Europe correspondent
BBCAll his grownup occasion, Colonel Soren Knudsen stepped ahead when his nation known as. And when its allies did.
He fought along US troops, particularly in Afghanistan, and for a occasion used to be Denmark’s maximum senior officer there. He counted 58 rocket assaults all over his responsibility.
“I was awarded a Bronze Star Medal by the United States and they gave me the Stars and Stripes. They have been hanging on my wall in our house ever since and I have proudly shown them to everybody.”
Upcoming one thing modified.
“After JD Vance’s statement on Greenland, the president’s disrespect for internationally acknowledged borders, I took those that Stars and Stripes down and the medal has been put away,” Soren says, his accentuation breaking a tiny.
This time earlier than Congress, the United States president doubled ill on his want to clutch the arena’s greatest island: Greenland, an self sustaining field of the Kingdom of Denmark.
“My first feeling was that it hurts, and the second is that I’m offended,” Col Knudsen laments.
I meet him within the first weeks of his leaving outdoor Denmark’s 18th Century royal place of dwelling, Amalienborg Palace within the middle of Copenhagen.
All of a sudden, pipers hit up and squaddies wave by way of.
As of late’s Converting of the Safe comes at a occasion when the Trump management has no longer simply tweaked however defenestrated maximum guesses round US-Ecu safety that experience held speedy for 80 years.
“It’s about values and when those values are axed by what we thought was an ally, it gets very tough to watch.” Soren says together with his American spouse Gina at his facet.
“Denmark freely and without question joined those efforts where my husband served,” she says.
“So it comes as a injury to listen to ultimatum from a rustic that I additionally love and to really feel that alliance is being trampled on. This feels private, no longer like some summary international coverage tactic.”
Soren has not given up all hope though.
“It’s my hope and my worship that I will be able to one moment be capable of put [the flag] again at the wall,” he confides.
Getty ImagesThere’s no sign his prayers will be answered soon.
Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, goes to the polls next week with all the main parties backing independence at some point in the future.
A takeover by Donald Trump – potentially by force – is not on the ballot paper.
Not far from the royal palace stands Denmark’s memorial to its soldiers lost in recent battle.
Carved on the stone-covered walls are the names of those killed alongside their Western allies.
The section honouring the fallen in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan is particularly sizeable.
Denmark lost 44 soldiers in Afghanistan, which as a proportion of its less than six million population, was more than any other ally apart from the US. In Iraq, eight Danish soldiers died.
This is why the president’s words sting so much.
Getty ImagesOne man very well placed to consider what Trump’s ambitions for Greenland actually amount to is Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
“President Trump’s declaration of goal to possibly remove Greenland by way of drive may be very matching to President Putin’s rhetoric in relation to Ukraine,” he tells the BBC.
The former prime minister of Denmark and ex-secretary general of the Nato alliance argues this is the moment Denmark and the rest of Europe must step up to better protect itself if the US is not willing to.
“Since my youth, I’ve admired the US and their position as the arena’s policeman. And I believe we’d like a policeman to safeguard global regulation and layout but when the US does no longer wish to shoot that position, upcoming Europe should be capable of barricade itself, to get up by itself toes.”
Fogh Rasmussen doesn’t though believe the policeman is about to turn felon.
“I wish to pressure I don’t suppose on the finish of the moment that the American citizens will remove Greenland by way of drive.”
President Trump first talked about a Greenland takeover in his first term of office before returning to the theme at the start of this year.
But now, after blindsiding supposed allies with his latest moves on Ukraine, tariffs, as well as the Middle East, Denmark is urgently trying the assess the true threat.
For many younger Danes, control of Greenland is plain wrong – an unfathomable colonial hangover.
It doesn’t mean they want it handed straight over the US instead.
“We do have connections to Greenland,” says music student Molly. “Denmark and Greenland are fairly separated I’d say however I nonetheless have pals from there so this does have an effect on me fairly individually.”
“I to find it actually horrifying,” says 18-year-old music student Luukas.
“The whole lot he sees, he is going then. And the object with the oil and cash, he doesn’t serve in regards to the situation, he doesn’t serve about any person or anything else.”
His friend Clara chips in that Trump is now so powerful he can “have an effect on their day by day occasion” from thousands of miles away, in what is an era of unprecedented jeopardy.
In light of President Trump’s suspension of military aid for Ukraine and his deep reluctance to fund Europe’s security, Denmark has been at the heart of the drive to boost defence spending across the continent.
The country has just announced it will allocate more than 3% of its GDP to defence spending in 2025 and 2026 to protect against future aggression from Russia or elsewhere.
Meanwhile, security analyst Hans Tino Hansen stands in front of a huge screen in what he calls his “ops room”, at his Copenhagen headquarters.
“This map is the place we replace every day our blackmail image in keeping with indicators and incidents far and wide the arena,” says Hans, who has been running Risk Intelligence for the past 25 years.
As part of Denmark’s increased defence spending, it’s bolstering its strength in the “Top North” with an extra two billion euros announced in January and three new Arctic naval vessels and investment in long-range drones.
Hans believes Arctic security can be tightened further, not by an American takeover – but with new deals that restore US influence.
“When you create extra assurances, each on defence and safety, but additionally financial ones and on uncooked fabrics, upcoming we’re kind of going again to the place we had been within the 50s and 60s.”
But the story stretches further back than the mid-20th Century.
“When you have a look at this globe, Greenland is essentially the most centrally situated park on Earth,” says world-renowned geologist Prof Minik Rosing, gesticulating in his wood-panelled office.
The serenity of his room reflects the temperament of a man who grew up in a settlement of just “seven or 8 family” in the Nuuk fjord of the island.
But a key reason his homeland is now coming under increasing scrutiny from outsiders is the rich mineral deposits beneath the Arctic ice.
We’ve seen how Ukraine’s natural resources have caught President Trump’s eye in much the same way.
“Some of these minerals that they speak about like uncommon metals, uncommon earth components – they’re if truth be told no longer uncommon. What is unusual is the virtue of them,” he reasons.
Prof Rosing says the vastness of Greenland and the lack of infrastructure are just two elements why the island may not be the cashpoint some Americans are hoping for.
“They’re a minuscule a part of the mining business and the economic system of extracting them may be very unsure, while the funding to start out extracting may be very top. The danger of the funding is simply too top relative to the possible achieve.”
ReutersThe current Greenlandic government says there will be a vote on independence at some point following next week’s election.
Although surely unintentional, President Trump’s designs on the island have shone a light on a desire found among the Inuit to finally break free from 300 years of Danish control.
But Prof Rosing believes, despite all the latent mineral wealth, his fellow Greenlanders are in no hurry to forego the annual block grant of the equivalent of £480m (€570m) it receives from Copenhagen.
This accounts for easily more than half of the island’s public budget.
“Crowd speak about fitness services and products, faculties, the upcoming outboard engine they would like on their boat and what’s the cost of fuel and all of these items that standard family do,” he says.
“It’s no longer like they get up up with a heavy knife, stream it within the breeze and yelp sovereignty, sovereignty.”
In terms of Trump’s apparent obsession with taking Greenland, Fogh Rasmussen fears there may be a troubling conclusion to be drawn.
One that would render the Danes unable to do business with a man whose view on territorial integrity is so wildly incompatible from theirs.
“I perceive rather well the American strategic pastime within the minerals, however in relation to mining in Greenland, they’ve proven disagree pastime,” he says.
“That leaves me with the worry that possibly it’s no longer about safety, possibly it’s no longer about minerals, possibly it is only a query of increasing the field of the US.
“And that’s actually a point where we are not able to accommodate President Trump.”
Alternative reporting by way of Kostas Kallergis