Prepare for a transatlantic divorce

It could be that 2026 is the year when the transatlantic alliance ends in divorce. As President Emmanuel Macron implied in his speech to the French diplomatic corps on Thursday, European states must face up to the fact that our long-time American partner has become coercive, even violent. The only hope of making President Donald Trump change his behavior will be to convince him and, crucially, the US Congress that we are willing to walk out.

As in a real divorce, however, if you are going to make the threat you had better be willing to face the consequences. Like other European leaders, President Macron devoted 2025 to trying to keep America on Europe’s side by flattery, trade concessions and diplomatic persuasion. The principal goal was to maintain American support for Ukraine by convincing Trump that it would not be in America’s interests to allow Russia to prevail in its war. But this strategy has failed.

The strategy was based on worries about Europe’s weakness and on wishful thinking among EU and British leaders that Trump in office might prove less extreme than during the 2024 campaign. His first year back in the White House has shown that two big factors have changed sufficiently from his first term to turn that wishful thinking into a delusion.

One is that the senior figures around him, led by Vice President JD Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, are even more extreme in their goals than he is. Far from being moderating influences, they are goading Trump to be more radical and destructive.

The second is that Trump has shown that he is intoxicated by power and has exhibited an even greater desire to exert that power than in his first term.

The slaying of a protester in Minneapolis on January 8 by an immigration-enforcement agent illustrates the domestic consequences of those new factors. The kidnapping by US special forces of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela amid the killing of an estimated 80 Cuban and Venezuelan forces on January 3illustrates the global consequences.

The European consequences, and the final but irrefutable proof that the strategy of supplication has failed, have been seen in Trump’s renewed declaration of intent to annex the Danish territory of Greenland. A year ago, the idea of America seizing Greenland, part of a country that has been a close NATO ally for eight decades, sounded outlandish and unreal. But it wasn’t. Trump is deadly serious about it.

How to respond? We should have learned by now that it is a mistake to deal with Trump by trying to reason with him. His claim that America needs the vast but sparsely populated island to protect its own national security is clearly nonsense. Under its 1951 agreement with Denmark, the United States already has the right to open as many military bases on Greenland as it wishes and yet has reduced its presence to just one base with 150 personnel.

It is tempting to suggest to Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that, as she is unwilling to send any Italian forces to Ukraine to join the multinational peacekeeping force that Britain and France are assembling, she should instead send one of Italy’s two aircraft carriers to Greenland. This would signal Italy’s support for NATO and for Denmark while also helping assure her friend Trump that Europe is determined to safeguard Greenland’s security. Of course she won’t do that, as to do so would require courage and vision.

Denmark anyway needs broader support from fellow NATO members than just the aircraft carrierCavour. Beyond a shared European NATO response, Denmark’s best way to deal with the national security claim would be to reach an agreement with Canada on a joint approach to Arctic security and to the economic development of the region. Canada is a much closer neighbour to Greenland than America is. In fact, Canada and Denmark share a border on an island that lies between them.

Yet, even while doing that, it will be important to avoid falling into Trump’s trap. He doesn’t really want Greenland for national security reasons. He doesn’t even want Greenland for the country’s mineral resources, since American companies are already free to invest in mines there – but haven’t done so.

He wants Greenland for the same reason that’s behind his demolition of part of the White House and his plans to build a vast ballroom: He wants his legacy as president to be a physical one as the president who transformed the White House and who added the world’s largest island to the United States, increasing its land area by about one-fifth.

Most likely, Trump will try to buy Greenland either through a transaction with Denmark or by bribing the 57,000 Greenlanders. Danish and Greenlander leaders are meeting Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, on Wednesday to tell him that Greenland is not for sale. That is a crucial message, for if Trump senses it is just a matter of price he will be able to raise his bids. When that fails, he will try to use coercion. Most worrying for Europe would be if he chooses to include America’s continued support for Ukraine as part of that coercion: a Ukraine for Greenland swap.

The only viable way to respond to this and to all Trump’s other bullying will be to call his bluff, in the same way China has done. The aim must be to make it clear that the price America will pay for the coercion or seizure of Greenland will be high: that the US will lose NATO and, with it a vast array of military facilities in Britain and Europe that currently house 85,000 US troops.

Before taking that giant step, Europe would need to increase further its support for Ukraine, preferably by supplying the long-range missiles that Germany has long withheld and by sending more missile-defense systems. The need to ensure Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign state is growing, especially as America looks ever likelier to throw it to the Russian wolves.

To finance that support and to send a strong message to both Russia and America, a new way must be found to use the €210 billion of Russian central-bank assets that the EU froze permanently in December. The effort to lend much of that money to Ukraine failed thanks to legal objections in Belgium and Italy, but that is no reason to stop trying.

To accept, or even threaten, the end of NATO would be to take a big risk in the short term. Without American capabilities European countries would feel vulnerable to Russia. Yet the rebuttal of that fear lies in the failure of the mighty Russian military to subdue its much weaker neighbor, Ukraine. Short of using nuclear weapons, Russia is a ruthless but unimpressive opponent.

A recent “By Invitation” in The Economist by David Gioe and Doug Chalmers argues that European NATO’s challenge would chiefly be in a long war thanks to the European lack of defense industrial capacity. For a short war, the superiority of its forces would give it a big advantage, though it needs to invest urgently in airborne-refueling, airborne command & control platforms and heavy transport lift capacity. NATO’s current division of labor leaves Europe dependent on US forces for these capabilities.

For Britain, abandoning NATO would also be to take a long-term risk, since Britain’s nuclear deterrent is dependent on American technology. The rebuttal to that is that in the long term there will be new American administrations to deal with. Falling out with Trump is not the same as falling out permanently with America.

The possibility of divorce must be embraced, and planning for how to deal with the costs of it should already be under way. That threat may not bring Trump himself to his senses. But it would stand a good chance of bringing Republicans in Congress to their senses, finally making them take on the president and serve their country as they should.

This English original of an article published in Italian by La Stampa and published also on Bill Emmott’s Global Eye is republished with permission.