#denmarkunited-states-relations

#denmarkunited-states-relations

The king goes where he is told, whether he would prefer to stay at home or not. This time to a land whose president denounces our aircraft carriers as toys and accuses us of cowardice.

The result was a vote of no confidence in a centrist government led by the Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen. Her administration was, in the Danish context, an unusual political construction.

Meeting in Munich over the weekend, officials on both sides said they wanted to continue to work together. In the world of geopolitics all eyes were on Southern Germany over the weekend where the Munich Security Conference (MSC) served as the latest make or break moment for Germany-US relations. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz delivered the event's opening speech in which he acknowledged that a rift has opened up with the US, and urged trans-Atlantic partners to repair and revive trust.

Our reason for requesting the meeting has been to move the entire discussion... into a meeting room, where you can look each other in the eye and talk through these issues," Lkke said following a foreign policy meeting in Denmark's parliament.

In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, Trump said 10 percent tariffs would come into effect on February 1 on Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. He added those tariffs would rise to 25 percent on June 1 and would continue until an agreement is reached for the US to buy Greenland. There was no immediate reaction by the European countries.

It's one step forward, one step back in Europe's relations with the US. Just hours after the Coalition of the Willing made a big step towards providing Ukraine with long-awaited security guarantees with potential UK and French troops deployments and all briefly seemed to be going in the right direction once again, the White House said that using US military is always an option for acquiring Greenland.

At their disposal are mainly three options: The use of the so-called "trade bazooka" a never-before-used instrument that could even go as far as restricting market access for US companies in the EU. The implementation of retaliatory tariffs. The suspension of the EU-US trade deal, which has yet to come into effect. EU heads of state and government will meet for a summit on Thursday a dinner cobbled together in haste to coordinate which of those options the bloc will use in response to Trump's threats.

"It's in that spirit that we can still talk about a fracturing, more dangerous, world, in which the U.S. is less vaunted, the USD loses its reserve currency status, and where the U.S. focuses instead on the Western Hemisphere as its sole and defendable redoubt," the pair explained.

We are getting better prepared all the time, and we have already reached a certain level, General Peter Boysen, head of the Danish Army, told EL PAIS. We will fight with what we have, but we need to accelerate and reinforce our forces, and that is what we are doing. Bornholm Island, in the Baltic Sea, is Denmark's easternmost point. Russia is 300 kilometers (186 miles) away, and that's where the threat General Boysen is concerned about originates.

It makes absolutely no sense to speak of any necessity for the United States to take over Greenland. The United States has no legal basis to annex one of the three countries of the Kingdom of Denmark. The statement continued: The Kingdom of Denmark and thus Greenland is a member of NATO and is therefore covered by the Alliance's collective security guarantee.

There are more signs that the United States is disengaging from the global order established after World War II. President Donald Trump has ordered his administration to pull out of more than 60 agencies, half of them part of the United Nations. Trump argues that being a member of these organisations is contrary to his country's interests. The secretary of state went as far as saying they're useless or wasteful.

This year's conference comes at a time of strained ties between Europe and the United States, after Trump threatened to take over Greenland and criticised "decaying" and "weak" European nations. Russia's war against Ukraine, set to enter its fifth year this month, is high on the agenda, alongside efforts by European NATO members to raise their defence budgets, in line with Trump's demands, out of concern that Moscow could seek to expand into their territory.