A cold front: Denmark’s response to Trump’s desire for Greenland

In predicting the scary scenarios for Donald Trump’s second term as US president, the media identified almost all the issues now causing sleepless nights in European capitals. However, there was one notable exception: the question of Greenland.  

When I was in Davos for the World Economic Forum, many European leaders saw the fate of this continent-sized iceberg as the most challenging issue on the diplomatic table. In his frequent references to acquiring the island, Trump has been lending legitimacy to the idea that you can use coercion to change European borders. What makes it so mind-boggling is that he is doing that as the leader of the main alliance that is meant to protect the security of Europe. The leader of one eastern European state told me they were more worried by Trump’s sights on Greenland than Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

To understand the dynamics around this brewing crisis, I spent some time in Copenhagen last week. I discovered a nation in shock and a government in crisis mode. The leading advisers to the prime minister are spending their time in secure rooms trying to plan contingencies for a problem so outlandish it is hard to compute. They’re particularly worried that the issue will get tied up with the internal debates and politics in Greenland. On Tuesday, the island’s prime minister announced that an election will be held on March 11th, and Greenland’s political parties are all competing to show how much they believe in independence—the ruling Siumut party has since announced it plans to hold an independence referendum after the election.

The backdrop, brought to life rather dramatically in the last series of Borgen, is that Greenlanders feel they’re not taken very seriously by the Copenhagen elites. On the other hand, many Danes have negative perceptions of Greenlanders in part because they see the thousands of them living in Copenhagen as prone to loutish behaviour—a bit like British tourists abroad.

Most people in Danish political circles agree that Greenland will eventually become independent and that it’s a question of when and how rather than if. But the process is quite complicated (The Faroe Islands voted for independence in the 1970s, but the logistics were so complicated that the Faroe Island government quietly abandoned the idea). Until it does happen however, Denmark must contend with Trump’s desires to buy the semi-autonomous territory.

Apparently, the Danish prime minister’s 45-minute call with Trump, which as widely reported, was indeed difficult. Both Trump and Mette Frederiksen are straight shooters. They didn’t shout at each other, but also didn’t make any progress and agreed to carry on the conversation after the inauguration. The Danes are happy that since Trump’s Mar-a-Lago statement, there haven’t been any more official comments from the administration, except from secretary of state Marco Rubio and secretary of defence Pete Hegseth during their confirmation hearings.

In principle, the Danish government would be very interested to see a growing US role in the Arctic. They are keen to stress that it is up to the Greenlandic people to decide on their fate. But foreign policy makers in Denmark still do not know what Trump wants—they have offered him everything short of sovereignty, but they have not even heard back on any specific demands on security or economic issues. 

But foreign policy makers in Denmark still do not know what Trump wants from Greenland—they have offered him everything short of sovereignty, but they have not even heard back on any specific demands on security or economic issues

During the US presidential campaign and before the election, the Danes spent a lot of effort cultivating Republicans and they have good contacts with the “institutional” administration such as Mike Waltz’s National Security Council, but it isn’t helping them because surrogates like Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. can always appear out of nowhere and complicate matters. The people I spoke to in Copenhagen cast doubt on the idea that the US is primarily interested in security issues (Trump Jr.’s visit only lasted five hours, and rather than bringing security experts, he brought 15 TikTokers led by the American activist and media personality Charlie Kirk). Many are starting to believe the “Mount Rushmore” theory that Trump simply wants to make his mark on the map by expanding America. 

The Danish strategy is, on the one hand, to prove that they are not alone. Hence Frederiksen’s tour of capitals and other attempts to rally support for Denmark. But it is not entirely clear what the support is for. It is crucial that European countries show solidarity with Copenhagen, just as the EU can help defend against trade coercion, but Europeans are well aware that the Americans have dozens of ways of making their life miserable in Greenland and beyond.

On the other hand, the Danes don’t want to do anything that will provoke Trump and are seeking to calm things down. They are trying to convey to Washington that the question goes beyond Greenland, and they think it’s helpful if it’s seen in the wider context of tariffs, the discussions of the trade order, and Colombia, all areas where Trump has pushed America’s weight around.

What the Danes, and Europeans more broadly, are most worried about is some of the scenarios floating around on right-wing US media. On his podcast, Ted Cruz supported the idea of a referendum to join the US in Greenland. Given that Greenland only has 56,000 citizens, there would be relatively little cost to manipulate it (by promising each future US citizen $1m, for example). A group of Make America Great Again Republicans, meanwhile, have argued for a free association agreement, like the US has with some Pacific islands. In any case, the constitutional hurdles for any sort of transfer would be significant. Even if there is a referendum, there would first have to be negotiations around questions of justice and citizenship and a law would have to be passed by the Danish parliament, the Folketing. It’s very unlikely that anything would be resolved before 2035.

It is becoming clear to Copenhagen that they don’t have access to the Americans that matter, who are basically a small cluster of people with unofficial or semi-official positions around the president. Appeasement has already failed. However, the Danes seem reluctant to stand up to Trump by threatening countermeasures or playing footsie with the Chinese. Their current strategy is to mix quietly building support for nightmare scenarios with delay and distraction. As my colleague Jeremy Shapiro says, “they are basically hoping that they can drag the issue out until Trump’s attention is drawn to some shiny canal somewhere”.