OPINION:
A larger-than-life president showed up at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday. Donald Trump had one demand for the World Economic Forum at Davos: Show some gratitude. The planet’s most self-important people are not accustomed to being bossed around.
“The United States is keeping the whole world afloat,” said Mr. Trump, speaking mostly off the cuff as he does at campaign rallies.
The U.S. commander in chief rattled off examples of the world mooching off American success. For instance, we helped liberate Europe from the Nazis and Imperial Japan. We subsidize the defense of the West. We bankroll the development of lifesaving drugs. For that, we get nothing in return.
How about we get Greenland as a small token of Europe’s appreciation?
You know the White House is serious about this territorial acquisition because Scott Bessent served as the president’s advance man. The Treasury secretary spent Tuesday shooting down nonsensical narratives about Mr. Trump’s pursuit to invade Greenland in peevish retribution for being snubbed by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
For some strange reason, Denmark owns Greenland. Neighboring Norway is also responsible for selecting Nobel Committee members, and those members awarded the Peace Prize to someone who doesn’t live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Democrats attempted to link these unrelated issues into an attack on the Republican president, which they can do because they are historically illiterate.
Democrats were the first to covet Greenland, beginning with Andrew Johnson’s exploration of the idea in 1868. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of state once wrote, “Greenland is within the area embraced by the Monroe Doctrine … and its defense against attack by a non-American power is plainly essential to the preservation of the peace and security of the American continent.”
Mr. Bessent cited the Tuesday vote in the British House of Commons that handed over control of the Chagos Islands to the tiny island nation of Mauritius, which is in Beijing’s pocket, as an example of the peril. Those islands are home to Diego Garcia, a critical refueling and repair stop for U.S. ships and planes transiting the Indian Ocean. If you can’t trust Europeans to safeguard a tiny group of islands, then you can’t trust them to protect a big one, such as Greenland.
Plutocrats go to Switzerland for the five-star accommodations and legendary Davos after-parties, not to be told their foreign policies are reckless. They don’t appreciate when their worldview is threatened. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is among those displeased at being asked to contribute more to his nation’s security.
“We knew that the story about the rules-based order was partially false. … You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” he groused.
In the past, Davos was dominated by tedious lectures about “climate justice.” Not anymore. Since Mr. Trump closed the spigot of American funding for green projects, artificial intelligence has emerged as the topic of the day. The jet set also realizes AI’s thirst for electricity won’t be satisfied by windmills and solar panels.
Mr. Trump mocked the countries still clinging to clean energy delusions. “China is very smart. They make [windmills]. They sell them for a fortune. They sell them to the stupid people that buy them, but they don’t use them themselves. They put up a couple of big wind farms, but they don’t use them,” he said.
It’s up to Europeans to heed these words and stop being stupid.
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