The meeting of Davos in 2026 will go down in history as the pivotal point when European Western Nations started the process of becoming in the next decade the leading and only global power operating to the rules of international peace and democracy.

President Trump provided us with the trigger to move from the delusion that the USA regards democratic nations as equal partners acting in everyone’s interest to the reality America always comes first. President Trump is the latest manifestation. He has helped us to remove the scales from our eyes. He came to Davos with the full intention of denigrating the economies of the West and through military force undermining NATO’s security values.

He was stopped in his tracks by Mark Rutte, the EU and the British PM.

The media may regard the last week’s events as a bit of a mystery but if anyone read my guidance notes just published the chain of events was crystal clear. On the Wednesday Mark Rutte spelt out in very clear terms what would happen if the President persisted in his approach to Greenland having been briefed in advance by the EU. A palette of counter measures was in the offing which I speculated to be; the EU triggering mechanism never used before against a state interfering in their affairs, including restrictions on visas for Americans, access to funding public projects, banking limitations, trebling of the digital sales tax to match the first 10% on tariffs etc., etc. Legislation to require national football federations not to compete in the World Cup. A division of European NATO forces sent to Greenland waiting to meet the US forces for a public surrender. The world press invited to witness it.

The boundaries, as the guidance note suggested, were set. He had to back down. In his frustration, as expected, he was to gaslight NATO Non-American forces in Afghanistan, a complete and insulting lie. All this did would be to prompt the British PM to advise King Charles to postpone his visit to the USA and for leaders to refrain from visiting the USA on their 250^th Anniversary of Independence.

Mark Carney’s speech will in time be regarded on the same magnitude of Abraham Lincoln’s, ‘Gettysburg Address,’ Winston Churchill’s ‘We will Fight Them on the Beach’ and Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ inculcation.

In the last century all the signals were there. The examples repeated before , the First World War was between 1914-1918 not 1917-1918 and the Second World War from 1939-1945 not 1941-1945. Britain paid a heavy price for the military hardware from the US under the Marshal Plan and increased its debt burden to 246% even though in the first instance there was no threat of invasion. The cost to the UK was not just money but the handing over of highly valuable intellectual property rights  to the US on nuclear power, computers, jet engine, radar and antibiotics. Such gestures were never matched in financial terms just the boundless courage of its military men and women in which the President never served when called upon.

In modern times the arms supplied to NATO wasn’t free, nor the arms for European support given to Ukraine.

Europe is now set on a path for independent security away from a reliance on the US and will match at least US military power in projecting its international interests.

Potential Future Actions:

(a) The British PM only speaks to the President for essential immediate matters. He declines to go to the 250^th Anniversary of Independence and advises the King to postpone his visit.

(b) The EU agrees a palette of severe measures against the US should the President change his mind.

(c) Insistence Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark and the peoples of Ukraine are the only authorities who can sign off any sovereign deals.

This week’s juvenile episode has severely damaged the US reputation. Congress now needs to limit the President’s arbitrary use of US executive powers and require the President to raise the resistance against Russia to effect a quicker resolution of peace. This is needed to restore at least some of Europe’s and Canada’s faith in the US as it was.

Europe must be ready to assume its position as one of the three global powers; US, Europe and China. Well done Mr. President, there should only be two! All the other good stuff you were doing you are committing self-inflicting damage to the US and others legitimate interests. 

Ron Kirk

Author