Denmark struggles to keep calm in crisis over Trump’s threat to seize Greenland

The gloomy January weather in Copenhagen matches the mood among Denmark’s politicians and business leaders.

“We take this situation very, very seriously,” Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland and punish Denmark with high tariffs if it stands in the way.

But, he added, the government had “no ambition whatsoever to escalate a war of words.”

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen downplayed Trump’s own suggestion that the United States could use military force to seize Greenland. “I don’t have the fantasy of imagining that we will ever get to that,” he told Danish television.

And Lars Sandahl Sorensen, chief executive of Danish Industry, also said there were “many reasons to remain calm…no one has any interest in a trade war.”

But behind the scenes, hastily arranged high-level meetings have been taking place in Copenhagen all week, a reflection of the shock caused by Trump’s comments.

Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede flew to meet the Prime Minister and King Frederick X on Wednesday.

And on Thursday night, party leaders from across the political spectrum gathered for an extraordinary meeting on the crisis with Mette Frederiksen in Denmark’s parliament.

In the face of what many in Denmark call Trump’s “provocation,” Frederiksen has generally attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, repeatedly referring to the United States as “Denmark’s closest partner.”

It was “natural” for the United States to be concerned about the Arctic and Greenland, he added.

However, he also said that any decision about Greenland’s future should depend solely on its people: “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders… and it is the Greenlanders themselves who have to define its future.”

His cautious approach is two-fold.

On the one hand, Frederiksen wants to prevent the situation from getting worse. She had complained before, in 2019, when Trump canceled a trip to Denmark after she said his proposal to buy Greenland was “absurd.”

“At that time he only had one more year left in office, then things went back to normal,” veteran political journalist Erik Holstein told the BBC. “But maybe this is the new normal.”

But Frederiksen’s comments also speak to Denmark’s determination not to meddle in the internal affairs of Greenland, an autonomous territory with its own parliament and whose population is increasingly leaning toward independence.

“She should have been much clearer in rejecting the idea,” said opposition lawmaker Rasmus Jarlov.

“This level of disrespect by the next president of the United States towards very, very loyal allies and friends is a record,” he told the BBC, although he admitted that Trump’s forcefulness had “surprised everyone.”

The Conservative MP believed that Frederiksen’s insistence that “only Greenland… can decide and define the future of Greenland” put too much pressure on the island’s inhabitants. “It would have been prudent and smart to support Greenland and simply state clearly that Denmark does not want (a US takeover).”

The Greenland issue is a sensitive one for Denmark, whose prime minister recently officially apologized for leading a social experiment in the 1950s in which Inuit children were separated from their families to be re-educated as “model Danes.”

Last week, Greenland’s leader said the territory should be freed from “the shackles of colonialism.”

In doing so, he tapped into growing nationalist sentiment, fueled by Greenland’s younger generations’ interest in indigenous culture and Inuit history.

Most commentators now expect a successful independence referendum in the near future. While it would be seen as a victory for many, it could also lead to a new set of problems, since 60% of Greenland’s economy depends on Denmark.

An independent Greenland “would have to make decisions,” said Karsten Honge. The Social Democrat MP now fears his preferred option of a new Commonwealth-style deal “based on equality and democracy” is unlikely.

Sitting in his parliamentary office decorated with poems and drawings depicting scenes of Inuit life, Honge said Greenland would have to decide “how much it values ​​independence.” It could cut ties with Denmark and turn to the United States, Honge said, “but if you value independence then that doesn’t make sense.”

Opposition MP Jarlov maintains that while it makes no sense to force Greenland to be part of Denmark, “it is already very close to being an independent country.”

Its capital, Nuuk, is autonomous, but depends on Copenhagen for currency management, foreign relations and defense, as well as for important subsidies.

“Greenland today has more independence from the EU than Denmark,” Jarlov added. “So I hope they think things through.”

As Mette Frederiksen has the awkward task of responding firmly without offending Greenland or the United States, the strongest rebuttal to Trump’s comments so far has come from outside Denmark.

The principle of the inviolability of borders “applies to all countries… no matter if it is very small or very powerful,” warned German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that the EU will not allow other nations to “attack its sovereign borders.”

His comments revealed deep concerns within the EU about how to handle the upcoming Trump presidency. “This is not only very serious for Greenland and Denmark, but it is very serious for the whole world and for Europe as a whole,” said MP Karsten Honge.

“Imagine a world, which we will face in a few weeks, in which there are no international agreements. That would shake everything up and Denmark would be only a small part of it.”

The Danish trade sector has also been thrown into deep tension after Trump said he would “impose Denmark with a very high tariff” if it refused to cede Greenland to the United States.

A 2024 Danish industry study showed that Denmark’s GDP would fall three points if the United States imposed 10% tariffs on EU imports to the United States as part of a global trade war.

Separating Danish goods from the influx of EU goods would be nearly impossible for the United States and would almost certainly lead to retaliatory measures by the EU. But trade industry professionals are taking few risks, and in Denmark, as elsewhere on the continent, huge amounts of resources are being spent internally to plan for the possible outcomes of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

As their inauguration approaches, Danes are preparing as best they can to weather the storm. There is a cautious hope that the president-elect may soon turn his attention to grievances towards other EU partners and that the Greenland issue may be temporarily shelved.

But the unease sparked by Trump’s refusal to rule out military intervention to seize Greenland persists.

Karsten Honge said Denmark would have suffered from any decision the United States made.

“They just need to send a small warship to travel up the coast of Greenland and send a polite letter to Denmark,” he said, only partly joking.

“The last sentence would be: well, Denmark, what are you going to do about it?

“That’s the new reality regarding Trump.”