Danish response after Trump's threat: "Even closer cooperation with the USA"

Denmark is prepared to cooperate even more closely with the USA after Donald Trump’s Greenland threat. That’s according to the country’s Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
– To ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled, he says.

It has been more than a thousand years since Vikings from Iceland and Norway first settled on the south coast of Greenland. And now Donald Trump, the incoming president of a nation less than a quarter of that age, wants to claim the island. With threats or violence, if necessary.

Something that has triggered a crisis between the USA and Europe.

“Open to dialogue”

At the center of events is the Danish government. The response from Copenhagen has been interpreted by the world as the Danes being prepared to give in to Trump’s demands. At least to some extent.

– We are open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we might possibly cooperate even more closely than we already do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled, says Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen to Danish media.

Løkke Rasmussen has previously been Denmark’s Prime Minister. In the summer of 2022, he founded the party Moderaterne; partly inspired by Fredrik Reinfeldt and the Swedish party of the same name.

Since December of the same year, the liberal profile has been Denmark’s Foreign Minister, in a government led by the Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen.

Not daring to dismiss

The Danish government has repeatedly stated that Greenland is not for sale. And Løkke Rasmussen emphasizes the Danish national community, which includes Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland.

But neither Frederiksen nor Løkke Rasmussen have outright dismissed Trump’s proposal that Greenland, in one way or another, could be annexed by the USA. Instead, there has been talk of Greenland potentially becoming independent.

And it’s a policy of appeasement that the government is criticized for. Or at least critical questions are being asked. Henrik Kjerrumgaard, former campaign manager for the Radical Left, believes that the government is afraid of offending the USA by rejecting Trump’s proposal.

– I think it’s incredibly deliberate, because otherwise they could escalate the conflict, he tells Ekstrabladet.

He likens Denmark to a victim of bullying in the schoolyard, which has the tactic of not provoking the bully USA. Because then the situation could get even worse.