling speed for Brussels. As I said last month, we must urgently prepare to support an independent Ukraine even without the support of the United States.
What about Greenland? First, we must be guided in everything we do by the elected governments of Greenland and Denmark. This, ultimately, is what distinguishes liberal democrats from authoritarian imperialists.
Denmark and some of its European allies in NATO announced on Wednesday that they would send more troops to Greenland. Foreign Ministers of Greenland and Denmark Then they met in Washington They agreed with Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to form a high-level working group. It is quite clear that the fundamental dispute has not been resolved. All indications are that Trump will become more extreme and unpredictable as time passes and his domestic difficulties increase.
So here are some suggestions. To highlight European commitment, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer should visit Greenland, along with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney should join them, because Canada is a NATO ally and Greenland’s de facto western neighbor and is directly affected by insecurity in the Arctic.
If they can take a train to Kyiv, they can take a plane to Nuuk. It is strange that this visit may be no less important than the essence of the security commitment, because President Trump’s second language is television. He will get the message from the pictures. A number of clearly uniformed European and Canadian liaison officers should be stationed in Greenland for the foreseeable future.
On Tuesday, Greenland’s Prime Minister, Jens Fredrik Nielsen, said that if they had to choose, “we would choose Denmark…we would choose the European Union.” Therefore, the European Union must quickly find a way to increase its currently small size Financial support for Greenland – And not just, as apparently planned, in the new budget period starting in 2028. This would be a good occasion for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa to board the plane to Nuuk.
While there, they should begin a strategic discussion about a possible future close relationship between an independent Greenland and the European Union. It is quite clear that tomorrow’s EU will have a set of ad hoc relationships with its major neighbours, including the UK, Ukraine, Turkey and Canada. Why not also with Greenland?
On the other hand, Europe – the United States’ largest economic partner – should privately review the full range of economic responses (including, for example, selling US Treasuries) it could take in the unlikely event that Trump orders a Putin-style military takeover of Greenland. The outlines of these contingency plans could be conveyed confidentially to the White House via US Treasury Secretary Scott Besent or the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
There are undoubtedly other possible moves, but the general trend is clear: for Europe (and Canada and other liberal democracies) to demonstrate quiet strength, strength, and resolve.
Among the most disappointing findings in our poll is that Europeans are leading the world in a state of pessimism. Nearly half of them believe that the European Union cannot deal on an equal footing with global powers such as the United States and China. If we start practicing this new, faster, tougher internationalism, perhaps more Europeans will believe in Europe again.