{"id":541955,"date":"2026-01-25T14:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T14:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/541955\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T14:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T14:26:10","slug":"european-leaders-learn-to-say-no-to-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/541955\/","title":{"rendered":"European leaders learn to say ‘no’ to Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 No more fawning praise. No more polite workarounds and old-style diplomacy. And no one is calling Donald Trump \u201cdaddy\u201d<\/a> now. <\/p>\n

European leaders who scrambled for a year<\/a> to figure out how to deal with an emboldened American president<\/a> in his second term edged closer to saying \u201cno,\u201d or something diplomatically like it, to his disregard for international law and his demands for their territory. Trump\u2019s vow to take over Greenland and punish any country that resists<\/a>, seems to have been the crucible. <\/p>\n

\u201cRed lines\u201d were deemed to have been crossed this year when Trump abruptly revived his demand that the United States \u201cabsolutely\u201d must rule Greenland, the semiautonomous region that is part of NATO ally Denmark. That pushed even the most mild-mannered diplomats to issue sharp warnings against Trump, whom they had flattered with<\/a>royal treatment<\/a> and fawning praise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBritain will not yield\u201d its support for Greenland\u2019s sovereignty, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. Several of the continent\u2019s leaders said \u201cEurope will not be blackmailed\u201d over Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThreats have no place among allies,\u201d said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re.<\/p>\n

The tough diplomatic talk around the showdown last week in Davos, Switzerland, was not the only factor pressuring Trump. U.S. congressional elections are approaching in November amid a sinking stock market<\/a> and wilting approval ratings<\/a>. European leaders also are not the first to stand in Trump\u2019s way during his second term \u2014 see Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But the dramatic turnabout among Europe\u2019s elite, from \u201cappeasing\u201d Trump to defying him, offers clues in the ongoing effort among some nations of how to say \u201cno\u201d to a president who hates hearing it and is known to retaliate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won\u2019t give it,\u201d Trump told his audience at the World Economic Forum. \u201cYou can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we will remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lesson 1: Speak as one<\/p>\n

In recent days, Europe offered abundant refusals to go along with Trump, from his Greenland demand and joining his new Board of Peace<\/a> and even to what Canada\u2019s Mark Carney called the \u201cfiction\u201d that the alliance functions for the benefit of any country more than the most powerful. The moment marked a unity among European leaders that they had struggled to achieve for a year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Europe is not divided, when we stand together and when we are clear and strong also in our willingness to stand up for ourselves, then the results will show,\u201d Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. \u201cI think we have learned something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federiksen herself exemplified the learning curve. A year ago, she and other leaders were on their heels and mostly responding to the Trump administration. She found it necessary to tell reporters in February 2025<\/a>, \u201cWe are not a bad ally,\u201d after Vice President JD Vance had said Denmark was \u201cnot being a good ally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump is transactional. He has little use for diplomacy and no \u201cneed (for) international law,\u201d he told The New York Times this month. Therein lay the disconnect between typically collaborative European leaders and the Republican president when he blazed back into the White House saying he wanted the U.S. to take over Greenland, Panama and perhaps even Canada. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn Trump\u2019s first term, Europe didn\u2019t know what to expect and tried to deal with him by using the old rules of diplomacy, with the expectation that, if they kept talking to him in measured terms, that he would change his behavior and move into the club,\u201d said Mark Shanahan, associate professor of political engagement at the University of Surrey,.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very hard for other leaders who deal with each other through the niceties of a rules-based system and diplomatic conversation,\u201d Shanahan said. \u201cIt is hard for them to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Five months after Trump\u2019s inauguration last year, with his Greenland threat in the air, European leaders had gotten their heads around Trump management enough to pull off a meeting of NATO nations<\/a> in the Netherlands. NATO members agreed to contribute more and widely gave Trump credit for forcing them to modernize. <\/p>\n

Secretary-General Mark Rutte, known as the coalition\u2019s \u201cTrump whisperer,\u201d<\/a> likened the president\u2019s role quieting the Iran-Israel war to a \u201cdaddy\u201d intervening in a schoolyard brawl.<\/p>\n

Lesson 2: Consider saying no \u2014 and make choices accordingly <\/p>\n

Traditional diplomacy exists to preserve possibilities of working together. That often means avoiding saying a flat \u201cno\u201d if possible. But Trump\u2019s Greenland gambit was so stark a threat from one NATO member to another that Greenland\u2019s prime minister actually said the word. <\/p>\n

\u201cEnough,\u201d Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a statement shortly after Trump\u2019s remarks Jan. 5. \u201cNo more pressure. No more hints. No more fantasies about annexation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That played a part in setting the tone. Denmark\u2019s leader said any such invasion of Greenland would mark the end of NATO<\/a> and urged alliance members to take the threat seriously.<\/p>\n

They did, issuing statement after statement rejecting the renewed threat. Trump responded last weekend from his golf course in Florida with a threat to charge a 10% import tax within a month on goods from eight European nations \u2014 Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland. The rate, he wrote, would climb to 25% on June 1 if no deal was in place for \u201cthe Complete and Total purchase of Greenland\u201d by the United States.<\/p>\n

Lesson 3: Reject Trump\u2019s big-power paradigm<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s fighting words lit a fire among leaders arriving in Davos. But they seemed to recognize, too, that the wider Trump world left him vulnerable. <\/p>\n

\u201cTrump was in a fairly weak position because he has a lot of other looming problems going on,\u201d domestically, including an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision on his tariffs<\/a> and a backlash to immigration raids in Minnesota<\/a>, said Duncan Snidal, professor emeritus of international relations at Oxford University and the University of Chicago. <\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Carney said no by reframing the question not as being about Greenland, but about whether it was time for European countries to build power together against a \u201cbully\u201d \u2014 and his answer was yes. <\/p>\n

Without naming the U.S. or Trump, Carney spoke bluntly: Europe, he said, should reject the big power\u2019s \u201ccoercion\u201d and \u201cexploitation.\u201d It was time to accept, he said, that a \u201crupture\u201d in the alliance, not a transition, had occurred.<\/p>\n

Unsaid, Snidel pointed out, was that the rupture was very new, and though it might be difficult to repair<\/a> in the future, doing so under adjusted rules remains in U.S. and European interests beyond Trump\u2019s presidency. \u201cIt\u2019s too good a deal for all of them not to,\u201d Snidel said. <\/p>\n

Lesson 4: Exercise caution<\/p>\n

Before Trump stepped away from the podium in Davos, he had begun to back down.<\/p>\n

He canceled his threat<\/a> to use \u201cforce\u201d to take over Greenland. Not long after, he reversed himself fully,<\/a> announcing \u201cthe framework\u201d for a deal that would make his tariff threat unnecessary. <\/p>\n

Trump told Fox Business that \u201cwe\u2019re going to have total access to Greenland,\u201d under the \u201cframework,\u201d without divulging what that might mean.<\/p>\n

Frederiksen hit the warning button again. In a statement, she said, \u201cWe cannot negotiate on our sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words: \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 No more fawning praise. No more polite workarounds and old-style diplomacy. And no one is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":541956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[29062,29739,7838,69,440,8697,57,2055,8298,3464,2066,142,70079,17723,18809,8955,239020,50,8961,18242,80,235115,376,4338,370,93,103,33536,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-541955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-denmark","9":"tag-denmark-government","10":"tag-diplomacy","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-government-and-politics","16":"tag-greenland","17":"tag-international-agreements","18":"tag-jd-vance","19":"tag-jerome-powell","20":"tag-jonas-gahr-stre","21":"tag-keir-starmer","22":"tag-mark-carney","23":"tag-mark-rutte","24":"tag-mark-shanahan","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","27":"tag-norway","28":"tag-politics","29":"tag-send-to-apple-news","30":"tag-united-kingdom","31":"tag-united-kingdom-government","32":"tag-united-states-government","33":"tag-washington-news","34":"tag-world","35":"tag-world-economic-forum","36":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}