Democracies do not wage war against each other

NATO allies do not threaten to wage war against each other, neither during peacetime nor during periods of heightened tension

Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, such as the USA, and non-permanent members, such as Denmark, support a rule-based international order

Close trading partners solve economic disagreements rationally and peacefully

The Arctic Council works slowly, but steadily, to solve issues across wide political divisions

If the above has been the old normal, on 7 January 2025, Donald Trump launched a new normal when he threatened Denmark – a close partner of the United States of America and a long-standing military ally – with military and economic sanctions, if Denmark does not cede control over Greenland to the US.

Turkey and Greece may have threatened each other despite being North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members. However, it is unheard of for the US to threaten Denmark, a NATO ally, and demand control over its autonomous territory, the way Trump did.

Trump threatens to take over Greenland

To be sure, already in 2019, Trump did suggest that the US should buy Greenland. But, at that time, he did not back his “proposal” with a threat of armed force. As former Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Per Stig Møller recently said in a TV interview, the current crisis is the most serious in decades because the US, instead of covering our back, suddenly pushes our back.

The situation, he reckoned, is worse than during the Muhammad crisis, when, in 2005, the Muslim ummah rose in protest against the newspaper cartoons. Muslims attacked Danish embassies abroad, but the Muslim countries did not threaten to attack Danish territory. Per Stig Møller added that during the 1930s, Hitler also did not try to take back North Schleswig, which Germany had to cede to Denmark after a plebiscite following World War I.

During his time as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2001 to 2010, Per Stig Møller had worked to strengthen transatlantic cooperation. In 2004, he signed an agreement with Colin Powell and Josef Motzfeldt from Greenland to amend and bolster the US military presence in Greenland.

Today, were the US to propose an increased military presence in Greenland, Denmark would be ready to find a mutually acceptable solution. However, Per Stig Møller added, if the US would undermine the long-standing bond of trust and reciprocity between the two countries, Denmark would have to rely on the EU and on the NATO leadership to shield Denmark from American provocations.

Image: The High North: Svalbard Snowscape, Digiscoped photo, Author, June 2011

Per Stig Møller was confident that reasonable people in Trump’s administration would see his point. Unfortunately, the point with the Trump administration is that such people – often referred to as the ‘guardrails’ or ‘the adults in the room’ – are in short supply.

The contrast between Trump’s new abnormal and the old normal is stark. For years before Trump came to power, the US included the Arctic Council as well as the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, and the Council of Baltic Sea States in attempts to fashion a post-Soviet security architecture. Such views were held by the long-serving US Undersecretary of State, Strobe Talbott, and later forcefully articulated by John Kerry, who was the Secretary of State from 2013-17.

However, by 2018 Talbott’s optimism had dampened:

For decades, Europe showed the world that sovereign nations can construct a system that allows them to govern the entire continent with rules, norms and policies that help democracies. I know it doesn’t feel as a great success right now. For the last couple of years, there have been tensions and failures, and there has also been a pressure from the East. And now, unfortunately, there are pressures from the United States.

Since 2018, collaboration in the high North has been an uphill task. In 2022, the Arctic Council decided to work only on issues in which Russia was not involved. In 2023, Russia left the Barents Euro-Arctic Council.

Though Russia and the US have been largely responsible for the worsening situation, it is not as if Denmark has been faultless. Per Stig Møller’s successor as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lene Espersen, famously cancelled her attendance at a meeting of the core group of the Arctic Council in 2010. Hillary Clinton and three other Foreign Ministers found time to attend, but Espersen skipped the meeting in favour of a family holiday to Mallorca in Spain. This glaring sin of omission made it obvious that the official Denmark did not always prioritize Greenland.

Greenland has, in fact, often accused Denmark of benign neglect, colonial thinking, discrimination, and even genocide.

Whoever is responsible for the downhill curve, the transatlantic consensus has weakened to the degree that the European Union’s top military official, Robert Briege, recently advocated stationing troops from EU countries in Greenland in addition to the US forces already stationed there, even though Greenland is not part of the EU.

Entangled history of Denmark and Greenland

Image: The 74th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron F-89s aircraft of the US Air Force at the Thule Air Base, Greenland in 1955. Photo by David W. Menard, USAF.

Relations between Denmark and Greenland go back hundreds of years to the pre-Christian times when the Vikings flourished in Scandinavia. Norse Vikings reached Greenland from Iceland c. 986 A.D. Later, the Inuit from North America reached Greenland, where they founded the Thule culture based on fishing and whaling. The Thule Inuits replaced the earlier Dorset culture, which had also originated in North America.

In 1397 Denmark, Sweden and Norway joined together in the Kalmar Union, which included Iceland and Greenland. Sweden broke the union in 1448, but Denmark and Norway stayed together in one kingdom until 1814. During this period, the Danish-Norwegian monarch ruled over the Norse in Greenland, but only notionally so, because the Norse Vikings died out around 1500.

The reason for their disappearance may have been climate change, an overreliance on sheep rearing, abandonment by mainland Europeans who stopped sailing to Greenland, or extermination by the Inuit.

When the Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede came to Greenland in 1721, he realized that the Inuit were the only people in Greenland. He had wanted to do missionary work among the Norse Vikings, but he ended up doing so among the Inuit instead. He was based in Nuuk – the city where Donald Trump Jr. landed and saw the statue of Hans Egede without, perhaps, realizing who he was.

From the 1730s till today, Greenland has remained a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenland was not a colony like the Danish possessions in India, Africa and the Caribbeans. Instead, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland were units in a multinational, multicultural Danish realm.

Greenland became a district in 1953, got its own parliament in 1979 and its own flag and home rule in 1985. In 2009, Greenland became autonomous with control of its underground resources and the right to “take home,” or transfer, administrative tasks previously financed by and administered from Copenhagen.

The exit from the Danish realm

The self-government agreement lays down the procedure by which Greenland may attain full independence by exiting the realm of Denmark (Rigsfælleskabet). The Government of Greenland would have to activate the process and negotiate with the Danish government. The parliament of Greenland would have to concur, and finally independence would have to be confirmed or rejected by Greenland’s 27,000 voters in a popular referendum.

Elections to Greenland’s parliament, Inatsisartut, will take place on 11 March 2025. Taking advantage of the commotion caused by Trump’s announcements, some politicians in Greenland have renewed their criticism of Denmark and indicated that the time for Greenland’s exit from the Danish realm may not be far away.

However, it is unclear what this exactly would mean, and whether it is realistic.

Image: This map of the North Atlantic hangs on a wall at the Greenland Representation in the old warehouse at the North Atlantic Quay in Copenhagen. Greenland is fifty times bigger than Denmark, or two-thirds the size of India. The population of Greenland is around 56.000 people. The population density of Ladakh is about 30 times higher than the population density of Greenland. Photo: Author, January 2025

In Denmark it is often said that if Greenland breaks loose, it would become dependent on the US (or China or Russia) on terms which are less favourable to Greenlanders than what they presently enjoy. Denmark currently pays around 40 percent of the cost of running those services, which have ostensibly been “taken home” to Greenland.

In addition, Denmark pays for police and defence. In total, Denmark contributes roughly half of Greenland’s budget.

Greenland has only one major source of income, i.e. fisheries, particularly shrimp and halibut fisheries. Many Inuit, as well as many Danes, hope that tourism and mining will fill the coffers of the state in the future. It is well known that the underground contains large mineral deposits, but at present only two mines seem to be operating. According to the geologist Minik Rosing, it is not certain that the much-talked-about rare minerals can be profitably exploited given the cost of extraction and unpredictable demand.

Even if an independent Greenland would be able to compensate for the loss of Danish funding, Greenland would still lack skilled workforce. The level of education in Greenland has gone up, but not sufficiently to run a modern welfare state. Moreover, many well-educated Greenlanders live in Denmark. Similarly, many Danes (and others) live and work in Greenland.

Corruption is another problem standing in the way of independence. According to Transparency International’s “Corruption Perception Index.” Denmark is the least corrupt country in the world. Greenland, however, does not figure on the list. It is one among a few grey areas on the map.

Even so, I would venture the guess that corruption is a chronic problem in Greenland.

In January 2025, Lars Emil Johansen, who was head of government in the 1990s, was sentenced to six months in jail for misappropriating around USD 100,000 with the help of the head of the Nuuk municipality. Two other heads of government, Aleqa Hammond and Kuupik Kleist, have had to leave office after misusing public funds for private purposes.

Greenland is represented by two members in the Danish parliament in Copenhagen. One of them, Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, is a young and outspoken politician from the Siumut party. She comes from an important political family. Her two brothers – Minik and Qarsoq – have also worked for the Siumut Party. However, their careers have been marred by drug offences, allegations of mismanagement of party affairs, and an unauthorised meeting with a mining company that has threatened Greenland and Denmark with a colossal lawsuit for breach of contract.

The career of their sister has apparently not been negatively affected by this. She maintains the stance of a staunch defender of the Inuit people, for instance, by insisting on speaking Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) in the Danish parliament. Unlike the Alaska natives and Inuit in Canada, the Inuit in Greenland have largely retained their language.

In January, Kuno Fencke, who is a member of the parliament of Greenland (the Inatsisartut) and the fiancé of Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, went to Washington DC, where he met Andy Ogles, a Republican who tabled the “Make Greenland Great Again Act” on January 14. Kuno Fencke and Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam are both from the Siumut Party. Under pressure, the party leadership agreed to speed up the process for independence. However, Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam was not satisfied and left the party on February 7.  

It is likely that the two questions regarding independence and regarding association with the US respectively will get further entangled during the upcoming elections. Some politicians who publicly profess that they want to be neither Danes, nor Americans, may de facto put their eggs in the US basket.

The possibility of buying politicians and voters in the coming elections has been curtailed by Greenland’s decision to ban foreign money in the elections rushed through parliament on the same day elections were declared.

The other member of the Danish parliament representing Greenland, Aaja Chemnitz, has accused Kuno Fencke of undermining the interests of the country by hobnobbing with American politicians against the official policy line. Kuno Fencke has responded by filing a police complaint against Chemnitz.

While some politicians in Greenland clearly try to make hay while the sun shines to fast-track full independence, voters in Greenland may not agree. A recent poll showed that 85 percent of the population answered with a resounding “no” to the following question: “Do you want Greenland to leave the Danish realm and become a part of the USA instead?”

Another poll showed that 90 percent of Danes did not want the US to own or control Greenland. Rather, 70 percent of the Danes wanted to retain the bond between Greenland and Denmark either in its present form or in a new form giving Greenland more independence.

Rearguard action or forward policy

For the time being, the Danish government works in tandem with the government of Greenland and with the EU to make it clear that the US has no claim to Greenland. At the same time, in a belated response to US critique, Denmark has suddenly become more than willing to increase its military budget as the US has long demanded.

On January 27, the governments of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Isles announced a new defence agreement worth around USD 2 billion for the Arctic and the North Atlantic. During the period 2025-33, Denmark will acquire three new ships that could carry helicopters, two long-range drones, two more sled-patrols, and so on.

While this might have been a suitable outlay ten years ago, today it is too little too late. According to military analyst Lars Struwe, the Danish military needs capacities to fight both submarines, aircraft, and drones. The three new navy ships will not have enough firepower to make a credible contribution to NATO forces.

As for the new dog-sled patrols, Trump made it a point to ridicule them remarking, “They deployed two dog sleds a few weeks back and called that security.”

Unlike Rajasthan’s camel-born regiment, the dog sled patrols in northeastern Greenland may seem quaint and outdated, but these legendary units do play a military role. Ridiculing the Sirius patrol is an insult akin to ridiculing the soldiers on the Siachen glacier. In any case, it later transpired that the two news patrols will probably be mechanized snow-scooters that can be deployed from the air, rather than dog-sled patrols.

Video: Glorifying the Sirius patrol in the northeastern part of Greenland. Slædepatruljen Sirius | Sirius Patrol | Tribute 2019.

Denmark seems to be in a fix here. If Denmark invests heavily in capacities in Greenland, it risks losing these capacities to Greenland if the latter chooses independence. Danes are split equally when asked whether Denmark should continue to invest in Greenland’s defence not knowing whether there will be a push for early independence.

In a hard-nosed essay that seeks to optimize Danish investments in the event of Greenland exiting the Danish realm, military analyst Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen has proposed to shift the headquarter of the Joint Arctic Command from Greenland to the Faroe Islands from where it may better monitor the GIUK-gap, i.e. the gap between Greenland, Iceland and the UK.

New acquisitions to the fleet, he writes, should be suitable for the Arctic as well as for the Baltic Sea, and the South China Sea as well. Financial control should be exerted by the Danish Ministry of Finance in such a way that Denmark does not repeatedly have to forgo its own interests in order to meet Greenland’s demands for more power and autonomy.

Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen’s is an extreme viewpoint. It also differs from what he said in 2011. As an adviser to the then government, he admonished that “world history is full of cases where nations went to war without wanting to do so.” To avoid a confrontation with Russia, Denmark should not escalate arms procurement.

Interestingly, the then Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Uffe-Ellemann-Jensen, did not buy this argument. He felt it was already too late to bank on Russian restraint.

At the heart of this discussion is the future of what constitutes the ’Danish realm’ or what is called Rigsfællesskabet in Danish. Denmark used to be a complex monarchy consisting of many units in Northern Germany and Southern Sweden, in addition to the Norway, Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. Gradually, the size of the Danish realm has shrunk.

During the Second World War, the USA took control of Iceland and in 1944, Iceland seceded from Denmark. Denmark would have preferred Iceland to wait till after the war. However, Iceland went for a clean cut since Denmark was occupied by Germany. The US also established military outposts in Greenland during the war. Acting on his own, and in contradiction to official Danish policy, the Danish Ambassador in Washington, Henrik Kaufmann, and representatives from Greenland signed an agreement – Defense of Greenland – which gave the US military control over Greenland, but not cede the Greenland as such.  

Image: Royal Arms of Denmark. Source: Great Brightstar

The Danish realm, therefore, consists of Denmark, Schleswig, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. The new monarch, Fredrik the 10th, ascended to the throne one year ago. He has updated and simplified the Royal Coat of Arms symbolizing Denmark (Three Lions), the Faroe Isle (Ram), Greenland (Polar Bear), and Schleswig/Southern Jutland (Two lions) with his own royal lineage in the centre.

If Greenland were to leave the Danish realm, its size would decrease by 98 percent. That would make it more difficult for Denmark to “punch above its weight,” as Barack Obama once phrased it. Denmark would become more of the small and homogenous nation-state that many Danes feel it already is.

The irony is that at this very point, Denmark will no longer be ethnically homogenous, because migration from Asia and Africa has made it complex in terms of ethnic diversity.

Myths of colonial takeovers: Will Greenland be different?

All is fair in love and war, and transatlantic politics seems no exception.

In today’s fluid situation, one wonders how Donald Trump’s mix of posturing and allurement might shape the outcome. It is still not clear whether Donald Trump is trying to tempt Greenland’s politicians to forsake Denmark by offering them favourable terms of accession. It is not impossible that the threats and insults flowing from the American “Vishwa Goonda” will gradually coalesce to become reasonable demands that may define a new normal.

Is Trump seriously planning to invade Greenland to grab the territory of a NATO ally, or is he just causing disruption to make Denmark and Greenland reveal their hands and give Trump a better deal?

Maybe anthropology can offer a perspective on this!

All over the world, people tell myths about how inequality, hierarchy, and dominance between people and nations came about.

In many countries, there is a myth that European nations, during their colonial forays, gained territory by cleverly fooling the locals. For example, in Diu on the Gujarat coast, a myth has it that “when the Portuguese asked Bahadur Shah for a piece of land on which to build an outpost, they requested a plot no bigger than a cowhide.” After the Sultan agreed, the Portuguese are said to have cut the cowhide into thin strips and laid them out end-to-end to claim an enormous swathe of land.

According to the anthropologist Michael Harbsmeier, this myth is found in many variations in Asia, North America, and Europe. It may be traced back to  the story of how Queen Dido founded the city-state of Carthage in 814 B.C. by convincing the king of Libya to give her land the size of an ox-hide that was subsequently cut up to inflate her claim.

In Africa, myths about how Africans lost wealth and power often centre on the greed of one’s own ancestors, rather than the trickery of others. As a West African myth has it, when God presented them with a choice Europeans chose a book, while Africans chose gold.

Native American mythology is not so much about clear winners and losers as stories about binary oppositions between the natural and the supernatural, fire and water, men and women, young and old, and even between twins!

Image: The Kellingin sea stack on the north coast of the Faroe Isles. The rough sea around the Faroe Isle has strategic importance. Digiscoped photo: Author May 2018

Myths in Greenland often follow the American structure. But, as Harbsmeier would agree, the myths about the encounter between the Inuit and the Norse Vikings, known as Kablunaks, are different. They have a progressive narrative structure and a clear outcome, i.e. the death of the Kablunaks.

In one version collected by Paul Egede, the son of Hans Egede, an Inuit was out hunting in a canoe, when a Kablunak sitting on the shore challenged him saying: “I am an Auk, try and hit me.” The Inuit rowed closer and killed the Kablunak with his throw-spear. After that enmity prevailed between the two groups, until the Inuit got the upper hand and set fire to the buildings of the Kablunaks.

Other myths recount the tale of how the Inuit - hiding behind white skins in front of their boats making the boats appear as icebergs - attacked and killed the fleeing Kablunaks.

Thus, encounters between nations and peoples may be thought of in terms of trickery and smartness, in terms of bad choices driven by greed rather than by long-term planning, in terms of eternal dualities, or in terms of victorious violent encounters.

In the current situation, radical Greenlanders seem to believe that the Inuits will ensnare both Danish and American Kablunaks, while more cautious Greenlanders choose the book rather than the promise of gold. Brash and brazen Americans, for their part, seem to think that by challenging and frightening the Danes sitting on the mineral-rich shore, they could be forced to drop Greenland in their lap.

They, however, seem to have missed the fact that the Danes and Inuit have a common history that makes cooperation possible, provided Greenland does not overplay its anti-colonial card.

In a tripartite match between Greenland, Denmark, and the USA with their hugely different population size, something apart from military might must be at play since the end-result is still difficult to predict.

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