Trump Says He ‘Won’t Use Force’ to Acquire Greenland

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday spoke for more than an hour at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. While his meandering remarks touched on multiple familiar topics, including windmills—a longtime personal pet peeve—the state of the U.S. economy, and his long-running 2020 U.S. presidential election denialism, Trump spoke at length about his desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark. He also strongly criticized NATO and said other members of the Western military alliance have taken advantage of U.S. generosity over the years.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday spoke for more than an hour at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. While his meandering remarks touched on multiple familiar topics, including windmills—a longtime personal pet peeve—the state of the U.S. economy, and his long-running 2020 U.S. presidential election denialism, Trump spoke at length about his desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark. He also strongly criticized NATO and said other members of the Western military alliance have taken advantage of U.S. generosity over the years.

The following is an excerpt from his remarks focusing on Greenland, Denmark, NATO, and U.S. military power.

Ultimately, these are matters of national security, and perhaps no current issue makes the situation more clear than what’s currently going on with Greenland. Would you like me to say a few words [on] Greenland?

I was going to leave it out of the speech, but I thought, I think I would have been reviewed very negatively.

I have tremendous respect for both the people of Greenland and the people of Denmark, tremendous respect. But every NATO ally has an obligation to be able to defend their own territory. And the fact is, no nation or a group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States. We’re a great power, much greater than people even understand. I think they found that out two weeks ago in Venezuela.

We saw this in World War II, when Denmark fell to Germany after just six hours of fighting and was totally unable to defend either itself or Greenland. So the United States was then compelled. We did it. We felt an obligation to do it, to send our own forces to hold the Greenland territory—and hold it we did, at great cost and expense. They didn’t have a chance of getting on it, and they tried. Denmark knows that. We literally set up bases on Greenland for Denmark. We fought for Denmark. We weren’t fighting for anyone else. We were fighting to save it for Denmark. Big, beautiful piece of ice. It’s hard to call it land. It’s a big piece of ice. But we saved Greenland and successfully prevented our enemies from gaining a foothold in our hemisphere. So we did it for ourselves also.

And then after the war, which we won, we won it big—without us, right now, you’d all be speaking German and little Japanese, perhaps.

After the war, we gave Greenland back t