Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketroef. This is The Daily. For weeks, President Trump has been ratcheting up tensions across the world by claiming he would stop at nothing in his quest to seize Greenland from Denmark. Then on Wednesday, Trump appeared to back down, announcing that he'd agreed, at least for now, to an off-ramp.
Today, my colleague Mark Landler on the dizzying ups and downs of Trump's Greenland gambit and why this whole saga may mark the beginning of a new world order. It's Thursday, January 22nd. Mark, what a week this has been. Welcome to The Daily.
Thanks. It's great to be back.
So in the last couple of days, we've seen this incredible pressure build over Trump's desire and stated intention to take over Greenland. And then just today, Wednesday, we got this announcement that Trump and NATO had reached some kind of framework for a deal. And we don't know all that much about it, but just orient us. What do we know?
Well, as you said, we don't know a great deal. There appears to be the outlines of an agreement under which the U.S. would perhaps be granted some form of ownership or sovereignty, if you will, over small pockets of land in Greenland, probably U.S. military bases. And it appears that that would be something that would allow
President Trump to claim what he has wanted all along, which is some American ownership of Greenland, while for the Danish government maintaining the reality of this situation, which is that this is Danish territory. So it appears to be something that Mark Rutte
the NATO Secretary General is trying to craft that will somehow mollify Trump while sort of preserving Denmark's claim over Greenland, which was shaping up to be an unbreakable conflict between the United States and Denmark. Mm-hmm. How it all shakes out, very unclear. For those of us that have covered Trump in the past, we know that these dramas tend to have multiple acts.
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Chapter 2: What sparked President Trump's interest in Greenland?
I think Donald Trump wants Greenland, in a sense, coming from his background as a real estate developer. He wants to acquire territory for the United States. Greenland would be a larger new acquisition for the United States in square miles than the Louisiana Purchase, than Alaska, than some of the other major expansions of the United States. So that's on a very visceral level.
It's simply about expanding the footprint of the country while he is president. Right. But there's also a more strategic argument here. And that argument is that Greenland sits in a very contested part of the world in the Arctic. It sits atop these very valuable minerals known as rare earth minerals.
For that reason, other countries are going to become increasingly interested in Greenland, the Russians, the Chinese. And Trump's argument, in short, is we need Greenland. We need Greenland as a frontline place to protect U.S. national security. We need Greenland because we want to exploit its mineral riches. And we can't do any of that alone. unless we actually own it.
It's not just enough to have a military base there, which the United States does have. We need to be the owners in order to get the full advantage of the protection of Greenland to be able to exploit it economically.
And is he right, Mark, that owning Greenland would somehow secure all of these new benefits?
Well, the point is the U.S. could already obtain virtually all of these benefits under the existing arrangement between the United States and Denmark. A 1951 treaty gives the U.S. a great deal of flexibility to expand its military facilities on the island.
So, President Trump's argument is, you're never going to defend something if it's a license agreement, which is the way he characterizes our current arrangement in Greenland. But the truth is, we could build up our military footprint on Greenland a great deal under the existing arrangement. And furthermore, the Danes would welcome that.
The Danish government has said over and over again, we are willing to have discussions with the United States. We would welcome greater involvement, not just military, but commercial. So I think the president is not quite right when he makes this argument.
Right, which is why when Trump originally started talking about owning Greenland, people really didn't take him seriously, right? It seemed like the U.S. already had this access to Greenland and taking it over was either a joke or a completely empty threat. But then, obviously, that changed.
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Chapter 3: What was the recent announcement regarding Greenland and NATO?
And that brings us to this week, to Davos, where world leaders and business leaders had assembled for their annual meeting in the Swiss Alps. This is something they do every year. But now, this year, there are these enormous stakes bearing down on this meeting.
And Trump arrives Wednesday morning to deliver a speech that everyone was waiting to hear with the real sense that the future of America's relationship with Europe, with Canada, with some of our closest allies was hanging in the balance here. I watched the speech. I know you did, too. So what struck you the most about it?
Well, if the hope of the people waiting in that room was to be reassured, I think that President Trump let them down quickly and let them down pretty hard.
Would you like me to say a few words of Greenland? I was going to leave it out of the speech, but I thought I think I would have been reviewed very negatively.
This was Trump at his most swaggering, his most menacing, really delivering in perhaps the purest form we've seen a message that he's been articulating for months, that this is a world in which the strong survive and the weak have to learn how to deal with it.
And the fact is, no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States.
He said he wants Greenland. He wants the United States to take ownership and control of Greenland.
We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won't do that.
But notably, he also took military action off the table.
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Chapter 4: Why does President Trump want to acquire Greenland?
There's a huge risk to it. At this moment, Trump is saying he's not going to impose the additional new tariffs he had threatened. But he goes back and forth on tariffs all the time. So if you were to impose the bazooka on the United States, what's to stop President Trump from imposing 100% tariffs or 150% tariffs, which could have really calamitous consequences for German car makers or
French luxury goods exporters. And that's a real issue for these European countries because these are politicians dealing with their own domestic pressures and tanking your economy to make a point with the United States is not going to do you any favors at the ballot box.
And we should point out that this whole time, there have also been risks on the U.S. side from this Greenland gambit. We saw Wall Street didn't seem to like this. There are Republican senators that seem uncomfortable with it. And, I mean, let's be honest. It's not like there's a huge hunger within the American public to own Greenland.
So taking all the things that you've just described about the dangers for Europe and the potential pitfalls for the United States here, it makes sense that both sides actually had a real incentive to find an off-ramp here, which is exactly what it looks like they did.
Yes, again, we don't know how solid this off-ramp is or what it entails as of Wednesday evening. But yes, it does seem like everybody backed off the edge of this particular cliff.
But I have to ask, Mark, whatever this deal or potential deal turns out to be, doesn't this whole saga, this saga of the U.S. threatening to subsume territory of another NATO state by force — Doesn't that make clear that NATO is fundamentally rotten? Like, this is an alliance that at its core is supposed to be about protecting each other from outside threats, defending each other's sovereignty.
And this time, the threat came from inside the family, one member against the rest.
You just put your finger on it right there. When the largest, the central, the linchpin member of the alliance now poses a direct threat to another member of the alliance, that fundamentally makes NATO no longer tenable.
And so I think you're right in saying that even the fact that we're having this conversation and that it's a serious conversation and that leaders in Europe are having to make decisions based on the potential of an American takeover of Greenland, that is already deeply, deeply damaging to the underlying principles of NATO.
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Chapter 5: What strategic advantages does Greenland offer to the U.S.?
We're going to hedge against this uncertainty that we now perceive in the United States, and we're going to do it by drawing closer to China.
On the other hand, I have to wonder whether there's some way that Trump would actually see that outcome that you're describing as a win for the U.S.
And, you know, pushing smaller countries into the arms of China, he may just view that as an inevitable result of his quest to realize this worldview that he has, which you, Mark, have described on this show, that the great powers should divide the globe into these spheres of influence that they dominate.
Yeah, that's exactly right. I think that in Trump's world, it's the great powers that set the tone for everybody else. I mean, there's a really interesting saying by a Greek historian, Thucydides, it's making the rounds a lot these days. And it kind of encapsulates Trump's philosophy. And it goes, the strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.
And I think, in essence, what we're seeing over the last few weeks most vividly, but it really has been the story of Trump's second term, is putting that ancient idea into practice. He really does see three major factors traditional great powers dividing up the spoils, the United States, Russia, and China.
And Europe unhappily finds itself wedged uncomfortably between two of those major great powers, but without some of the key ingredients, the key weapons that make one a great power, it has to kind of navigate this rather dangerous and unfriendly world, making partnerships and alliances where it can. And yet at the same time, I think we need to be careful not to indulge in too much declinism.
The Europeans do have a future. It's a future that will require them to make some difficult choices, but will give them a chance to become every bit as big a sphere of influence as some of these others. After all, remember, Russia is for all of its saber-rattling, is in many ways a weak country.
And the Europeans in this case seem to get Trump to back down.
Yeah, bully for them. It seems like, in a sense, this was the best scenario that one could have imagined for this situation. And it's also a reminder that Europe is, for all its weaknesses, still a player. They can still find ways to fend off the worst threats. They have massive economies, an educated workforce, diplomatic soft power, powerful cultural values.
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