Thread by @Microinteracti1

You Broke NATO. Now You Want a Favour.
There is a particular kind of man who picks a fight at the pub, smashes three teeth out of the bloke who bought him a drink, then wanders over an hour later and asks if anyone fancies splitting a taxi. Donald Trump is that man. And Europe, for once, has decided it would rather walk home in the rain.

Let us go back to January 2026, because the memory of the Trump administration is apparently shorter than its attention span.

Trump refused to rule out the use of military force to annex Greenland, a territory belonging to Denmark, a founding NATO member, and threatened a 25% import tax on European goods unless Copenhagen handed the island over. Wikipedia Not bought it. Not negotiated for it. Handed it over. Like a sandwich. To a man with nuclear weapons and the emotional regulation of a golden retriever who has eaten the sofa.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN with a straight face that "utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief's disposal" CNN when asked about acquiring territory belonging to a treaty ally. This is the same NATO alliance in which an attack on one member is legally an attack on all. Leavitt delivered this information as though it were a weather forecast. Cloudy with a chance of annexation.

Then there was JD Vance, a man who has built a career out of being aggressively wrong about everything with tremendous confidence. He flew to Greenland's Pituffik Space Base, uninvited, and declared that Denmark had "not done a good job by the people of Greenland," claiming the US had "no other option" than to ramp up its presence there. CNNThis is like a man breaking into your house, rearranging the furniture, and then explaining that your interior design choices left him no choice.
Vance's advice to European leaders was blunt: "take the president of the United States seriously." ABC News The Europeans did. That is precisely the problem.

Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, spent much of this period performing the diplomatic equivalent of parallel parking a tank. He told reporters that military intervention was not a preference, but declined to rule it out. He confirmed the administration intended to buy Greenland. When asked about the military option he had just been publicly briefed on, he told a reporter they had "lost a lot of weight" and pivoted. NPR The Foreign Minister of Denmark presumably stared at the ceiling for quite some time after that meeting.

Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff, was asked repeatedly by CNN whether he would rule out using military force against a NATO ally. He would not. ABC News Miller is a man who has never appeared to experience joy, which perhaps explains why he finds threats to the postwar international order so relaxing.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry was appointed as a special envoy to Greenland. He described his role as a "volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US." ABC News He also announced he intended to attend a traditional Greenlandic dog sled race, uninvited. Denmark summoned the American ambassador. The ambassador presumably offered his condolences.

The White House social media team, not content with letting the diplomats handle the humiliation, posted a meme asking "Which way, Greenland man?" while the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers were literally sitting inside the White House trying to conduct diplomacy. Wikipedia Trump himself posted an AI image of himself, Vance and Rubio planting an American flag on Greenlandic soil. Like conquerors. Of a NATO ally. Whose soldiers died alongside Americans in Afghanistan.

Trump told the Norwegian Prime Minister, in a message he asked to be "shared widely with world leaders," that he no longer felt an "obligation to think purely of Peace" because he had not been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Wikipedia This is a real sentence that a sitting president wrote to the leader of a country whose citizens he was simultaneously threatening with tariffs. Norway has 44 fallen soldiers in Afghanistan. Peace Prize notwithstanding.

At Davos, Trump gave a speech containing numerous false claims about Greenland, Denmark and NATO. He falsely stated that Greenland is a US territory. He appeared to repeatedly confuse Iceland with Greenland. Wikipedia These are two different islands. On different sides of the ocean. Both on a map. Which he posted.

Now. Fast forward to February 28, 2026. The US and Israel launched attacks across Iran, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one-fifth of the world's oil transits. Al Jazeera Having started a war, without consulting allies, without a UN mandate, Trump then did what any reasonable man would do after torching the furniture.
He asked for help moving it.

Trump told the Financial Times that NATO faced "a very bad future" if European nations refused his call for warships to secure the strait. Al Jazeera He had, twelve weeks earlier, threatened those same nations with annexation and 25% tariffs if they didn't hand over Danish territory.
The Europeans, at long last, said no.

Germany's foreign minister told reporters Berlin had no intention of joining military operations in the conflict. The UK's Keir Starmer said the Strait of Hormuz mission "won't be, and it's never been envisioned to be, a NATO mission."

A European diplomat told NBC News: "He's asking us to help for a war he started. There is not much enthusiasm for this." NBC News Another added: "It's not possible to just forget what happened with Greenland. Trust has been damaged, and it's not easily repaired." NBC News
That is the entire story. In two sentences.

A French former ambassador put it with admirable economy: "Even in asking for a helping hand, he is doing so in a brutal manner, saying: 'You're useless, we're the strongest, we don't need you, but come.'" PBS

Trump, naturally, took the rebuffs with his characteristic grace. He told the Financial Times: "We've been very sweet. We didn't have to help them with Ukraine." Fortune He then appeared surprised that this framing did not immediately generate enthusiasm among the countries he had spent fourteen months bullying.

In late January he had told allies: "We've never needed them. They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that. And they did -- they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines." CNN More than a thousand coalition soldiers from allied nations died in Afghanistan. They did not stay off the front lines. They came home in flag-draped coffins that were not American flags.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commanding general of US Army Europe, said allies are "looking at the United States in a way that they never have before. And this is bad for the United States." PBS

He is, of course, correct. But it was entirely predictable. You cannot spend a year threatening to annex your allies' territory, insulting their war dead, calling their defence spending inadequate while demanding military support for a conflict you launched without telling them, and then express genuine bafflement that they are not "enthusiastic."

Trump eventually dropped his call for allied help, saying "We don't need any help, actually." NBC News Which is what he had been saying all along. Right up until the moment he desperately needed it.

Europe and ASIA did not abandon America. America spent fourteen months explaining, loudly, to its oldest allies that they were liabilities, their territory was available for acquisition, and their soldiers had not really fought. They simply listened.

Then it pulled up a chair. And left it empty.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1