Trump walks back Greenland threats, but Congress fears NATO damage

The Hill -   Trump has long sought to take over Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, and in recent weeks has floated the use of military force to do so.

But on Wednesday, he reversed course in his address to European leaders at the Davos Economic Forum, where he suggested the U.S. would not seize the territory by force and instead called for immediate negotiations. 

A short time later, Trump announced that he had reached a “framework of a future deal” with respect to Greenland after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and that he would not impose tariffs he had previously threatened on European allies because they had demanded that the U.S. respect Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland.

The rapid, back-to-back developments drew a sigh of relief from some lawmakers in the Capitol, who had warned that the attacks on NATO allies — whether through military force or economic sanctions — would obliterate the decades-old alliance. But others said even the threat of those actions has poisoned the long-standing relationship between Washington and European democracies.