Denmark’s Greenland Illusion

On January 14, 2026, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt stepped out of a tense, closed-door meeting at the White House. Inside, they had spent an hour facing Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The subject was Greenland — its future, its security, and President Trump’s increasingly explicit ambition to bring the Arctic territory under American control.

Outside the Danish embassy, the scene unfolded in a way that felt unmistakably Danish. First came a quick fist bump and shoulder tap between Løkke and Ambassador Jesper Møller Sørensen — a small gesture of relief and solidarity after polite confrontation. Then came the cigarettes. Løkke lit one, exhaled deeply, and stood for a moment as if releasing the pressure of diplomacy performed at full emotional restraint.

In Copenhagen, this scene reads as quiet heroism. Løkke later described the talks as “frank but also constructive”. He admitted there were no breakthroughs — “we didn’t manage to change the American position” — but emphasized progress nonetheless. The parties agreed to establish a high-level working group to “explore a common way forward”, addressing American security concerns while respecting Denmark’s red lines: sovereignty over Greenland and the right of Greenlanders to self-determination.

In Denmark, this is what responsible leadership looks like. Calm under pressure. Dialogue instead of escalation. Inclusion rather than force. Keep talking. Keep the process alive. Trust that reason, patience, and goodwill will eventually soften conflict — or at least contain it. This reflects the Danish consensus model at its purest: the belief that broad agreement is preferable to confrontation, and that standing together is itself a form of strength. Danish media quickly filled with commentators reassuring one another that unity would prevail, that composure itself was a strategic asset. One senior politician — the chair of the Danish Foreign Policy Committee – even spoke approvingly of “diplomatic body contact” — as if proximity, tone, and mutual recognition could substitute for leverage.

Across the Atlantic, the reaction was very different. In American conservative media, particularly on Fox News, the episode was treated less as diplomacy and more as farce. The Five show mocked Løkke Rasmussen’s diplomatic gestures and asked: is this serious? Another European delegation proposing committees and working groups while Trump speaks the language of control and outcomes. The fist bump looked like relief after folding. The cigarette break looked like exhaustion, not resolve. Politeness in the face of power. This contrast is not just cultural misunderstanding. It exposes a deeper fracture in today’s world order — one that Denmark, and much of Europe, is struggling to face.

Constructive Dialogue or Capitulation by Process?

If we strip away the diplomatic language, the White House meeting delivered a blunt result: nothing changed. The American position remains intact. Trump’s administration continues to treat Greenland as a strategic necessity for U.S. national security, not as a subject for moral debate or historical sensitivity. Danish sovereignty and Greenlandic self-determination were acknowledged politely — and then set aside.

What Denmark and Greenland received in return was not compromise, but time. A working group. Meetings “in the coming weeks”. A structured process to keep talking.

From Copenhagen’s perspective, this is progress. A working group is the centre piece of Danish democracy — a way to delay hard decisions and make people feel they have influence. In Danish political culture, process is power. Turning confrontation into conversation is a victory. Delay is not failure; it is space for trust-building, mutual understanding, and gradual de-escalation.

Løkke Rasmussen played his role perfectly: calm, experienced, reasonable. The adult in the room.

But in Washington, the same outcome is read very differently. From a Trumpian worldview, the meeting confirmed asymmetry. Denmark wants respect for red lines. The United States sees leverage. Denmark believes dialogue restrains power. Trump believes power defines reality.

The working group does not constrain American options. It suspends Danish ones. While committees meet, pressure can be applied elsewhere: directly to Greenlandic elites, through investment promises, security guarantees, or economic incentives that bypass Copenhagen entirely. Dialogue buys time, but not for Denmark.

This is the uncomfortable truth: when one side treats process as an end in itself and the other treats it as a stalling tactic, the advantage lies with the side that is willing to act.

Calling this “constructive” may be emotionally comforting for Danes. Strategically, it edges toward capitulation, not because Denmark agrees with Trump, but because it has no alternative language of power to deploy.

From Feminized Politics to the Return of Raw Power

To understand why Denmark’s response feels so emotionally charged, we need to step back from Greenland and look at the wider transformation of global politics.

For roughly fifty years, Europe has lived inside what can be described as a feminized political order. This is not about gender, but about governing style. Feminized politics prioritises consensus over command, care over coercion, process over outcomes, and legitimacy over dominance. It seeks to include rather than defeat. It assumes that conflict can be managed — even dissolved — through dialogue, norms, and institutions — an approach that sounds, to some observers, almost like a “woman who wants to talk it over”.

This political culture built the European welfare state. It created high-trust societies like Denmark. It delivered peace, equality, and internal stability. But it also trained European leaders to see overt power as dangerous, vulgar, or illegitimate.

That world is ending.

The emerging global order is increasingly shaped by leaders operating in a more openly masculine logic of power: hierarchy, strength signalling, transactional loyalty, and visible dominance. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping are not ideological allies. But they share one assumption: if you cannot enforce your claim, you do not truly possess it.

In this worldview, territory matters again. Geography matters again. Power is not something to be hidden behind institutions — it is something to be demonstrated.

Denmark, like much of Europe, is still speaking the language of the previous era. It appeals to norms in a moment when norms no longer enforce themselves. It responds to threats with process. It treats moral outrage as deterrence.

Trump does not hear moral argument. He hears opportunity.

Mette Frederiksen and the Illusion of the Iron Fist

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wants to appear strong. Her rhetoric is firm. She speaks of sovereignty, unacceptable behaviour, and standing up to pressure. But her strength operates entirely within a feminized political framework that fundamentally distrusts domination and coercion.

This creates a contradiction at the heart of Danish leadership. Denmark wants the symbolism of strength without embracing the realities that strength historically requires. It wants sovereignty without hierarchy, authority without command, and control without coercion.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Denmark’s relationship with Greenland.

Denmark never colonized Greenland in the classic imperial sense. It ruled softly. It governed through welfare, care, and gradual autonomy. It feared being a colonizer more than it feared being weak. Morally, this is often presented as progress — and in many ways it is. Strategically, it created ambiguity about responsibility, authority, and power.

Denmark wanted legitimacy without domination. Influence without force. That worked in a world where no one challenged the arrangement. It fails in a world where great powers think in terms of control.

Trump does not see Greenland as a relationship. He sees it as strategic space — a gateway for Arctic basing, defence projects like “Golden Dome”, and leverage against Russia and China. Denmark sees Greenland as a moral responsibility. These are incompatible understandings of reality.

Sovereignty Without Power

Denmark’s response to Trump is emotional not because it is irrational, but because it is existential. Trump is not just threatening territory. He is threatening the political culture Denmark has built its identity on.

For decades, Denmark believed that power could be civilized away. That rules would replace force. That history had moved past domination. Trump, Putin, and Xi are saying — explicitly or implicitly — that this belief was a luxury, not a law of nature. That is why the fist bump and the cigarette matter. They are symbols of a political culture trying to calm itself after encountering a form of power it no longer recognizes or accepts.

The Greenland crisis is not, at its core, about Donald Trump. Nor is it primarily about American tone or European sensitivity. It is about a structural mismatch between how Denmark — and Europe more broadly — understands sovereignty, and how power now operates in the world.

In a recent episode of the UnHerd podcast, devoted to the question of whether Donald Trump could ultimately succeed in gaining control over Greenland, Cambridge professor of political economy Helen Thompson offered a definition that reframed the entire debate:

“The definition of sovereignty is that you can provide your own security.”

Taken seriously, that definition leads to an uncomfortable conclusion. Denmark cannot provide security for Greenland. It already relies on the United States to do so and openly asks Washington to carry that responsibility.

Seen in that light, the Greenland dispute raises a legitimate question: what does Danish sovereignty over Greenland actually mean in practice? And if that question is uncomfortable for Denmark, it is even more unsettling for Europe as a whole.

Denmark’s position is therefore not simply challenged from the outside. It is internally contradictory. The Danish state speaks the language of sovereignty while outsourcing its enforcement. It insists on dialogue and norms in a strategic environment where capability, geography, and power have returned as decisive factors.

Denmark’s instinct to talk, include, and de-escalate is rational within the political culture it was built for. But that culture assumed a world in which security was stable, norms were collectively enforced, and dependence carried no political cost.

That world no longer exists.

The choice Denmark faces is not between values and power. It is whether those values can survive without power behind them. If sovereignty means the ability to provide security, then sovereignty without capability is not a principle — it is a vulnerability.

Greenland is simply the place where that reality can no longer be postponed.