Denmark Reacts to Trump's Greenland, Military Comments

Henrik Bager, a Danish soldier who served with Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, said US president Donald Trump’s vow to take Greenland from Denmark and his insults about Denmark’s military were “a punch to the gut”. Rasmus Jarlov, a voluble centre-right member of the Danish parliament and the chair of its defence committee, said “we know full well that the Americans can destroy us”, but should Trump, who has not ruled out military force, attack a fellow Nato ally, “of course we will fight back”. In the next breath, Jarlov said it was “absolutely so weird to be uttering something like that”. Casper O Jensen, a Danish pollster who has lived in the United States and calls it “close to his heart”, sounded like a jilted lover. “I thought we had a really good thing going on,” he said. “Apparently not.” These are bleak times in Copenhagen, where Danes say they feel betrayed, bewildered and frightened by Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, the semi-autonomous Danish territory and a source of national identity and pride. Greenland, 50 times the size of Denmark, has long made the tiny Nordic nation more of a player on the world stage. “We’re not small when you add Greenland,” said David Trads, a political commentator and the author of three books on the United States, including his most recent, America Turns the Clock Back. “It makes us more important.” Trump’s view is that the United States needs to take over Greenland because Russia and China pose a security threat in the Arctic, and because the island is essential for the “Golden Dome” missile shield he wants to build to protect the US. Denmark, Nato allies and most security experts say Trump already has all the access to Greenland he needs, given existing treaties and the willingness of Denmark, long one of the most pro-American countries in Europe, to do anything – short of giving up Greenland – that the president wants. This past week in Copenhagen, where wall-to-wall television coverage of the crisis seemed to match the mood of the dark Scandinavian winter, Danes pored over every utterance from Trump. [ ‘I’ve not felt so insecure before’: Greenlanders prepare for crisis amid a lack of official adviceOpens in new window ] [ ‘With Irish people I feel understood, a connection’: In Greenland, talk of US takeover is deeply triggeringOpens in new window ] By Saturday, thousands of Danes had packed Copenhagen’s City Hall Square before marching to the US embassy in protest, while hundreds demonstrated in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. Hours later, Trump said he was putting new tariffs on Denmark and other European nations until they come to the negotiating table to sell him Greenland. Danes have been particularly stunned by Trump’s taunts that Denmark relies on “two dog sleds” to defend the Arctic island. “It’s like fifth graders bullying the small guy in the corner,” said Bager, the Danish soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Danes in his unit died during his 2009 deployment to Helmand province in Afghanistan, he said, and the rhetoric from the White House hurts. Adam Price, the creator of Borgen, a Danish television political drama that became an international hit, set its fourth and final season in Greenland. In episodes that aired in 2022 in the US, a geopolitical struggle unfolds between the US, China and Russia after large reserves of oil are discovered on the island. Price likes to take real events and push them beyond what has actually happened. But in an interview last week, he said that, had he pitched a storyline to Netflix that an American president was vowing to get Greenland from Denmark “one way or another” – the exact words of Trump – “I would have been laughed out of the pitching room.” “They would have said, ‘It’s too much, it is too crazy,’” Price said in his Copenhagen office, where a large photograph of sled dogs and icebergs in Greenland covers one wall. “I mean, you wouldn’t have an American president that would actually threaten a Nato ally.” Many Danes believe Trump wants to own Greenland because, as he put it to The New York Times in an interview this month, “that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success”. Aaja Chemnitz, one of two members of parliament who represent Greenland, said in an interview: “Maybe you should take it up with his therapist if it’s a question of making sure that he feels better.” Chemnitz, who said Greenlanders were having trouble sleeping for fear of an American invasion, was host last week to a bipartisan congressional delegation led by Democratic senator Chris Coons to Denmark. In her view, Trump is more interested in the minerals and oil in Greenland than anything else. That sentiment was echoed by Oliver Haagensen (21), a medical student at Aarhus University, who was skating recently at an outdoor rink in Copenhagen’s Christianshavn neighbourhood. Like everyone else, he was keeping up with the news on Trump. “He knows that Russia and China want the minerals and oil, and he wants to get there first,” Haagensen said. [ Denmark and Greenland united in mass protests against Trump annexation threatsOpens in new window ] There was some short-lived relief in Copenhagen after a meeting on Wednesday in Washington where Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, emerged from talks with US vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio. Rasmussen said that although a “fundamental disagreement” remained with Trump and that the American president “has this wish of conquering Greenland”, there would be a “working group” to continue talks. But on Thursday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the Danes and Greenlanders had agreed “to continue to have technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland”, which Denmark and Greenland said was not the case at all. Trads, the political commentator, had been sceptical that the meeting would produce anything. Over coffee near the Danish parliament last week, he said that the only thing Denmark had on its side against Trump was time. The Danish government hopes that Trump’s party will lose the midterm elections, he said. “If that doesn’t happen, then we’re just waiting for the three years to pass,” Trads said. “It’s a long time, but we don’t have anything else. So that’s the whole tactic, just to make sure it goes on and on and on, and somehow he is preoccupied with something else.”