Meet Europe’s Gaullists, Atlanticists, denialists and Putinists

Can a country still call itself an ally of America if America is threatening to annex part of its territory? Such a question might once have seemed ripe for a Gitane-puffing philosophe to ponder in a Saint-Germain-des-Prés café circa 1968. It has gained fresh relevance in recent weeks as Donald Trump has made repeated threats to seize Greenland, currently an autonomous region of Denmark. At first Europeans convinced themselves that the returning American president’s designs on the island were merely part of his patter, something that could be ignored as safely as his suggestion in 2020 that injecting bleach might cure covid. (It doesn’t.) Now nobody is sure. After a reportedly fiery phone call with Mr Trump, Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, has criss-crossed Europe this week to shore up support in Paris, Berlin and Brussels. The French foreign minister volunteered to send troops to Greenland, just in case. Channelling his inner Jean-Paul Sartre, a European diplomat quipped: “With allies like Donald Trump, who needs enemies?”