January 23, 2026

Transatlantic Tumult at Davos

By: Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend

It has been a tumultuous month in the transatlantic alliance. This week, President Donald Trump’s demands to take control of Greenland reached a fever pitch. On Sunday, President Trump threatened major tariffs on Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and a host of other American allies in Europe to coerce them to accept his demands for U.S. control over Greenland. For many European allies, Trump crossed a line, and allies raised the prospect of using their anticoercion instrument against the United States. Though Trump posted on Wednesday afternoon that he had negotiated a “framework deal” to avert the crisis with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, much damage was already done. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech at the World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos declaring the end of the era of decisive U.S. global leadership, Trump launched the Board of Peace for Gaza—to which he invited Russian President Vladimir Putin—and Putin ordered more missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s capital and critical infrastructure, in what has been one of the harshest winters in Ukraine in recent memory. Less than a month into the new year, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that we are in the worst period the Transatlantic Alliance has seen since World War II.

To help us make sense of recent events and to put this crisis into historical context, we're very happy to welcome Jim Goldgeier and Charles Kupchan to Brussels Sprouts.

  • Jim Goldgeier is a research affiliate at Stanford University and a professor of international relations at American University, and he worked on the National Security Council under the Clinton administration.
  • Charles Kupchan is a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He also served on the National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Obama.

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