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Trump’s Fixation With Greenland Has Ended Denmark’s Love Affair With the U.S.
Only 20% of Danes, until recently one of the most pro-American peoples in Europe, say they hold a favorable opinion of the U.S.
COPENHAGEN—In his long career as a senior Danish politician, including as minister of defense during President Trump’s first administration, Claus Hjort Frederiksen said he always valued the Scandinavian nation’s tight bond with the U.S.
And, like many from Denmark, until recently politically one of the more pro-American countries in Europe, he said he is heartbroken today by how the U.S. has turned from best friend to rapacious foe. Trump’s claim on the Arctic island of Greenland, which accounts for 98% of the Danish kingdom’s landmass, has become the most important feature of the bilateral relationship.
“My parents, who had their youth during World War II here, they loved the Americans who came to our rescue in 1945,” Frederiksen said. “For me—a person who has been trusting the U.S. all these years since then—it’s very hard to experience that it doesn’t mean anything anymore that we had fought alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan, in Iraq and many other places, that suddenly we are nothing.”
As for his own two sons, Frederiksen added, “They are very very angry with the U.S.”
So are most Danes. According to a YouGov poll conducted in February, only 20% of Danish people hold a favorable opinion of the U.S., down from 48% in August last year. In a more recent poll, for the Berlingske newspaper, 41% of Danes described the U.S. as a threat to their nation.
“It’s a very big change in a very short time. We have always talked about the U.S. as our closest ally,” said Rasmus Jarlov, a Danish lawmaker from the conservative opposition and a former minister of business affairs. That change has seeped into the attitudes of ordinary Danes. “It’s no longer well-regarded to go on vacation to the United States, it’s now something to be frowned upon,” he said, adding that his own household has stopped buying Heinz ketchup.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, was shocked when Trump laid out his demand for Greenland in their initial conversation after the president’s election to a second term, diplomats said. Trump later upped the ante by saying he wouldn’t exclude using military force to seize the island. Vice President JD Vance, on a March visit to an American military base in northern Greenland, said “Denmark hasn’t done a good job at keeping Greenland safe” and that the island would be safer under an American umbrella.
“We have a rather fierce and fundamental disagreement,” Frederiksen said in an interview with the country’s Ritzau news agency last month. To Copenhagen’s relief, the issue of Greenland didn’t come up during Trump’s meeting with fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders at the alliance’s summit in The Hague last month. But Danish officials believe that it hasn’t gone away, and that Trump still seeks to pry away Greenland one way or another.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was shocked when the U.S. president laid out his demand for Greenland.
As part of its response, Denmark has bolstered its engagement with Greenland’s autonomous government, which seeks eventual independence for the island but opposes annexation by the U.S. The Greenland government coalition, which coalesced as a result of American threats, garnered some 74% of the vote in the island’s elections in March, and is negotiating with Copenhagen ways of expanding its already substantial self-rule.
“Our position is quite clear. We want to seek cooperation with the U.S. regarding security in the High North. We’re always approaching the U.S. as a very important and a very strong ally,” said Christian Rabjerg Madsen, a senior lawmaker from Denmark’s ruling Social-Democrats party. “But the future of Greenland is not something that is to be decided in Copenhagen or Washington. It is to be decided in Greenland by the Greenlandic people. And we are pleased that we have very strong support from European allies in this difficult situation.”
Should the U.S. attempt a direct military takeover, there isn’t much resistance that Denmark, which maintains only a small military presence in Greenland, could put up, Danish leaders realize.
“I guess the rules of engagement would be, hand over the keys and take the next plane home, because there is very little we could actually do about it, and it would be sort of pointless to fight it because we have four dog sleds and some civilian police there, that’s it,” said Danish military analyst Peter Viggo Jakobsen.
Vice President JD Vance, on a March visit to Greenland, said the island would be safer under an American umbrella.
Asked in congressional testimony last month whether the Pentagon had plans for the military seizure of Greenland, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “Our job at the Defense Department is to have plans for any particular contingency,” refusing to elaborate.
An outright invasion seems unlikely, at least for now, even to the most pessimistic Danish and European politicians. Asked about how they would react to an American military takeover of Denmark, senior officials in several European nations dismissed it as a highly improbable scenario. “All kinds of disputes between allies should be handled in a peaceful way,” said Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson.
Yet, European allies—especially France—have been working to back up Denmark even as they quietly try to persuade Trump to drop the issue of Greenland altogether. French President Emmanuel Macron flew on a visit to Greenland in June, accompanied by Prime Minister Frederiksen. He announced investments and the opening of a French consulate in the capital Nuuk, where only two foreign missions—from nearby Iceland and the U.S.—are currently located.
“Everybody thinks, in France, in the European Union, that Greenland is not to be sold, not to be taken,” Macron, the first foreign head of state to visit the island in recent years, said in Nuuk. “The situation in Greenland is clearly a wake-up call for all the Europeans. And let me tell you very directly that you are not alone. And when a strategic message is sent to you, I want you to know that it is clearly perceived by the Europeans as targeting a European land.”
Any U.S. moves to take over Greenland unilaterally would likely cause the end of the trans-Atlantic alliance as we know it, many European officials warn, and the breakdown of trade between the U.S. and Europe as a whole.
“It would be such an extreme action, so much against our common history,” said Danish lawmaker and former foreign minister, Martin Lidegaard. “And if this was done in contradiction to the will of the Greenlandic people, it would also be very damaging not only to the Danish-American, but to the whole European-American cooperation.”
Greenland’s main opposition party Naleraq, which seeks rapid and full independence from Denmark, has been flirting with the Trump administration. Its leader, Pele Broberg, has raised the prospect of entering a free association pact with the U.S., along the lines of Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. With only 56,000 people, Greenlandic politics could be susceptible to election interference and manipulation, and some European nations have offered Copenhagen assistance from their anti-disinformation experts who usually focus on Russian information warfare.
For now, however, Washington’s perceived bullying has alarmed Greenlanders so much that such assistance might not be required, said another former Danish foreign minister, Jeppe Kofod. “We don’t need to do anything now because Trump has actually managed to obtain the opposite of what he wanted,” Kofod said. “He alienated the Greenlandic people and made many of them afraid.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
