Twenty years ago, I spent a couple of weeks in Afghanistan with Britain’s Royal Marines. Operating largely under British command in Helmand was a Danish contingent made up largely of special forces. The Marines had nothing but praise for their Danish allies, who were in some of the toughest firefights and who suffered the highest per capita rate of fatalities after the United States.
Why were they there at all? What made Denmark send 750 men to those remote mountains? There was only one explanation. Danes had felt the atrocity of 9/11 as an attack on the entire West. When the U.S. called for help, the no-nonsense Norsemen did not hesitate.
To see the Danish military mocked and disparaged online by MAGA supporters is disgusting. To watch leading politicians and commentators who know better obsequiously backing President Donald Trump’s aggressive claim to Danish territory is degrading.
The apologists are, as usual, proffering reasons that the president himself has not presented involving missile trajectories and satellites and hordes of Chinese people waiting to vacuum up rare earths.
I wonder whether these sophists believe their own arguments. For the record, a 1951 treaty gives the U.S. the right to station pretty much any forces it wants in Greenland. If he were truly worried about a renewed threat to Arctic security, Trump would presumably be beefing up that presence. But he is doing the opposite. There are now fewer than 200 American military personnel in Greenland, down from a Cold War peak of 6,000 — a decline that continued during the first Trump term.
If there are specific installations that the U.S. wants in Greenland, it need only say the word. Indeed, successive Danish governments have been quietly urging American leaders to strengthen their presence in the Arctic (some 6,000 troops were also withdrawn from Iceland). But no requests have come.
Is Denmark, then, in the language that MAGA apologists like to use, “stepping up”? Yes, albeit in a way that should make Americans weep with shame. It is deploying troops to Greenland as a tripwire, with orders to shoot first and ask questions later. A country that has served at America’s side for 80 years is now preparing for the possibility of a sudden attack from its ally.
And shall I tell you the worst thing? Those of us who regard the U.S. as a second homeland, who have backed it in all its conflicts, who always, as it is a surer guarantor of freedom than our own countries, would be forced to take Denmark’s side. It is agony to write those words, but I see no other proper response to an unprovoked attack on an ally.
Some of Trump’s apologists are trotting out their “seriously not literally” line. This is all Art of the Deal stuff, they say. The real goal is to purchase Greenland, just like Florida, Alaska, or the U.S. Virgin Islands. The saber-rattling is just to drive down the price. Watch what Trump does, not what he says.
Which invites two responses. First, what he says, as president, has consequences. When, in justifying his dismissal of Denmark, he declares that “I doubt NATO would be there for us if we really needed them,” he undermines the entire Western alliance. Russians and Ukrainians alike will hear those words as meaning that Ukraine would be on its own regardless of any American security guarantees given to secure a peace deal.
Remember that NATO’s mutual defense clause has been invoked only once, by the U.S. itself in 2001. How do you imagine Trump’s words sound to the families and friends of those British and European soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq in response to that invocation?
BRITAIN HAS BECOME A WARNING TO AMERICANS
Second, for all the talk of security, this whole episode is making the U.S. and the rest of the world far less secure. NATO members are already canceling orders for U.S. weaponry, and may suspend their purchases of F-35s. NATO troops are being deployed against the possibility of an attack from another NATO member — something the alliance has been able to survive on the Greek-Turkish frontier, but may not survive this time. And all for no security gain whatever.
I can see only two explanations for Trump’s behavior. Either he has gone full Caligula and, not content with forcing public institutions to name themselves after him, he feels a psychopathic need to be remembered as a man who enlarged the U.S., or else the conspiracy theorists were right all along and he is some kind of Putinite asset. Either way, why is no one stopping him?