DAVOS, Switzerland — “You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.” That was President Donald Trump speaking at Davos, laying out Europe’s choices on Greenland. When I asked a senior European leader whether there was relief that Trump had stepped back from the threat of military action, he said yes. “But we’ve now seen a pattern in his dealings with us,” the leader said. “He treats us with contempt. And even if this crisis gets resolved, we will remember.”
Trump’s approach to leadership is primarily transactional. He begins by asking, “Who has more leverage?” If the answer is “me,” he pushes as hard and as publicly as he can, not simply to win but to dominate — extracting the maximum price. For him, diplomacy is the art of the squeeze.
Trump enjoys using America’s vast strength — built over generations — almost for sport. He placed tariffs on Switzerland, and then raised them sky high because the Swiss president, he said, “rubbed [him] the wrong way.” He relished recounting how quickly the Swiss came to him seeking relief. This was less strategy than a power play.
Last year, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte appeared to jokingly liken Trump to a “daddy” intervening in a schoolyard brawl, and Trump has repeated that line with evident pleasure, including at Davos. He seems to enjoy even insincere flattery because it shows that he is so powerful, people have to fake their admiration for him.
The Europeans should not take it personally. Trump uses the same style on anyone he perceives as weak. In Ukraine, his irritation has often fallen less on Russia — the aggressor — than on Ukraine, for refusing to accept subordinate status. In dealing with countries like Brazil or South Africa, he is quick to lash out over policies he dislikes. But with China, he often sounds oddly deferential — because Beijing possesses tools that could impose real costs on the United States. And he adores the Gulf monarchies because they are swimming in cash, a form of strength he respects.
This is the opposite of how American leadership has worked in the modern era.
The United States has been the world’s dominant power for close to a century. But its leaders understood that primacy is not only about coercion; it is also about legitimacy, reassurance and voluntary cooperation. They grasped a basic truth: Power is more sustainable when it is exercised with restraint, and influence is larger when allies feel dignity rather than fear.
Think of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. America was the indispensable arsenal for the Allied cause; without American aid, Britain and the Soviet Union would have lost the war — and fast. Roosevelt could have summoned Churchill and Stalin to Washington like petitioners. Instead, despite using a wheelchair and gravely ill, he traveled for hours and hours to the Casablanca, Tehran and Yalta conferences to meet them as equals — demonstrating, in physical form, the idea that partnership matters. Trump crowed more at Davos about winning World War II than did the man who actually did the winning.
Or consider George H.W. Bush watching the Berlin Wall fall. The United States had “won” the Cold War, and Bush could have crowed. He deliberately did not. He said he did not want to “dance on the wall” — in part because he did not want to steal the moment from Eastern Europeans who were winning their freedom, and in part because he did not want to humiliate Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who was allowing it to happen.
Or consider India. Over the last quarter-century, the United States treated India as an important world player, even when it was still by the numbers a very poor country. That respect was not charity; it was an investment that helped build strategic cooperation. Trump sees only the balance sheet: India’s economy is smaller than America’s, therefore America can squeeze it by slapping prohibitively high tariffs on it.
This is the art of the hustle: Use the leverage you have, make the other side pay the highest price and treat bruises as proof of success. It may work in a one-off real estate deal. It is not how to build enduring businesses, let alone lasting global influence.
Since World War II, there have been many places that the U.S. has considered strategically vital — Western Europe, Norway and Finland, the South China Sea routes, the Persian Gulf, the approaches to Japan. But in that time America has never concluded that strategic importance requires physical annexation. It has created security through alliances, access agreements and forward presence. Greenland fits that tradition. The United States already has a base there, and it can expand its capabilities easily through cooperation rather than coercion.
Whether or not Trump gets his “piece of ice” (as he now calls Greenland), he has already accomplished something that will outlast the headlines: He has taught America’s allies a lesson. They will still work with Washington — because power is real. But they will trust it less, hedge more and quietly plan for a world in which America no longer leads by lifting others up, but by reminding them they can be squeezed.
As that European leader put it, with the same cold clarity Trump thought belonged only to him: We will remember.
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