{"id":71571,"date":"2026-04-30T01:35:58","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/71571\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T01:35:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:35:58","slug":"greenland-could-become-biggest-car-crash-in-transatlantic-relations-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/71571\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenland could become biggest car crash in transatlantic relations \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

But senior Danish officials also believe Trump\u2019s territorial ambitions are, indeed, real, even if they aren\u2019t based on practical objectives. They\u2019re all about the untidiness of the map.<\/p>\n

Trump regards the huge, empty foreign landmass to his northeast as an affront to American greatness \u2014 a piece of real estate that both Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine dictate should belong to the Land of the Free.<\/p>\n

The U.S. president takes the same map-driven view of Canada. However, there he suspects the annexation of some 40 million people might be impossible or, at the very least, a long-term project. Grabbing a large island, with the population of a medium-sized town (56,000 Greenlanders) and 80 percent covered in ice, should be simpler.<\/p>\n

And what about sovereignty or self-determination? When Trump was asked this back in January, he replied: \u201cI\u2019m sure Denmark will come along.\u201d<\/a> He also made no mention of the Greenlanders, 89 percent of whom are Inuit and 85 percent of whom rejected an American future<\/a> in a January poll.<\/p>\n

\"\"But senior Danish officials also believe Trump\u2019s territorial ambitions are, indeed, real, even if they aren\u2019t based on practical objectives. | Nils Meilvang\/EPA<\/p>\n

So, Danish officials are convinced the Trump White House is planning something \u2014 a view substantiated by a Wall Street Journal report in May about U.S. intelligence agencies trying to identify \u201cuseful\u201d Greenlanders sympathetic to Trump\u2019s agenda, as well as news that Denmark summoned a top U.S. diplomat<\/a> in August to discuss reports of three American citizens with alleged links to Trump conducting covert operations in Greenland. Their objective, the Danish public broadcaster DR reported, was to foment ill feeling against Copenhagen.<\/p>\n

Hence, the Danish government doesn\u2019t expect a military invasion \u2014 it expects an invasion of dollars. Either as an outright offer to pay a large sum to each Greenlander, or a campaign to buy influence and local politicians. And the fear in Copenhagen is that a slow-motion land grab won\u2019t provoke a strong enough response in Brussels or among its EU partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But senior Danish officials also believe Trump\u2019s territorial ambitions are, indeed, real, even if they aren\u2019t based on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[4893,227,219,26,184,230,38907,57,3504,19424,2276,1632,188,76],"class_list":["post-71571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-greenland","tag-borders","tag-canada","tag-cooperation","tag-denmark","tag-donald-trump","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-eu27","tag-greenland","tag-intelligence","tag-raw-materials","tag-security","tag-transatlantic-relations","tag-u-s-foreign-policy","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116491097575482020","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71571","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=71571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}