On January 20, President Trump will travel to Davos with an unprecedented sense of confidence in his own ability to shape global events—and with a greater readiness to pressure and publicly humiliate those who stand in his way.
In recent weeks, Trump has made clear that dominating the domestic arena and the news cycle is no longer sufficient—he is now seeking to project his influence globally. He is heading to Switzerland after threatening to impose tariffs on Denmark and seven other NATO allies that deployed small military contingents to Greenland, unless an agreement on transferring the island to the United States is reached by February 1.
In Davos, Trump intends to announce an expansion of the mandate of the “Peace Council” he created for Gaza, extending it beyond the enclave. A number of allies view this as an attempt to construct an alternative to the UN Security Council—with veto power vested exclusively in Trump. “The Peace Council will not be limited to Gaza. It is a Peace Council for the entire world,” a senior US official said. According to him, the president is “focused first and foremost on our hemisphere, but looks more broadly,” while remaining committed to the America First principle and regarding the United States as the world’s leader.
Trump’s advisers say he was particularly energized by Nicolás Maduro’s rapid consolidation of power in Venezuela. “We held our breath, but it clearly gave the president even greater latitude to project force around the world,” one of his closest aides said.
Overnight, Trump posted memes depicting himself laying claim to Greenland and Canada, published private messages from French President Emmanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and shared new posts laying out why the United States is “obliged” to acquire Greenland. “The message in Davos will be simple—look at how extraordinarily well our country is doing,” he told reporters.
Until recently, allies expected Trump’s core themes in Davos to include the announcement of the Gaza Council and the signing of an agreement on Ukraine’s reconstruction. Now they are scrambling to prepare for his arrival, trying to contain a crisis over Greenland that threatens to fracture NATO. “European officials had to tear up all their prepared talking points on Ukraine and urgently draft new ones—on Greenland,” a Ukrainian official told Axios.
The tone for the entire week was set by an episode in which Trump sent a message to Norway’s prime minister saying that, having failed to receive the Nobel Prize, he would no longer focus first and foremost on peace. The United States later formalized the text on official letterhead and circulated it to NATO ambassadors, as first reported by PBS. In Oslo, officials had expected the correspondence to remain confidential and were taken aback by its dissemination.
Europeans are signaling that they are prepared to respond forcefully. The EU is discussing a sweeping package of retaliatory tariffs, while Denmark is dispatching additional troops to Greenland. At the same time, some Davos participants doubt that Europe will be able to respond to Trump symmetrically. “I’m betting Europe won’t have the staying power,” one American forum regular remarked wryly. On panel discussions wholly unrelated to Arctic security, nervous laughter and quips about a hypothetical US invasion could be heard.
The dispute over Greenland has crowded out plans to use Davos to forge agreements among the United States, Ukraine, and European powers on security guarantees and Ukraine’s reconstruction. According to a Ukrainian official, the signing of the so-called “prosperity plan” was canceled. Washington denied this, saying no date had been set and that the document still requires further work. Trump nevertheless plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a number of European leaders, although, as a US official cautioned, no breakthroughs should be expected.
On Tuesday, Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to meet in Davos with Russian emissary Kirill Dmitriev to discuss Ukraine. On Monday, Dmitriev and other Kremlin representatives publicly praised Trump for his pressure over Greenland and said that Moscow had received an invitation for Vladimir Putin to join the Peace Council.
On Thursday, Trump plans to hold an event formally launching the Council, which he will chair and which is officially intended to oversee Gaza’s reconstruction. A draft charter prepared by the White House, however, enshrines Trump’s veto power over all decisions. “This is not at all what we signed up for in Sharm el-Sheikh,” a senior European official said, recalling the summit in Egypt following the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza. France has already said it will not accept the invitation at this stage, and several other countries have voiced serious skepticism. At the same time, Morocco, Qatar, and Indonesia have agreed to take part. In total, according to a US official, invitations were sent to 58 leaders.
Trump, meanwhile, told reporters that “no one wants” Macron anyway, “because he’ll be out of office soon,” and suggested that the French president would join once the United States imposes a “20-percent tariff on his wines and champagne…though he might not do it.” A few hours later, Trump published private messages purportedly from Macron, in which he wrote: “We are fully aligned on Syria. We can do big things on Iran. I don’t understand what you’re doing with Greenland.” In the exchange, Macron proposed holding a G7 leaders’ summit in Paris on Thursday after Davos “with Ukrainians, Danes, Syrians, and Russians on the sidelines,” and invited Trump to dinner before his return to the United States.
Trump then said he had agreed to a “meeting of various parties” on Greenland in Davos following a “very good” conversation with Rutte, publishing a deferential message in which the NATO secretary general praised his leadership and spoke of a “willingness to find a way forward on Greenland.”
On Monday evening, Trump signaled a possible softening of his tariff rhetoric, noting that the countries he has threatened with duties had “sent only a few people to Greenland.” Later, however, he wrote on Truth Social that “there is no way back,” posted an image of himself planting the American flag in Greenland, and mocked Britain over “plans to give away” one of its overseas territories—Diego Garcia. This “act of GREAT STUPIDITY,” he said, was “another in a long line of national-security considerations as to why Greenland must be acquired.”
A US official warned that forum participants should brace for insults when Trump takes the podium on Wednesday. “Just as he went to the UN and said: you take huge contributions, occupy a lot of real estate, and actually do nothing—he could say roughly the same to some people in Davos,” the source said. According to the official, Trump is convinced he has resolved numerous conflicts—even if some have since unraveled—without the UN and “without any real help from them.” As for the Peace Council, “I suspect it will be presented as a counterweight to the UN,” the official said. “But with Donald Trump, you never know exactly what will be said until he delivers the speech.”