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“WE’RE TALKING ABOUT acquiring, not leasing…We have bases on Greenland. I could put a lot of soldiers if I want but you need more than that. You need ownership. You really need title.”

So said the President of the United States of America, Donald J Trump, recently when queried on his interest in Greenland. He subsequently posted on his Truth Social network: “NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable.”

Tellingly, the real estate baron opines without any regard for national sovereignty or the human rights of the inhabitants of the vast arctic island that is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Instead, he wants to have “title” to Greenland, as if it were a merely another
skyscraper or golf course being added to his sizable collection.

At any rate, it is in this fraught milieu that Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Vivian Motzfeldt, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland respectively, attended a meeting at the White House with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The western world had been looking on anxiously. Would the visitors be treated to a dressing down akin to the one President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine received in February 2025?

Were President Trump’s top deputies prepared to inform their guests that the US was going in full steam ahead, the transatlantic relationship and the concerns of old friends be damned? Might this be the de facto end of NATO?

While it is far too early to say that the European worries have been completely allayed, it does appear that there has at least been something of a temporary reprieve. At a press briefing outside the Danish embassy shortly after the conclusion of the gathering, the two foreign ministers attested that the two sides had agreed to disagree........

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