President Trump, after eliciting comparisons to the Monroe Doctrine in his posture toward the western hemisphere such that it is also known as the Trump Doctrine, has been very active in negotiating Art of the Deal paradigmata in regard to Greenland. The president is so busy on various global affairs that it is challenging to keep track of all of these unexpected approaches to diplomacy that has set European politicians aflame.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trumps-year-anarchy
President Trump may have realized, unlike previous presidents, that the new European Union has brought those former more sedate post-W.W. Two recovering nations into a status comparable to the new China. Each is experiencing the maturity of growth to global power. China seeks to flex its global political and economic muscles as does the new European Union. The EU leadership seems to feel the United States will treat it as it formerly treated the E.C. in the post W.W. 2 decades and regard Russia as it did the former Soviet Union. While the EU has grown and continues to grow in power, military assets and geography, as does China, the United States largely remains the same. The President may have realized that allowing the EU to own Greenland- located in the western hemisphere, presents a potential threat to the United States equal to that of China owning Greenland.
The E.U. as a large military, economic and political unit that functions as if it were a nation in some respects, with a national political identity will not always agree with the United States on critical issues, and in the future it may exploit Greenland’s location and resources for leverage or even attack upon the United States. Nuuk Greenland is 300 miles closer to Washington D.C. than Los Angeles. A missile launched from Nuuk would need only 10 or 15 minutes to hit Washington D.C. The EU expects U.S. support in expanding eastward into Ukraine. The BIden administration actually funded that and helped isolate the U.S.A. from good relations with Russia.
It may be, except for President Macron who likes to express the French foreign legion’s attitude of never respecting authority, that European leaders still respect the authority of the U.S. President in regard to sovereign concerns in the western hemisphere. Macron may feel that he has a beast in the fight- with Quebec being a French speaking province and France being one of the few democracies that continued to have colonies into the 1950s and 60s (i.e. Algeria and Vietnam).
It is difficult to know what President Trump really plans to do with the cards he holds internationally. Apparently he likes to play them at the high stakes table of global security and trade. Certainly the United States has some that would feel that standing pat at the table while China, the EU and the BRIC block rise wouldn’t be a good plan- that the United States would proportionately continue to diminish in relative power. Certainly Macron can count on the Democrat party to act as a fifth column that hates Trump and prefers an ‘enlightened’ European viewpoint on the U.S. President who they feel, as Macron said indirectly at Davos, that President Trump is a bully.
I am not sure that President Trump cares what the French President thinks. At least he did not go full Monty Python and say; “I fart in your general direction” in reply.
Garrison Gibson: books and blog 
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