From Greenland to Ørsted, US pressure unsettles Denmark
Danish officials grapple with a Trump administration oscillating between friend and foe
Twenty-four hours can be a long time in Danish-US relations.
Hours after Denmark’s foreign minister stood alongside Californian governor Gavin Newsom — the self-anointed Democratic leader of the “resistance” to Donald Trump — the US halted work on a $1.5bn offshore wind farm owned by Danish renewables developer Ørsted.
Were the two events on Friday a coincidence? Or a warning? Markets did not wait to find out: Ørsted shares plunged to a record low on Monday.
What might once have seemed like a minor commercial scuffle now feels like a geopolitical shot across the bow.
For Danish officials, it adds weight to a question that has quietly troubled the kingdom since the US president first floated the idea of taking over Greenland: how do you navigate an alliance with a superpower that starts acting like a threat?
Other countries, including Canada and Panama, have borne the brunt of Trump’s expansionist ambitions too. But Danish officials, past and present, say that his focus on Greenland — a semi-autonomous part of the kingdom of Denmark — is particularly dangerous.
“The scary thing about Trump’s rhetoric is that it’s very similar to the rhetoric of [Vladimir] Putin and Xi Jinping,” said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister and ex-head of Nato, speaking before the Ørsted move.
It could embolden the Russian and Chinese presidents on Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, he argued.
“We should treat Trump the same way as we treat Putin and Xi Jinping,” Rasmussen posited. “Autocrats only respect one thing: power, a firm stance. You have to stand up for your own values, your own interests.”
Officials in both Copenhagen and Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, are still struggling to calibrate their response to Trump. Initially, they tried a softly, softly approach, insisting that they too were interested in discussing America’s interest in increased Arctic security.
But in recent months they have become more assertive. Denmark announced before the summer that two of its Merlin helicopters had landed in Greenland, the frigate Niels Juel was patrolling its waters and fighter jets would also arrive soon.
Shortly afterwards came another show of strength: a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Greenland where he stated of Trump’s overtures: “I don’t think that’s what allies do.”
The question now is whether Ørsted — which is 50 per cent owned by the Danish state — has become part of the shadow war on Greenland.
Newsom and Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark’s foreign minister and a former prime minister, were all smiles on Friday in California but others raised doubts on the wisdom of such a visit given the tensions between Copenhagen and Washington.
“It doesn’t seem so wise,” said one former Danish official, although others doubted that there was a direct link between the Newsom meeting and the order to halt Ørsted’s project off Rhode Island.
Greenland is equally befuddled by Washington acting more as foe than friend. Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for business, minerals and energy, says the Arctic island’s 57,000 people have been baffled by the ideology of expansionism espoused by what is after all its main security guarantor.
“The idea of taking other countries seemed to be a thing of the past . . . Right now, we’re trying to adjust. We’ve been a bit naive, all of us,” she said.
The difficulty for both Denmark and Greenland will be finding a way of appeasing the US. Danish officials say Trump’s two publicly stated reasons for wanting Greenland — national security and deposits of rare minerals — are both achievable without a takeover.
The US already has a military base on Greenland. Both Copenhagen and Nuuk have repeatedly said they are open to a bigger American presence, even if Washington itself has slashed the number of troops present in recent decades.
Likewise, Greenland is desperate to attract international investors to its mining sector, but most have been deterred by high costs, an inhospitable climate and long payback times.
That leaves some in Copenhagen believing that Trump’s biggest motivation is the optics of acquiring new territory. “He’s a real estate man, and this would be a big real estate deal,” said one Danish official.
Denmark’s current strategy is to play for time. Trump expressed his desire for Greenland once before in 2019, but the story fizzled out within months as he entered re-election mode. This time, he has a full four-year term but has said less about it in recent months.
For Ørsted, time is not a luxury given its balance sheet was already under pressure. The Trump administration issued a similar stop order on a wind farm owned by Equinor, the Norwegian energy group. But it had Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s finance minister, former head of Nato and close Trump ally, to fight its corner.
Unfortunately for Ørsted, Denmark’s ties to the White House are not as strong.