Outside the White House, Denmark’s foreign minister jogged toward a car, fished out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. The video went viral: Lars Løkke Rasmussen, smoke curling from his lips, wordlessly offering a cigarette and lighter to his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt. The moment captured the mood of a week in which Europe, Denmark and Greenland were forced to contemplate something once unthinkable — deterring the United States from taking Greenland.
“We didn’t manage to change the American position,” Rasmussen told reporters after meeting Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He said the only tangible result was a plan to form a working group. But within a day, even that sliver of consensus collapsed. The White House announced the group would study how the U.S. could acquire Greenland — a direct shot at Danish sovereignty. Copenhagen said it had agreed only to discuss Arctic security concerns, not any transfer of control.
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The gulf in understanding might have been shocking in any other week. This one moved at breakneck speed. In Greenland, people who spent years feeling peripheral suddenly found themselves at the center of great-power politics. Many told visitors they were grateful for mere words of support from Europe, and realistic about what they could ask of allies. Troops? That felt far-fetched — until it wasn’t.
By the weekend, several European capitals floated a NATO mission to the Arctic, ostensibly to address the security risks President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised. He has claimed Russian and Chinese ships are prowling Greenland’s waters, despite no evidence of such a presence. The idea of a NATO flag in Greenland served a dual purpose: It signaled that Europe takes the Arctic seriously, and it would complicate any unilateral U.S. move by placing alliance forces in the way.
Then Europe moved faster still. By midweek, officials shelved the NATO concept, which would require all 32 members to agree. Instead, Denmark announced immediate deployments under Operation Arctic Endurance. France and Germany each sent around a dozen troops. Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands contributed a handful of officers. Britain dispatched just one — a number that instantly became a meme — but the point was made. Six allies put boots on Greenlandic soil, a low-key but unmistakable line in the snow.
These arrivals were planners, not parade units. Their mandate: lay groundwork for broader deployments if needed and coordinate with Danish Arctic Command in Nuuk. Publicly, European diplomats framed the mission as addressing U.S. security concerns. Privately, French officials were blunter. The aim, they suggested, was to jolt opinion in Washington — especially at the Pentagon — by demonstrating that an attempted annexation would trigger a confrontation with multiple European states, not just Denmark.
President Emmanuel Macron barely bothered with euphemism. In his New Year’s address to France’s armed forces, he said France’s role was to stand “at the side of a sovereign state to protect its territory,” noting Europe was being “shaken in some of its certainties” and facing “rivals it did not expect to see.” The message was clear: If the threat to Greenland comes from an ally, Europe will still show up to defend sovereignty.
Why this is happening at all remains the central riddle. The White House has refused to rule out military action and has threatened tariffs on countries that oppose U.S. plans. A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers turned up in Copenhagen hoping to “lower the temperature.” Sen. Chris Coons said there was “a lot of rhetoric, but not a lot of reality” behind the threat perception. On the merits, Denmark argues, a 1951 agreement already gives the U.S. near-unfettered military access in Greenland. As for mineral and oil wealth, much of it sits inaccessible under ice — and Copenhagen says it is open to commercial deals anyway.
There is, however, one explanation that tracks with the president’s own words. As he told The New York Times, this is less about strategy than psychology — the desire to own, to possess, applied to foreign policy. He has said he needs to “own” Greenland because it is “psychologically needed for success,” and he has spoken about his love of maps and Greenland’s sheer size. “Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States,” he said in 2019. If cartographic envy is the driver, no security arrangement will satisfy a leader who wants the map to show more American territory.
That leaves Denmark and Greenland managing a crisis that defies typical deterrence logic. In Nuuk this week, locals voiced gratitude for European backing and anxiety about what might come next. “I’m afraid,” one Greenlander said in a clip viewed widely on social media. Officials in Copenhagen appear resigned to the fact that the most credible near-term deterrent is political optics — allied flags, military planners, and the prospect of a messy, high-profile standoff among democracies.
Even as Denmark’s top commander in Greenland tried to tamp down the tension — “My focus is not toward the U.S. Not at all. My focus is on Russia,” Maj. Gen. Soren Andersen said — his own chain of command acknowledged the uncomfortable truth. Peter Boysen, head of the Danish army, noted a 1952 royal decree compels Danish soldiers to fight back if national territory is invaded. Asked whether that obligation would apply to an American force, he paused: “This is highly political. And I’m just a soldier.”
That is the scenario Europe has been forced to contemplate: deterring an American invasion. The phrase alone would have sounded absurd not long ago. But policy, perception and psychology have combined to push Greenland to the front line of a confrontation between sovereignty and a superpower’s whim.
In diplomatic terms, the path out runs through the very working group that began this spiral. If the U.S. and Denmark can narrow its scope to verifiable Arctic security measures — joint patrols, information-sharing, infrastructure upgrades at existing bases — they could claim a win on deterrence against Russia while lowering the political temperature. If, instead, the White House sticks to acquisition as a nonnegotiable end state, every new Allied footprint in Greenland becomes both more necessary and more provocative.
For now, Europe has chosen to send planners and patience rather than battalions. It hopes the signal suffices — to Washington, to Greenlanders and to a world where the rules of sovereignty supposedly still apply. Whether that signal cuts through depends on something no deployment can guarantee: a president’s willingness to let the map be.
Back outside the West Wing, Rasmussen’s cigarette served as an unintended headline — a brief, human exhale in a week of hard facts and harder choices. It may also be the most honest measure of where this crisis stands: a pause, not a resolution, and a momentary calm before the next gust of Arctic wind.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
