{"id":65751,"date":"2026-04-22T00:41:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T00:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/65751\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T00:41:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T00:41:36","slug":"denmark-was-ready-to-blow-up-airfields-to-stop-a-u-s-invasion-of-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/65751\/","title":{"rendered":"Denmark Was Ready to Blow Up Airfields to Stop a U.S. Invasion of Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"

As tensions with President Trump peaked in recent weeks, the Danish military developed detailed plans to blow up airfields in Greenland in the event of an American invasion, two European officials said on Friday.<\/p>\n

Danish soldiers were sent to Greenland equipped with explosives and blood supplies, underscoring the seriousness of the contingency plans, according to the officials, who had knowledge of the plans but said they could not be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.<\/p>\n

The soldiers never actually did anything to the airfields. But Denmark\u2019s consideration of such a scenario shows just how unnerved the Scandinavian country was in January as President Trump escalated threats<\/a> to take over Greenland, a gigantic Arctic island that has been part of the Danish kingdom for more than 300 years.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump later softened his tone<\/a>, signaling that he was willing to compromise over Greenland\u2019s future relationship with the United States and subsequently turned his attention elsewhere, initiating a war with Iran alongside Israel.<\/p>\n

DR, Denmark\u2019s public broadcaster, first published information about these plans on Thursday, as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen campaigns for re-election. Her tough stance against Mr. Trump has become one of her top-selling points in the election, which is set for next week.<\/p>\n

According to DR\u2019s report<\/a>, when Danish soldiers were deployed to Greenland in January, they carried explosives to disable the runways in Nuuk, Greenland\u2019s capital, and in Kangerlussuaq, a small town in the Arctic Circle.<\/p>\n

The report said that this would \u201cprevent U.S. military aircraft from landing soldiers on the island if President Donald Trump ultimately chose to take Greenland by force.\u201d<\/p>\n

(The report did not mention that the United States military maintains its own airfield on the northwest corner of the island, part of a defense agreement<\/a> that the United States has had with Denmark for decades.)<\/p>\n

Security analysts said Denmark\u2019s detailed planning was unsurprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cMilitaries will naturally think: \u2018OK, what\u2019s the worst that can happen?\u2019\u201d said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you start with the runways and you prepare for combat. Well, blood banks. Live ammunition. There you go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to the DR report, the Danish soldiers also had live ammunition.<\/p>\n

At the time, Denmark said it was sending soldiers to Greenland for a broader military exercise with a small contingent of troops from other European countries, including France, Germany, Britain and Norway.<\/p>\n

Though Denmark\u2019s full plans weren\u2019t public at the time, the exercise was clearly meant to signal to Mr. Trump that Europe was united against his threats to seize a large chunk of a European country\u2019s territory.<\/p>\n

Tom Roseth, a professor of intelligence studies at the Norwegian Defense University College, believes Denmark\u2019s gambit worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation was highly serious,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething had to be done in terms of military presence and demonstrating solidarity with Denmark.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it is called an exercise, an operational deployment, or symbolic support, the effect is what matters,\u201d Mr. Roseth added. \u201cThe Americans could not simply arrive with a small force and raise the flag, if they ever seriously considered doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n

American military officials indicated in January that they had no war plans for Greenland, and it\u2019s not clear how likely Danish intelligence agencies believed the United States was poised to invade.<\/p>\n

Still, the Danish troops deployed on the island were under a heightened state of readiness.<\/p>\n

In mid-January, as the tensions were rising, Troels Lund Poulsen, Denmark\u2019s defense minister, said Danish soldiers were under orders that \u201cif one is attacked, one must defend the Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, he added, \u201cit is considered entirely hypothetical that the U.S. government would initiate an attack on Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amelia Nierenberg in London and Henrik Pryser Libell in Oslo contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As tensions with President Trump peaked in recent weeks, the Danish military developed detailed plans to blow up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[31965,31964,26,28958,71,10572,57,10571,31962,31963,27319,75,31961,31966],"class_list":["post-65751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-greenland","tag-arctic-regions","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-denmark","tag-donald-j","tag-europe","tag-frederiksen","tag-greenland","tag-mette","tag-military-bases-and-installations","tag-politics-and-government","tag-territorial-disputes","tag-trump","tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces","tag-united-states-international-relations"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116445583019586893","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}