Davos 2026 – When U.S. Pressure Met European Resistance

For years, Davos had operated less as a forum for strategic confrontation than as a ritual of managed agreement. The World Economic Forum was the annual moment when political leaders, corporate executives, and financial powerbrokers acknowledged the world’s problems, exchanged familiar diagnoses, and reaffirmed a shared commitment to cooperation. The setting was demanding, the challenges were real, but the underlying consensus had long remained largely intact.

Davos 2026 disrupted that equilibrium. This time, the fracture did not run between North and South, or between democracies and authoritarian powers, but within the Western alliance itself. President Donald Trump, present in Davos, brought with him a deliberately confrontational and transactional approach to alliances—one that America’s partners had, until then, largely absorbed in the name of stability.

The turning point came when U.S. pressure extended beyond rhetoric into questions directly touching on European sovereignty, most notably over Greenland. At that moment, accommodation gave way to response. What emerged in Davos was not a break with the United States, but a recalibration: an alliance still standing, yet no longer operating on automatic consent, and a Europe increasingly willing to articulate limits, even vis-à-vis its closest ally.

Original illustration – Atlantic Perspectives.

A New Tone Among European Leaders

The WEF 2026 generated no shortage of speeches, panels, and declarations. Attempting to cover them all would not only have been impractical, but would also have obscured the more meaningful shift that emerged beneath the surface. This article therefore adopts a deliberately selective approach.

Rather than cataloguing every intervention, it focuses on a small number of European leaders whose remarks captured a broader change in posture. Across different institutions and political traditions, a common thread became visible: Europe was no longer content with rhetorical alignment or managed ambiguity. Faced with a more transactional and confrontational international environment, European leaders spoke with greater clarity about sovereignty, responsibility, and limits, signaling a move away from automatic accommodation toward a more explicit, self-aware form of partnership.

What follows is not an exhaustive account of Davos, but an analysis of this emerging European tone, as articulated by a few voices that mattered most in shaping the moment.

Emmanuel Macron: Reforming Europe, For Sure, in a World Without Rules

The French president set out a stark assessment of an increasingly unstable international order, marked by the rise of authoritarian regimes, the proliferation of conflicts, and the weakening of multilateralism. He described a world in which international law was receding in favor of the rule of the strongest, and where strategic competition now extended across economic, technological, and commercial domains.

In response, Macron rejected two dead ends. The first was the passive acceptance of power politics, which would lead to vassalization. The second was a purely moral posture, one that offered commentary but no leverage, and ultimately resulted in powerlessness. Neither, he argued, provided a viable path for Europe in a world that had become more brutal and unpredictable.

Instead, Macron called for a response built on two complementary pillars: greater European sovereignty and an effective multilateralism focused on delivering concrete results. He stressed the need to address global economic imbalances, insisting that responsibility had to be shared among the major powers: the United States, China, and Europe alike.

For Europe, this translated into a strategy built on three pillars: an assertive approach to protection without resorting to protectionism; sweeping simplification of rules undermining competitiveness; and stronger investment and innovation in strategic sectors. Reform, he argued, was no longer optional. Europe had to move faster - for sure - or risk strategic irrelevance.

This political diagnosis was echoed and reinforced at the institutional level during Davos. In her own address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen framed the moment as a structural turning point for Europe, explicitly warning that decisions taken in Washington could abruptly reshape the global order and expose European dependencies. Her message converged with Macron’s: adaptation had to be permanent, not tactical.

Both leaders converged on the same conclusion. Europe possessed savings, skills, and innovation, but fragmented national financial markets prevented it from acting at scale—unlike the United States, whose unified capital market enabled rapid financing of innovation, defense, and strategic technologies. Mobilizing European capital for European priorities was therefore no longer a technical reform, but a condition of power. Economic strength, energy security, industrial capacity, and defense were now inseparable.

Macron concluded by portraying Europe as a space of stability, predictability, and the rule of law, arguing that these attributes now constituted a major strategic advantage in a world where volatility and coercion had become the norm.

Full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kumn4Uz5fEE

Mark Rutte and Bart de Wever: Reciprocity, Not Dependency

Taken together, the interventions of Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen pointed to a Europe no longer content with rhetorical alignment, but increasingly focused on capacity, responsibility, and credibility. This shift was echoed, in a different register, by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

Acknowledging that U.S. pressure had been instrumental in pushing European allies to meet their NATO spending commitments, Rutte nonetheless made clear that solidarity within the Alliance was not a one-way street—reminding his audience that Europe had already stood by the United States when Article 5 was invoked, and would do so again if necessary.

This emphasis on reciprocity rather than dependence set the stage for a more direct political message from European leaders. It was in this context that Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever framed the issue bluntly: “I would like to confirm that they (United States) are an ally, but then they have to behave like an ally.” His intervention captured the emerging consensus in Davos—that the transatlantic relationship remained essential, but could no longer operate on imbalance, ambiguity, or unilateral pressure.

Pushback Beyond Europe

The pushback observed in Davos did not originate exclusively in Europe. It also emerged from within the United States itself and from other long-standing allies. Across the Atlantic, a growing number of political figures and partners signaled that the issue at stake was not opposition to America, but resistance to a particular exercise of power.

In Washington, voices critical of Donald Trump’s confrontational approach had become more explicit, while allies such as Canada increasingly stressed the need for reciprocity, respect, and balance within the transatlantic relationship. Davos 2026 thus revealed a broader phenomenon: a willingness, among partners and within the United States itself, to challenge unilateral pressure in the name of alliance cohesion rather than submission.

Gavin Newsom: The American Counterpoint

The recalibration observed in Davos was not articulated solely by European leaders. Gavin Newsom, governor of California, offered a striking American counterpoint by openly urging the European Union to stand its ground against Donald Trump.

Newsom criticized what he described as European hesitation and weakness in the face of repeated pressure, arguing that accommodation had only emboldened a more coercive approach from Washington. Positioning himself as one of Trump’s most outspoken domestic opponents, the Californian governor used Davos to project an alternative American voice, one explicitly supportive of a stronger, more assertive Europe.

Mark Carney: The Power of the Middle

The Canadian prime minister delivered a stark diagnosis of the current international moment, describing not a transition but a rupture in the global order. The familiar fiction of a stable, rules-based system, he argued, had collapsed. Great powers increasingly operated without constraint, weaponizing economic integration through tariffs, supply chains, and financial infrastructure.

Yet Carney firmly rejected the idea that middle powers were condemned to powerlessness. Drawing on Václav Havel’s concept of living in truth, he called on countries like Canada to abandon comforting illusions and name reality as it was. Sovereignty, in this context, could not rest on rhetoric or institutional nostalgia, but had to be grounded in resilience: the capacity to feed, fuel, finance, and defend oneself.

Crucially, Carney warned against a retreat into isolated fortresses. A fragmented world of unilateral hedging would be poorer, weaker, and more unstable. His alternative was collective resilience: shared investments, diversified partnerships, and flexible coalitions built issue by issue with countries sharing sufficient values and interests.

Carney concluded with a message resonating far beyond Canada: in an era of great-power rivalry, middle powers had to act together or risk marginalization. Sovereignty today was not performed through declarations, but earned through the ability to withstand pressure, even when it came from the most powerful actors in the system.

Full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flsgJe8mN-A

And Greenland in All of This?

The Greenland episode ultimately crystallized the broader recalibration on display at Davos. After weeks of escalating rhetoric, Donald Trump went as far as threatening the use of force to secure control over Greenland and the imposition of punitive trade measures against European partners. The American president stated that he would enforce 100 percent tariffs on European states resisting his demand to take control of Greenland.

Yet this maximalist posture did not hold. It receded in the face of a firmer European response: repeated reminders of alliance commitments by Mark Rutte, the deployment of European troops to Greenland - officially for exercises, but symbolically unmistakable - and explicit signals that the European Union was prepared to activate its Anti-Coercion Instrument should economic pressure escalate further.

Negotiations were subsequently opened between the United States and Denmark to revisit the 1951 defense agreement on Greenland. These talks could allow an expanded U.S. military footprint on the island, including missile defense capabilities, and even raise sensitive questions about the legal status of American bases.

The issue, therefore, is far from settled. But the immediate lesson is clear: for the first time in this cycle of transatlantic tension, Europe did not bend reflexively. It resisted, held its position, and forced a return to negotiation rather than submission.

In a nutshell

This was not the first transatlantic crisis, and it will not be the last, but it showed that the alliance remains a living relationship, not a given.