Comparing notes with a fellow journalist on the last night of this year’s Davos extravaganza, it was clear that from a professional point of view, this had been the most fun and interesting either one of us had been to.
In previous years, you had to really hunt down news and manufacture intrigue. The place is of supreme interest to those here, and of little to anyone outside. Not in 2026, and that’s entirely due to Donald J. Trump, the populist from Queens — and of course Mar-a-Lago via Fifth Avenue — who has been the American president most eager of any in history to appear here (twice in person, once by video) and who has made this Swiss village his stomping ground. (Bill Clinton is the only other US leader to ever come to Davos, and he did it once.)
With their inimitable talent for platitude, the organizers of the World Economic Forum had decreed the theme of Davos 2026 to be “Spirit of Dialogue.” But the key theme for anyone with a functioning ear was inescapable — ice.
Ice, as in the black stuff, somehow always unsalted even on Davos’ central promenade, that cracks more than a few (elite, mind you) bones every year.
Ice as in the federal agency whose casual respect for probable cause and other constitutional protections throws into doubt the future of the world’s oldest democracy, now in the midst of celebrating its 250th birthday.
And of course, above all, as in that “big, beautiful piece of ice” — in the words of the American president on stage January 21, referring to the island whose name starts with green — that has made the transatlantic marriage feel icier than ever in either Trump era.
There was another variation on the theme here, too: the degree to which Greenland iced Ukraine out of the agenda.
As ever, you don’t know if it was premeditated or spur of the moment after the success of his Venezuela special op to remove Nicolás Maduro, and whether it was driven by conviction, strategic folly, drama addiction, or was it a distraction from something? Endless interpretations were offered. At a private dinner after his January 21 speech, I even heard multiple close readings of Trump’s use of the phrase “Iceland” to refer to Greenland.
Was he confused, skidding toward senility? Was he word playing “ice-land” after invoking ice repeatedly in his descriptions of the island of Greenland (my own reading, figuring the joke was on the self-styled smartest and most successful people in the world in that room)? Was that a barely subtle threat that America would continue marching eastward in its newfound embrace of an imperial mission? He was certainly trolling his audience, then and in the preceding weeks, by provoking the emotional response he was looking for. Americans may be more familiar with this trap than the Europeans (though they are no better at avoiding it).
At that dinner, we talked a lot about broken trust. I pointed out that if we closed our eyes and woke up in the same exact place in 2006, most Davos men and women in attendance would be bemoaning the boor in the White House, the end of the transatlantic marriage, and a bullying America running roughshod over the international order (in the distinctly un-icy Mideast).
A wise man, both figuratively because of his position in Washington and literally in the sense of the quality of the brain, suggested we go further back by another two decades. Then you’d hear the same chorus about another pushy American in Washington who called the Soviets “evil” and sparked mass protests in Europe by deploying cruise and Pershing missiles on the continent. So plus ça change.
Or not. Europeans tell you that this time is different and speak with a fervor that matches Trump’s American critics. We can all agree on one thing: that Trump is out to break stuff — conventions, complacencies and establishments. The apparent lack of appreciation of why it’s in America’s interest to keep and nurture Europe as an ally is fairly novel, and if applied seriously rather than merely rhetorically, is dangerous.
Trump wasn’t alone in using the Davos stage to play politics and burnish the brand. Canada’s Mark Carney did himself a lot of good at home and internationally, certainly for a prime minister from a country that spends about as little on defense as Croatia, with his headline-grabbing cri de coeur over the death of the West. He is now the beloved anti-Trump hero of the Davos set.
I find it hard to think of a time with so much noise, making it hard to pick out the signal. Having raised anxieties to peak pearl-clutching levels, Trump tuned it down, taking the threat of a military attack on a NATO ally off the table (how nice) and then, in the middle of my dinner-slash-transatlantic-therapy session, announcing a “framework” agreement on Greenland, and pulling back from a trade war with Europe.
The Davos Greenland edition of this reality show was over. Did the markets spook him, or was his plan to push then retreat all along? Is that it — or does Trump still wish to be the 21st century’s Andrew Johnson, not only by getting impeached but also by getting America an icy northern expanse to chime with Johnson’s Alaska purchase?
Will his obsession, which my old Wall Street Journal colleague Holman Jenkins likened to Ahab’s whale fixation, lead him to hold back support for Ukraine or NATO until his quest is satisfied? Or was all this intended to distract from some new Jeffrey Epstein storyline, or from imminent plans to attack Iran with that carrier group this week moving into the Persian Gulf? The answer is obvious: Yes.
The Greenland denouement came in time for Ukraine’s big day on January 22. Every year, the Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk holds an early morning breakfast that has become the key event here for Kyiv watchers.
There were the usual guests: friendly to Ukraine senators, NATO sec-gens past and present, a bunch of heads of state and foreign ministers, Bill Browder, and Eric Schmidt. Plus two surprises: Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the men leading Trump’s negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, who have conspicuously visited Moscow and avoided Kyiv, and were indeed off to the Kremlin later that day.
So their presence was notable. Witkoff said that Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump aide who knows Pinchuk, persuaded him to come. He talked up the economic potential of a peace deal for Russia and Ukraine. This audience wasn’t happy, both because of what he said and what he didn’t say.
The breakfast set didn’t share Witkoff’s view that peace is a simple real estate deal after which economics will heal the wounds of war. Senator Thom Tillis, the lame-duck Republican from North Carolina, gave an impassioned speech seemingly aimed at two people: Witkoff and his friend and boss, Trump.
Putin is a murderer and a rapist who can’t be trusted and won’t be satisfied. Congress, he added, would have a final say on any peace and security deal worth the paper. While the presence of Witkoff-Kushner suggests the Ukrainians are managing the relationship with the White House better, word spread that in private meetings, the Americans explicitly ruled out direct military support for Ukraine in any post-settlement deal. That would put the onus squarely on the Europeans, who haven’t proved overly brave — in Kyiv’s view — to get in the fight without US cover.
That might explain Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech at the Congress Center later in the day. If you Europeans don’t want to be middle powers squeezed by the great, get your act together, he said. He was as much echoing, usefully given his circumstances, Donald Trump on Europe as offering a subtle rejoinder to Mark Carney’s call for middle powers to “stick together.”
Zelenskyy also made the point that can’t be said often enough: Ukraine’s one-million-man, militarily tech-savvy army, makes it Europe’s best defense and the tip of the West’s spear against a China-led authoritarian bloc. Zelenskyy gave little insight into his talks with Trump here. As the week ended, the Ukrainians found themselves on slippery ground still, if no longer iced out.
So the reality show — or make that disruption tour — left the Alps with nothing permanently solved, or I would say permanently broken, and moved on to the next, at least literally less icy, stop.
The one thing you can also say for sure is that Trump will be center stage and the ultimate ending for him, for the “global elites,” the Ukrainians, or anyone else, has yet to be written.
Matthew Kaminski is Editor-at-Large of the Arsenal, a new publication focused on defense tech in Europe, and Editorial Chair of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. He’s a member of CEPA’s International Leadership Council and the board of World Minds. He is also a senior advisor at Evident AI and New Vista Capital. For nearly a decade, Matt was Editor-in-Chief of POLITICO in Europe, confounding and leading its European startup in Brussels, a joint venture with Axel Springer launched in 2014, and then in Washington from 2018-2024.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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