Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Trump Threatens Europe Over Greenland; Europe Responds

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

JVL and Will Saletan break down Donald Trump’s escalating threats against Europe as he pushes to “conquer” Greenland, claiming “World Peace is at stake!”

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I'm JVL here with my bulwark colleague Will Salatin, and we're going to go through all of it because this stuff is insane. I'm going to read to you, Will, some selections from this long truth social post by the present of the United States. We have subsidized Denmark and all of the countries of the European Union and others for many years by not charging them tariffs or any other form of remuneration. Now after centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back. World peace is at stake. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the circumstances. safety, security, and survival of our planet. These countries who are playing this very dangerous

game have put a level of risk in play that's not tenable or sustainable. Therefore, it is imperative that in order to protect global peace and security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly and without question. Now it goes on to the trade war. starting on February 1st, 2026, all of the above-mentioned countries will be charged a 10% tariff on any and all goods sent to the United States of America. On June 1st, 26, the tariff will be increased to 25%. The tariff will be due and payable until such time as a deal is reached for the complete and total purchase of Greenland. Will? I'll let you cook first.

Okay, this is insane. What's happened here is until today, Trump's position about Greenland was the Russians and the Chinese have all these ships and forces around there. He wildly exaggerated it. And therefore, the United States must protect Greenland from them. Today is the first day that Donald Trump has said, no, no, no, no, no. The Europeans, NATO countries are sending forces. He doesn't explain why. a journey for reasons unknown.

The Europeans basically took Donald Trump up on his demand that they defend Greenland from the Russians and the Chinese. So they're sending forces to Greenland to say, hey, we can do it. Trump's response is that that is a hostile action. He's pretty clearly saying, and he's treating them as the threat. And correct me if I'm wrong, JBL. This sounds like the Cuban missile crisis. They've created this untenable situation, and we're going to escalate to try.

drive them out. This is a very important escalation here. Because prior to this morning, prior to Saturday morning, the administration's position has been, we are going to get a deal on Greenland. It's going to be a big,

beautiful deal that everybody's going to be very happy with. One way or another, it's going to happen. They're going to sell it to us. They're going to agree to sell it to us. Of course, military force is always on the table, right? But it has been, there has been no coercion, right? The idea has been like, we're going to make them an offer so good that they'll love it.

Now, by saying that we're going to punish you until you accept an offer, that's different. That's a different thing. That is not just an optimistic, hey, we know that we're all going to get to yes. Because when you say that, the other party, your counterparty, can still theoretically say no. this is a you're not going to say no because we we are laying out what the punishments for saying no are so that we're no longer in a a free and fair deal this is now we're going an open a mission that the united states is going to coerce Denmark and Greenland into transferring sovereignty to America all right let's go backwards because a lot has happened this week um beginning with Wednesday when delegates from the European Union, from Greenland and Denmark met with

Vice President J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio. And this is what the Danish foreign minister, Lars Loke Rasmussen, said at a news conference after that closed door meeting. It's clear the president has this wish of conquering Greenland. Conquering. It's clear that the president has this wish of conquering. wish of conquering over Greenland. We made it very, very clear that this is not in the interest of the kingdom. Not mincing any words. No, no, like, well, we had a full and productive conversation. And, I mean, just, so if that's what the diplomat, again, it's a foreign minister,

Secretary of State, like when you are in the diplomatic world, your job is to always leave yourself legal room and stuff. If that's what he was willing to say publicly, you can only imagine. what was being said to him by, I wonder, Will, do you think J.B. Vance said, have you even said thank you once? That's an optimistic view of what went on in the room. The Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers came out.

They said that. They also said that we didn't quite, you know, it was a great meeting, even though we didn't get acquiescence to our red lines. And when they described their red line, the red line was sovereignty. It was respect for the sovereignty of other countries and respect for the autonomy

for the self-determination of the Greenlanders. So that is what J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio refused to accept the minimum, a bare moral, civilizational minimum of respecting sovereignty. That's amazing. Well, it's because Donald Trump can't grant that. His worldview is that the only person with sovereignty is Donald Trump.

right? And so by extension, only America has sovereignty provided Donald Trump as president, right? And once Donald Trump ceases to become president, well, then, you know, America is just like any other country. And so what happened after that is that we got word that Europe was starting to send small delegations of military troops from France, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweden, showing up to Greenland, starting on Thursday. Again, these are, they're not moving in artillery. Like these are very, very small groups. A lot of them are officers doing consulting. I mean, we're talking dozens, right? Maybe scores of military personnel. Nobody's bringing a battalion in. But then on Thursday, Manuel Macron, president of France,

said that his country would be sending further land, air, and sea assets. Again, just sort of leaving it a little bit open like that. this feels like a prelude to war. I mean, I just don't know how to, right? This is what those things look like. They don't always end in war, right? But it always starts like this. I skip breakfast this morning.

Stay out of my way. Don't threaten me with your bad choices. No worries. A booster bar from booster juice will fix me. I don't even know what that is. Yeah, because they're new. Snacks sized bars, packed with seeds, pecans, gluten-free oats, all sorts of good stuff.

That sounds lovely, actually. Two different flavors to try two. Coconut Pecan booster bars and harvest booster bars. Want to skip breakfast with me? I take it back. You make good choices. Booster Juice, Canadian-born blending since 1999. The idea that Donald Trump is creating this and then doing the thing that authoritarian's always do,

they create the hostile situation and then claim the existence of that hostile situation as pretext for why they have to invade, which is when I say they, this is what Vladimir Putin did in Georgia and in Ukraine. This is gray zone warfare, except that the United States is doing the gray zone warfare. Right. First of all, to your point about creating the hostile situation, the Europeans are doing what Trump asked them to do. Trump in this statement, as you just read it, he says, you know, they have a couple of dog sleds up there. He's ridiculing the absence of military force by Denmark, protecting. Greenland from Russia and China. So the Europeans respond by, okay, okay, you want us to show that we can defend Greenland. We're going to send some forces up there. Trump's response to them doing what he

implied that they should do is to call that a hostile act and treat it as. So as you say, he's just trying to provoke a confrontation. But let me pick up on your point about Putin because I think that's very astute. You mentioned, you alluded before to J.D. Vance saying, you know, how come you have and, you know, thank the president. That was Vance and Trump. ambushing Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, back in a year ago, basically, in the in the Oval office. And Trump said there to Zelensky, you don't have the cards. Who has the cards? The country with the power, Russia. So what Trump is doing now is saying to NATO, we, the United States, have the cards. You don't have the cards. And the country with the cards, which is Russia

in Ukraine, us in Greenland, gets to move in and take what we want. Right. This is a fully new vision of American foreign policy. Like, it is a totally new American foreign policy doctrine. And it's clear as day. And it is weird that there are a couple people in the administration, like Pete Higgsith, who who get close to inching up to saying it out loud. But they still can't do it. There's still this like reflexive Reaganite, well, they have to pretend that it's all about freedom and peace and stuff. But it isn't. This is just domination law of the jungle stuff. Like, there are, there is no international order except for guns. Right.

And the person with the Navy and the most guns and the most nukes, they get to do what they want. That's the new foreign policy doctrine in the United States. Right. So the person whose fingerprints you can see on this statement is Stephen Miller. And I say that because there are certain phrases in the, uh, to the social post, strong measures must be taken, especially the phrase without question. This is one of Stephen Miller's favorite. Without question, America will dominate.

everyone must do what we say. And that phrase appears as here in terms of exceeding to America's demands. So I suspect he's involved in it. But can I pick up on what you said about this is brand new? So I don't know as much history as you do about American foreign policy. If we go back to the 19th century. Right. I'm sorry. When I say brand new, I don't, I don't mean brand new in like the post-war order. Right. This is, I don't mean in the history of the world. Like this stuff is how the world used to be run. once upon a time. And then we built this rules-based order that began, you know, it was slowly being built after World War I and the attempts to leave nations, then after World War II, and people are like, we can't do this anymore. We need rules because otherwise we are slitting

the throat of our own civilization. And so I'm sorry, when I say it's all brand new, I just meant it's all brand new for anybody who who is living now or had grandparent, you know, within the last 80 plus years. So I apologize. No, no, no, but that was true of Latin America, but you could argue it is new as it applies to Europe. I mean, as other countries that were empires, I mean, we fought, when's the last time we fought the British?

You know, it's been a couple of centuries. So, that does look new to me. I wonder if this is, JBL, I'm remembering right after Trump invaded Venezuela. and got rid of Maduro. The reporters asked him, well, is Greenland next? What are you thinking about Greenland? And at that time, he said, who's talking about Greenland? I'm not thinking about Greenland.

But it seems like the Venezuela invasion, the success of it, has gone to his head. Do you think that there's a cause and effect there? Well, I mean, I think it's proof of concept, right? I mean, I wouldn't put it as, like, success has gone to a head. I would call it proof of concept that you can do this. and the fact that he was able to very seamlessly pick up. And the reason he's been able to do it is because there is no nation building, there is no bringing democracy.

He didn't even topple the regime. He just swapped out dictators for one that will work with him. Right. And if that's your view of the world that you just want the dictator who's going to do what you tell them to do, well, that's a little easier to manage, right? You can, that's, the question is just like, is that what America is? Is that, and very clearly it is. I want to bring something to you, though.

I'm going to step a little bit back on the Greenland thing and explain to you. And maybe you tell me why I'm wrong, because I'm kind of obsessed about this. I believe that Trump, by saying he wants to purchase Greenland, he has set up what is essentially an impossible ask. You notice he hasn't tendered an offer. right for a guy who's like you know all we want to buy we want to buy it he hasn't made an offer like isn't that typically what you do if you if you want to buy a thing you know you go to the car dealership and you say huh i like that toyota camry i'll give you x dollars for it and then the other you know the salesman says let me go back and talk to my manager and blah blah blah blah blah there is no

offer and the reason there isn't an offer will is because there can't be an offer you can't price the asset. It is impossible to have a transaction where the asset can't be priced. And a gigantic landmass like Greenland that has 50,000 people living there, you can't price it. Somebody was like, well, one trillion dollars. I heard this is a thing that a lot of Magas say. We could pay them $1 trillion. Are you saying that the eternal control of this gigantic landmass is worth the same as like the next few years of Elon Musk's executive time at Tesla? No, crazy. Like, clearly, that can't be right. But the second part of it is if you are the seller at that point, so if you are Denmark and the United States is trying to coerce you into selling, whatever you accept as your sale price has to be

paid up front because you have no ability to collect in the future. So if America were to say, we will give you $1 trillion, and we'll give you $50 billion now, and then we'll give you $10 billion a year for, you know, we'll put it on a payment plan. We'll use Clara, you know, we'll use the PayPal. You can't accept that if you're Denmark because you have no way to compel payment. And because America is now a rogue regime, you would be fools to assume that they would continue to pay you.

And so the entire idea of this being a purchase is a sham. And we know it's a sham because Trump hasn't tendered an offer. Okay. Interesting theory. Let me push back on a couple of things. First of all, Truman came up with an offer and Denmark said no. So there was a price put on it. Whether you could do that today, I'm not clear. But there are multiple problems and you've just named some of them. Who is the seller? Is it Denmark or is it Greenland? Right. Because the Trump is acting, half the time the Trump people act like we can just offer a certain amount of money to each person. in Greenland to vote. They're vote buying, basically, what they accused Democrats of doing here. The payment plan. This is an administration, the Trump administration, that A, had previous agreements with Denmark about how we were going to operate in Greenland. B, signed a bunch of trade deals or at least frameworks for trade deals last year, which we're now telling the Europeans,

you know what, we're going to throw on another 10, 25 percent because we feel like it. Who in their right mind would sell anything to us on a payment plan when, as you just pointed out, We have no credibility at all. We have no credit rating. And they have no way to enforce because, again, we're now living in a world where the only way to force anything is guns. So, you know, America has just said that all documentation and treaties are not worth anything and that force is the only backstop of everything. And so if you're Denmark, you can't go, unless you're willing to go to war against America, like full-blown thermonuclear war against America to collect, you have to. to assume that anything that you, any, the last dollar you get is the dollar they hand you at

the ceremony. Right. So this is, again, it simply can't be done. And honestly, JVL, if we, even if we paid up front, which is impossible for all the reasons you named, there, there's no reason why they should trust us not to come and take it back. I mean, that's essentially what Trump has done with every deal that he's made. So that there, there can be no bargaining with the United States. It's why, you know, Catherine Rampel just wrote a story for us in the bulwark today about the Europeans are making trade deals with the South Americans. Everybody's making deals with other entities, whether they are individual countries, whether they're blocks of countries. And that's because those entities have a credit rating. They are good to their word. We're not. We're not. No one can,

all, all the deals made with us are temporary. So, first of all, they can't make a deal with us for Greenland, but also we shouldn't expect anyone to count on us. I mean, I think Americans would be fools to believe that anything that Donald Trump signs is an agreement that would be honored in the future, certainly by our side, if not by theirs. And so because of this, I'm just going to keep walking you down the road, because a sale is not possible and anybody who is looking at this objectively understands that it's not possible, then the demand for a sale is clearly only pretext for war. right if you if you are if you are demanding a thing which is not possible and you are refusing to take military force off the table and then you are saying that you're going to punish people for not taking the thing which isn't possible to be to be completed there's no other way to understand that except as a pretext for war unless it's just like rantings of a crazy guy and there'll be a

shiny object next week and he'll be off to that right i mean that is possible but if you assume that everybody is being a rational actor here and that people are pursuing interests in ways that are rational, then he's going to go to war for Greenland. So let me offer an alternative to that. And I think probably you don't mean literally he's going to go to war for it.

What he wants is Greenland. The war would be a means to it, right? So my alternative picture of what's going to happen here and what Trump has in mind is Delcey Rodriguez. Delce Rodriguez turns Trump goes into Venezuela, takes out Maduro, kills a bunch of Cuban guards,

blows some things up, and says, we'll do it to you next unless you do what we say. So we have this remote control operation going on. I think what Trump wants is Adelsea Rodriguez in Greenland. I think that he's using the threat of force as,

and this escalation in this tweet, is part of it, in order to get some, somebody in Greenland to knuckle under to him. And remember, he sent J.D. Vance there, what was it, in March of last year? He sent it early last year, right? And then the Danes and the Greenlanders were pissed off because we had people, American operatives up there that they sussed out. We are in there trying to find someone in Greenland who will be our viceroy. And I think this military threat is part of the game. Does that make sense? It is. It does make some sense.

there are a couple differences, right? So in Venezuela, you're not dealing with a democratic polity. You're just dealing with a gang. And so you can take out the guys the top of the gang and then, you know, his deputy, you can make a deal with them because you don't have to worry about popular sentiment. It's different with Greenland and Denmark, right? These people seem to have gotten their Irish up a little bit in the way the Canadians did. God bless him when Trump was going on and on about conquering Canada. So it's harder, right? You can't just strike a one-on-one deal with the one person in the gang. And I'm not sure what Trump could do materially for Denmark or Greenland to make this make sense for them. Right. And so that's why I, you know, I could have seen this as a, well, at some point, sign some agreement and say, well, Mark Andreessen and Peter Thiel get to extract a bunch of rare earth minerals from Greenland, and that's all we ever wanted at the beginning. Art of the deal! Right? This is the, you know,

I could see that, but we're getting to a place where I don't know that there's a climb down. I mean, Trump is now talking about how this is, you know, it's all part of the Golden Dome strategy and that this is vital for American national security. And France and the United Kingdom are playing a dangerous game. I don't know. Will, are you with me on the idea that NATO's dead? Well, no. I don't think NATO's dead in the sense that we can elect a new president and American can come crawling back and saying, you know what, we want to restore the old order. We're very sorry. I mean, Germany, it took them a few decades to come back, but they came back to civilization, right? They're back in the good graces of the civilized world. So I don't think

that NATO is over. But I do. We mean, it had to be occupied in order for that to happen, Will. Right, right. And I don't want to compare what America has done so far to what Germany did. I mean, I don't want to go crazy here. Okay. But I was speaking before about our credit rating. We have a financial credit rating, which is shot. But we also have a moral credit rating. And that's shot. So I don't think the Europeans are going to ever trust us the same way they trusted us before. We had one election of Donald Trump. They were willing to sort of give us, okay, you screwed up. you didn't really think this guy was going to win.

He stages a coup. We bring him back. He threatens Europe. He engages in all sorts of economic coercion against Europe. He says Europe doesn't matter. At a certain point, they're just going to say, this is what America wanted. America didn't turn this guy out. I mean, we sit here today.

Trump's making these statements. I hear from people in Europe. They say, you know, we don't see you guys rising up. If America was different from Trump, you'd be doing something about it. They don't see us doing anything about it. To that extent, even when Trump's gone, they may say, you're going to have another Trump because that's who you are. Well, I mean, so I think the problem isn't moral.

I mean, obviously there's a moral component to it, but the problem is very practical. And when I say NATO is dead, what I mean is that it is a dead man walking, right? It is a zombie organization now, as currently envisioned. Maybe it continues on and is just superseded by like a European defense pact. But as the future of European defense does not include America. And they will continue to get whatever they can from America while they decouple from us. But the process of decouplement is coming. And I think it's unavoidable.

And the reason is because they have now seen that America can't be counted on. Forget can't be counted on to fulfill Article 5 obligations. America can't be counted on to not be belligerent. Yes. Right. And so they have to make alternative arrangements. You cannot have an alliance with a country who maybe once every four years or 16 years becomes a belligerent and an adversary, right? That doesn't work. You have to treat them as a strategic competitor at best or a strategic adversary. And again, this is going to be a strategic competitor. to begin with a nuclear umbrella. They will at some point. There's already been a lot of talk. You follow like European defense stuff about creating a European nuclear umbrella, beginning with the French and the British. Eventually, this will mean the Germans getting nukes. The polls will have to get nukes. And once there is a nuclear umbrella that is European independent,

and this is, again, one of the reasons that the Ukraine war is so important is that Ukraine has built up a tremendous defense industry. And so the big, the big, part of this is actually building the homegrown defense industries because Europe has understood now that they can't rely on American weapons manufacturers. And so you've seen this in the last six months or so a lot of European defense contracts are going internally now. And so they're instead of doing procurement through the Americans, they're looking to stand up their own industries. And that's because they understand they simply can't rely on us even at the level of trade and military procurement. And as that's, I mean, that train,

I think can't be stopped. And it doesn't matter what happens going forward. America has proven that this is what America is. Right. I can't. We're rogue state, Will. You've followed this more than I have. I was going to say the Europeans need us for as long as we are the sole

arms supplier capable of giving them what they need in Ukraine. Right. And that's why they won't jump off until they're ready to jump, right? They'll string it along. But that is the, that is the, the window that they have to finesse here in Greenland. It's about a decade. They can't have a confrontation with us that takes us out of supplying them the weapons to defend their eastern flank while they prepare for the eventual confrontation with the West, which is us.

Right. Yeah. And that's why I actually think that the most, the most likely outcome is that Trump's sort of tacos and claims victory and claims art of the deal. The next most likely outcome is he just announces that we do own Greenland. And it's like the Gulf of America. Like, yes, it's ours now. You know, and we're going to take away the White House press credentials of any organization that doesn't refer to Greenland as American territory. You know, like, yeah, we own it.

You know, and everybody else can say they don't, but we do. The next most likely is that they just send a couple of platoons over there and say, this is ours now. And if that happens, if there's an actual invasion, I think the Europeans just let me. go because there is, again, they're in the business of decoupling. And so they'll, okay, sure, fine, keep getting access to as many American arms as they can while they stand up their own defense industry. Trust that if another Democratic president has ever elected, that Democratic president will hand Greenland back over, which I think is like an obvious thing that would happen. But it wouldn't change the directionality. It wouldn't change where Europe goes from here.

because you're this is I wrote I wrote a piece about all this last week will and I said something like the rest of the free world while I was writing and then I realized I can't use that phrase anymore because the free world no longer includes America America is now like China or like Russia a great power looking to just exert domination wherever it can to take whatever spoils it can in the free world is now like Europe and Canada and a bunch of Pacific nations, Australia, Japan, South Korea. So I don't want to go with you to that, to that vision of the future. That's farther than I'm willing to say. But I want to say this to anybody who thinks that your scenario of America just sending troops in to Greenland and not being opposed, anyone who thinks that that is far-fetched. And I hate to be an alarmist. I'm going to just name two people who have specifically described that scenario, Stephen Miller and Mike Johnson. both of them said there's not going to be a war in Greenland. There's not going to be fight in Greenland because there's hardly anyone there by various estimates, 55,000, 60,000 people.

It's not not a serious military. There won't be a war there because no one will fight us, they said. Not because we won't fight them because they won't fight us. I think that's, that is probably, I've begun this whole adventure like a year ago thinking it was like a 2% scenario by last, last week of the week before. on the next level, I was up to about 10% chance that we, like, actually invade Greenland. I think I'm now up to like 35% maybe, like a little bit better than one in three. How about you? I'm not there because I don't see other people other than Donald Trump really pushing on this.

And because I actually believe there are enough Republicans in Congress who would actually do something about this. The question is, what can Congress do? materially not controlling the military. Well, that's why I'm at one in three and not two and three. I'll take that. I'll take that. From you, JVL, I will take one and three. Guys, this stuff is important, and it's important for people to be clear-eyed about it and not either be alarmance or be Pollyanna. I think we try to do a pretty good job here at the bulwark of going right between those, the skill and cribbous of alarmism and polyanaism. We'll be back as more things dictate that we have to be.

Good luck, America.