What did Donald Trump say over the cellphone to Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, on Wednesday? I don’t know which exact phrases he used, however I witnessed their affect. I arrived in Copenhagen the day after the decision—the topic, after all, was the way forward for Greenland, which Denmark owns and which Trump needs—and found that appointments I had with Danish politicians had been all of a sudden at risk of being canceled. Amid Frederiksen’s emergency assembly with enterprise leaders, her overseas minister’s emergency assembly with celebration leaders, and an extra emergency assembly of the foreign-affairs committee in Parliament, the whole lot, unexpectedly, was in full flux.
The consequence: Mid-morning, I discovered myself standing on the Knippel Bridge between the Danish overseas ministry and the Danish Parliament, holding a cellphone, ready to be instructed which path to stroll. Denmark in January will not be heat; I went to the Parliament and waited there. The assembly was canceled anyway. After that, no person needed to say something on the file in any respect. Thus have People who voted for Trump due to the putatively excessive worth of eggs now precipitated a political disaster in Scandinavia.
In non-public discussions, the adjective that was most often used to explain the Trump cellphone name was tough. The verb most often used was threaten. The response most often expressed was confusion. Trump made it clear to Frederiksen that he’s critical about Greenland: He sees it, apparently, as a real-estate deal. However Greenland will not be a beachfront property. The world’s largest island is an autonomous territory of Denmark, inhabited by people who find themselves Danish residents, vote in Danish elections, and have representatives within the Danish Parliament. Denmark additionally has politics, and a Danish prime minister can not promote Greenland any greater than an American president can promote Florida.
On the identical time, Denmark can also be a rustic whose world firms—amongst them Lego, the delivery large Maersk, and Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic—do billions of {dollars} price of commerce with the USA, and have main American investments too. They thought these had been optimistic elements of the Danish-American relationship. Denmark and the USA are additionally founding members of NATO, and Danish leaders can be forgiven for believing that this issues in Washington too. As a substitute, these hyperlinks develop into a vulnerability. On Thursday afternoon Frederiksen emerged and, flanked by her overseas minister and her protection minister, made a press release. “It has been prompt from the American facet,” she stated, “that sadly a state of affairs could come up the place we work much less collectively than we do right this moment within the financial space.”
Nonetheless, essentially the most troublesome facet of the disaster will not be the necessity to put together for an unspecified financial risk from an in depth ally, however the want to deal with a sudden sense of just about Kafkaesque absurdity. In fact, Trump’s calls for are illogical. Something that the U.S. theoretically may wish to do in Greenland is already attainable, proper now. Denmark has by no means stopped the U.S. army from constructing bases, looking for minerals, or stationing troops in Greenland, or from patrolling sea lanes close by. Up to now, the Danes have even let People defy Danish coverage in Greenland. Over lunch, one former Danish diplomat instructed me a Chilly Conflict story, which unfolded not lengthy after Denmark had formally declared itself to be a nuclear-free nation. In 1957, the U.S. ambassador however approached Denmark’s then–prime minister, H. C. Hansen, with a request. America was all in favour of storing some nuclear weapons at an American base in Greenland. Would Denmark wish to be notified?
Hansen responded with a cryptic word, which he characterised, in accordance with diplomatic data, as “casual, private, extremely secret and restricted to at least one copy every on the Danish and American facet.” Within the word, which was not shared with the Danish Parliament or the Danish press, and certainly was not made public in any respect till the Nineteen Nineties, Hansen stated that because the U.S. ambassador had not talked about particular plans or made a concrete request, “I don’t suppose your remarks give rise to any remark from my facet.” In different phrases, In case you don’t inform us that you’re preserving nuclear weapons in Greenland, then we gained’t need to object.
The Danes had been loyal U.S. allies then, and stay so now. Through the Chilly Conflict, they had been central to NATO’s planning. After the Soviet Union dissolved, they reformed their army, creating expeditionary forces particularly meant to be helpful to their American allies. After 9/11, when the mutual-defense provision of the NATO treaty was activated for the primary time—on behalf of the U.S.—Denmark despatched troops to Afghanistan, the place 43 Danish troopers died. As a proportion of their inhabitants, then about 5 million, this can be a larger mortality price than the U.S. suffered. The Danes additionally despatched troops to Iraq, and joined NATO groups within the Balkans. They thought they had been a part of the net of relationships which have made American energy and affect over the previous half century so distinctive. As a result of U.S. alliances had been primarily based on shared values, not merely transactional pursuits, the extent of cooperation was completely different. Denmark helped the U.S., when requested, or volunteered with out being requested. “So what did we do incorrect?” one Danish official requested me.
Clearly, they did nothing incorrect—however that’s a part of the disaster too. Trump himself can not articulate, both at press conferences or, apparently, over the phone, why precisely he must personal Greenland, or how Denmark can provide American firms and troopers extra entry to Greenland than they have already got. Loads of others will attempt to rationalize his statements anyway. The Economist has declared the existence of a “Trump doctrine,” and one million articles have solemnly debated Greenland’s strategic significance. However in Copenhagen (and never solely in Copenhagen) folks suspect a much more irrational clarification: Trump simply needs the U.S. to look bigger on a map.
This intuition—to disregard current borders, legal guidelines, and treaties; to deal with different nations as synthetic; to interrupt up commerce hyperlinks and destroy friendships, all as a result of the Chief needs to look highly effective—is one which Trump shares with imperialists of the previous. The Russian overseas minister, Sergei Lavrov, has additionally crowed over the alleged similarity between the U.S. need for Greenland and the Russian need for territory in Ukraine. Lavrov prompt a referendum is perhaps held in Greenland, evaluating that chance to the pretend referenda, held underneath duress, that Russia staged in Crimea and japanese Ukraine.
After all, Trump may neglect about Greenland. But in addition, he may not. No one is aware of. He operates on whims, typically choosing up concepts from the final individual he met, typically returning to obsessions he had apparently deserted: windmills, sharks, Hannibal Lecter, and now Greenland. To Danes and just about anybody else who makes plans, indicators treaties, or creates long-term methods utilizing rational arguments, this fashion of constructing coverage feels arbitrary, pointless, even surreal. However it is usually now everlasting, and there’s no going again.
