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Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen attends a brief press conference with the German Chancellor in Berlin, Germany, January 28, 2025.
A Greenland temperature check (still cold, but the tea is hot)
Meanwhile, a Greenland independence movement is gaining momentum. Prime Minister Múte Egede recentlytold reporters, “We don’t want to be Danes. We don’t want to be Americans. We want to be Greenlanders.”
But can Greenland go it alone? Denmarkpays roughly $800 million a year to Greenland – making up half of Greenland’s government revenue. While only 57,000 people live on the island, the population maintains a high standard of living like their Nordic neighbors. An independent Greenland would still need economic and security support thanks to existing and rapidly developing external pressures.
If the United States made an aggressive move for the island, Trump would face more than just retaliation from the Danes and Europeans: Other major players, namely China and Russia, could respond aggressively to protect critical shipping routes.
On Wednesday, Danish MEP Morten Løkkegaardsuggested Greenland rejoin the European Union for “protection” from Trump’s threats. He said, “The situation has changed dramatically” since 1985, when the country officially left the European Communities byreferendum vote. Rejoining the EU would mean more support for economic development and security, as well as geopolitical influence.
Trump’s saber-rattling provides a new opportunity for Greenlanders to rethink their stance on European integration … and, perhaps, a way for Europe to strengthen its influence in the Arctic.
French President Emmanuel Macron receives Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, on Jan. 28, 2025.
France weighs EU troop deployment to Greenland
Geopolitics are heating up in the Arctic. Inan interview Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Paris had started talking with Copenhagen about sending troops to Greenland, and that the Danes are “open to considering it if our security interests are at stake.” When asked whether the US would invade Greenland, Barrot said, “That won’t happen … No one has any interest in entering into conflict with the European Union.” However, he added that “if Denmark requests the solidarity of the European Union member states, France will be ready to respond.”
Barrot isn’t the only European politician speculating on the need for military defense of Greenland. On Monday, the EU’s Military Committee head, Austrian Gen. Robert Brieger,floated the possibility of deploying EU troops to the island. And during a recent visit to Berlin by Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, German Chancellor Olaf Scholzstressed that “Borders must not be moved by force – to whom it may concern” – a not-so-subtle jab at US President Donald Trump, who has spoken about taking Greenland.
How might a deployment of French troops be received in Washington? Eurasia Group’s US director Clayton Allen says the US president would likely see it as a challenge. “Trump would see any move by France to send troops to Greenland as an escalation from what is, to him, a purchase attempt,” he says.
“It would give Trump or those around him a convenient and tangible justification for NATO pullback; if France deploys troops to counter US interests, why should the US expend resources on their defense?”
So far, the Danes are playing it cool. On a whirlwind tour of three European capitals this week, Frederiksen said she had “no reason to believe that there is any military threat to Greenland or Denmark,” but her government recently announceda €2 billion investment in Arctic defense, including three new navy vessels. When asked about the relationship between Europe and Trump, Frederiksen commented, “I think everyone in Europe can see that it will be a different collaboration now.”
At Davos, all eyes are on Trump
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Davos, Switzerland.
What’s been going on here?
It’s been Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. It’s been very much dominated by assessments, curiosity, concern about the transition in the US. A lot of businessmen are fairly, sort of, upbeat. They think there’s sort of a deregulation and lower taxes, that’s good. Economists are more worried. Debts and deficits, that’s not good. And those dealing with geopolitics, like myself, are deeply concerned.
Is he going to go to war with Denmark over Greenland? What’s going to happen with the Panama Canal? Is their Middle East policy that is credible? And what is he really up to when it comes to dealing with Mr. Putin on Ukraine? There are lots of questions, lots of concerns. But, upbeat assessment, in spite of that.
What Greenlanders might want from a deal with Trump
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: a Quick Take to kick off your week.
Let's talk about Greenland. First time I ever encountered it was when I was playing Risk in school, and it was this big island between North America and Europe that connected you with Iceland. But it was part of North America, at least on the Risk map, and that's how you got your five armies if you owned the whole thing. So you always threw a couple up there, a lot of big, big territory. And now we're visiting, and Donald Trump Jr. taking Air Trump One last week and landing in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Landed for a few hours, did some social media stuff, and then got back to Mar-a-Lago, where he's probably more comfortable. What's happening? Why do the Americans say that they are going to buy it, incoming President Trump, and what does it mean for American alliances and the future of the global order and all of that?
Well, first, let's recognize that as much as it sounds crazy, Trump is not the first president to offer to buy Greenland. He's actually the third. The first was Andrew Johnson. His Secretary of State, William Seward, who was down for Alaska, also offered 5.5 million to buy Greenland. This was back in 1868. The timing is interesting, of course. There's no historic claim on Greenland. The US troops did briefly occupy it in World War II for defensive purposes, but it's not as if the United States has any reason to believe that this should be American. It's not like, say, what the Russians say about Crimea.
And the Greenlandic government, which is itself, it represents all of 55,000 people, despite the size, is led by a separatist political party. They want independence. Independence is popular in Greenland. They've had a few polls, and people generally say that they'd like to be Greenlanders and not part of Denmark. And they are clearly leveraging all of this spotlight from Trump to advance having an independence referendum during parliamentary elections coming up real soon, like in April. And frankly, given that Denmark is a tiny country and spends about $500 million a year on Greenland, that if the Americans came over the top and said, "Well, we'd make you an ally. We'd put troops on the ground and we'd pay you more, not taking it over, Greenland would be an independent state." I think it would be much more likely that Greenland would actually vote for independence. And then, Trump would say, "We've got a new ally, and we've got everything we wanted. And we have these basing rights for the Arctic," and all of that.
It's pretty significant in terms of talking about the Nordics. Denmark has had Greenland as part of its territory since 1830. And Greenland is autonomous, they have their own parliament, which means they are right now in charge of their own domestic affairs, but not foreign or security affairs. So in that regard, also much like Crimea under Ukraine. But they have moved more towards an independence movement over the past decades. In part, self-determination is what people generally are aiming for around the world, with better understanding of others, post-colonial, being able to achieve it for themselves. Also, because there's a difficult history with Denmark. A lot of forced integration, taking Greenlanders from their homes, from their families, to put them in Danish schools and make them more Danish. Even forced birth control to reduce the Greenland explosion of population. Those things are not happening now, but that is a history that was exploitative and makes a lot of Greenlanders feel about the Danes the way that a lot of Native Americans feel about the United States. So, it's understandable why there would be an independence movement.
Now, the Danes, in addition to all the European leaders, are squashing any idea that Greenland is for sale, but that is very different from Greenland might well go independent. And there's no question that Greenland is important, particularly in terms of national security. Russia has put billions of dollars into Arctic infrastructure, including its Northern Fleet, and they're the only country in the world that's really actively trying to seize the Arctic's economic and strategic potential. That's going to become much more important as the ice cap melts, with transit routes, with exploitation of resources. The United States did have some troops on the ground, a meaningful number, in Greenland, something like 10,000. It's now down to 200. They've reduced that. They could certainly expand it with a new relationship with an independent Greenland.
Of course, they could also expand it with a new relationship with Denmark, of which Greenland is a part, Trump not all that interested in that because it doesn't make spectacular headlines, and also because he likes real estate. Let's face it, you look at him personally, and he loves putting his names on pieces of property that are iconic and that have a large visual footprint in the minds of people. And historically, he almost lost his economic empire a few times by holding on to iconic real estate for too long. So is that a factor in how Trump thinks about Greenland? You'd have to imagine it plays a role. So I think we are going to be talking about this actually a lot more over the coming months, and it's going to have a lot more to do with what 55,000 Greenlanders decide to vote for. And then how the Americans negotiate with them.
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Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer.
Nordic nations unite against gang violence
And you thought Sweden’s major export was IKEA. On Wednesday, Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer announced that Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland will establish a new police hub in Stockholm to clamp down on Sweden’s latest product: crime.
The announcement comes after Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard blasted Swedish gangs for hiring teenagers to commit crimes, including contract killings, in Denmark. There have been nearly two dozen incidents since April. The gangs recruit teenagers because they face fewer police controls than adults and are often exempt from prosecution. Finland has also seen an uptick in drug smuggling linked to Swedish gangs.
Why has Sweden become gang central? Politicians blame the country’s generous asylum laws, poor integration of newcomers, and the growth of the drug trade. Between 2013 and 2023, the number of fatal shootings in the country more than doubled, and Sweden now leads the European Union in gun violence, with 55 deaths last year. Gang crime now ensnares both low-income newcomer communities and middle-class children from all backgrounds.
Sweden and Denmark will now station police in each other’s countries and increase controls at the border. Police have also requested facial recognition tools, but those would require a change to privacy laws.A herd of cows standing on top of a lush green field.
Hard Numbers: Danes tax cow farts, SCOTUS sides with Biden (on social), Deadly mpox strain hits DRC, China’s lunar probe returns
6-3: In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the government can go to combat misinformation on social media when it comes to topics like COVID-19 and election security. The case stemmed from administration efforts to have platforms remove posts that touched on issues like COVID vaccines and election fraud.
8,000: There have been nearly 8,000 cases of a new strain of mpox, aka monkeypox, this year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including 384 deaths – almost half of which were children under 15. The virus, which can cause lesions across the whole body, has been spreading at a worrying rate, risking cross-border and international spread of the virus.
4.5 billion: China’s lunar probe has returned to Earth with the first-ever samples from the unexplored far side of the moon. The Chang’e-6 landed in the Inner Mongolia desert on Tuesday after a nearly two-month mission that was fraught with risk. Scientists hope the samples will help test theories about how the moon was formed 4.5 billion years ago and whether it resulted from a collision with a very early version of Earth.Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen gives her Constitution Day in Copenhagen, Denmark, on June 5, 2024.
Danish PM attacked in the street
Political violence is surging – even where you’d least expect it.
Danish PM Mette Frederiksen was attacked on a Copenhagen street on Friday, just two days before her country votes in EU Parliament elections. Her Social Democrats are the largest party in Denmark’s government, but they’ve been losing support in recent months.
Following a campaign event, a man reportedly walked up to Frederiksen and hit her in the city center late Friday. She was left in shock, and the assailant was arrested.
Fellow European politicians are taking to social media to offer support and condemn the attack, which comes just weeks after Slovakian PM Robert Fico survived a May 15 assassination attempt.
As we wrote earlier this week, scholars and police have been growing increasingly worried about the risk of political violence in both the US and Canada as both countries head into election cycles this year and next. But Europe is already in the throes of a tumultuous European election in which – amid sharp debates about immigration – the far right is expected to gain seats.
Stay tuned: We’ll be watching to see how Frederiksen bounces back from the attack, and how Danes and Europeans more broadly vote in the days ahead.
A view of a Dollar Tree store in Washington, U.S., June 1, 2021.
Hard Numbers: Forest of Dollar Trees axed, Danes for drafts, Colombia reforms stall, Don Lemon X-communicated, Wilders won't be PM
1,000: Dollar Tree, a major discount food and variety chain, will close 1,000 stores across the United States. The chain’s stores are often the only source of food in low-income communities that would otherwise be “food deserts,” but the stores and others like them have faced strong criticism for driving out independent grocers and selling unhealthy products.
11: Denmark has proposed to expand military conscription, nearly tripling service time to 11 months and drafting women for the first time. The move comes as a number of European countries weigh reintroducing drafts (see Daily writer Alex Kliment’s recent column on that here). But look closely and the Danes want to expand the size of their conscription force by a mere … 300 people.
8: At least eight of the 14 Colombian senators on a key committee will vote to shelve President Gustavo Petro’s healthcare reform, in a major blow to the left-wing president’s plans to expand the state’s role in healthcare and pensions. Petro, a former Marxist guerilla and capital city mayor, was elected in 2022 on a wave of anti-establishment frustrations. Since then, his agenda has stalled and his poll numbers have fallen, raising fears that he may try to mobilize the streets to defend his agenda.
1: It took just one interview with Elon Musk for former CNN host Don Lemon’s new partnership deal with X to fall apart. Musk said Lemon “lacked authenticity” and accused him of being a mouthpiece for CNN head Jeff Zucker. Lemon says he had a deal with X and “expects to be paid.” Want to see it? Lemon plans to drop the interview on social media platforms on Monday.16: Far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders has abandoned his bid to become prime minister after 16 weeks of negotiations, saying that he recognized he could not gain the support of all coalition members. The Netherlands may now take an unusual path to a government, wherein the leaders of each party in the coalition do not take cabinet positions.