President Donald Trump upped the pressure on Europe to cede control of Greenland or face the consequences, saying that NATO owes it to the U.S. to grant it full rights to the Arctic island.

In a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday after prompting days of elevated transatlantic tensions over his plans, Trump said that he was seeking “immediate negotiations” on acquiring the sovereign Danish territory for national security reasons.

The president ruled out the use of military force, but he insinuated that he would weigh Europe’s response to his demands when considering the U.S. commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization going forward.

“You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no, and we will remember,” the president said.

Trump cast the request as a “small ask” compared to the defense shield that the U.S. has offered NATO countries for decades.

“What I’m asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection,” he said.

Trump’s speech was closely watched for any signs that he was backing off his demands to take the world’s largest island, after triggering strong pushback from multiple allies from eastern Europe to the Nordic nations and heavyweights Germany, France and the U.K. His vow not to use force is likely to prompt at least some exhalation in European capitals and on Wall Street.

“That’s probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force,” he said. “I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

Still, Trump doubled down on his desires, deriding Europe’s liberal democracies, their governments’ policies, NATO’s effectiveness and singling out individual leaders including Canada’s Mark Carney and Emmanuel Macron of France for criticism.

Faced with Washington’s intransigence, Greenland’s government is already making preparations for an invasion, though it’s still seen as an unlikely scenario. Canada’s military has meanwhile modeled how it would respond to an American invasion after Trump publicly talked about the country as a potential 51st state, according to a report in the Globe and Mail.

A request for comment on Trump’s latest remarks was not immediately returned by the Danish prime minister’s office or the foreign minister’s office.

Trump’s sales pitch occasionally veered off script. He claimed that the U.S. had selflessly established military bases on Greenland in World War II, before acknowledging moments later it was in the country’s own self interest. He also repeatedly referred to Greenland as Iceland.

But the crux of Trump’s argument was that the U.S. needed full control of the island because it was critical to the deployment of his “Golden Dome” missile defense system.

“Greenland is a vast, almost entirely uninhabited territory sitting undefended in a key strategic location between the United States, Russia and China,” he said. “That’s exactly where it is, right smack in the middle.”

While casting the American acquisition of Greenland as essential to collective security, he downplayed the danger it would pose to NATO.

“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable,” Trump said. “But I won’t do that.”

At the same time, Trump’s not-so-veiled threat to remember Europe and NATO if they don’t help him to cut a deal for Greenland takes place against the backdrop of an aggressive Vladimir Putin who is widely considered to at least have some designs on European lands beyond Ukraine.

Trump, in a discussion following his speech, sidestepped a question of what type of deal he saw emerging over Greenland’s future, instead emphasizing that he believed the territory was too expensive for Denmark to administer and reiterating his complaints about NATO.

“We’ll see what happens. I just say this, NATO has treated the United States of America very unfairly,” he said. “We never asked for anything. We never got anything.”

NATO forces, among them Danes, have accompanied the U.S. in a number of military endeavors, including the mission in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq.

Trump argued it would be impractical to safeguard land not under U.S. control.

“Who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease?” Trump said, adding “you need the ownership to defend it.”

He also cited U.S. support for Ukraine as an example of what he saw as the unequal trans-Atlantic relationship, saying the burden should fall onto Europe for supporting Kyiv.

“The United States is very far away. We have a big, beautiful ocean separating us. We have nothing to do with it,” Trump said.

European leaders in recent days have been discussing how to respond to Trump’s demands, including potential economic retaliation, but the U.S. president has dismissed those threats, suggesting that allies have more to lose by opposing his agenda.

He also delivered a harsh warning to Europe, suggesting the continent’s liberal governments were falling behind the U.S. and that leaders needed to emulate his model to provide for their citizens.

“I love Europe, and I want to see Europe go good, but it’s not heading in the right direction,” he said.

---------

—With assistance from Sanne Wass and Kati Pohjanpalo.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.