Denmark ‘ready to defend’ Greenland after latest Trump remarks, PM says

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Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Wednesday said her country is “ready to defend” Greenland after President Trump’s renewed comments about the U.S. acquiring the island territory.

“We are ready to defend every inch of NATO, including our own territory,” she told reporters ahead of the summit in Ankara, Turkey.

She added later, “One of the reasons why ​we ⁠have built NATO many, many years ago, is if anything happens to ⁠one ​of us, then everybody ​should stand up for each other.”

Frederiksen said there were no plans to discuss Greenland while in the Turkish capital.

The prime minister defended Denmark’s sovereignty and called on “everyone to respect our territorial integrity and our sovereignty,” The New York Times reported.

“Article 5 is our insurance,” she said, referring to the alliance’s collective defense agreement.

Trump reopened his fight over Greenland ahead of the summit by saying the island territory is “very important” to the U.S. and that it “doesn’t help Denmark.”

“That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” the president said. “And when they wouldn’t go along with it, and with all the money we spend to help them with Russia — we don’t have to spend any money.”

He warned Europe to “be careful. With immigration and energy, if they’re not careful with those two things, you’re not going to have a Europe anymore.”

Trump also said the response to his push to annex Greenland “hurt” his relationship with NATO, which he has long threatened to withdraw from.

The calls for acquiring Greenland intensified in January ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with the Trump administration threatening to take the island territory by military force. Talks at the forum between Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte concluded with the “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland,” according to the president.

Rutte on Wednesday praised Trump’s criticism of other member countries’ defense spending compared to the U.S., saying that the increased spending from NATO allies would not have happened “without you in this chair.”

“Grab the win,” he told Trump. “It’s there.”

NATO allies agreed at last year’s summit to invest 5 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, with 3.5 percent going to their defense budgets and 1.5 percent on infrastructure for the expediency of troops and equipment to mobilize ahead of a conflict.

Trump and his administration have called for a “NATO 3.0” instead of a “paper tiger.”

The president doubled down on the pressure Wednesday, signaling the U.S. could block all trade with Spain.

Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a six-month review of U.S. troop deployments in Europe to ensure the alliance moves “fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading.”

“NATO lost its way,” Hegseth told allies at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. “NATO 2.0 was an era of distraction, deindustrialization and demilitarization. It was an era of free riding, and those were lost years that we’re not going back to.”

He added, “And that’s why, at the Department of War, we’ve been so clear and so candid to restore NATO’s core military role and character.”

The Associated Press contributed.

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Denark

Donald Trump

Greenland

Greenland acquisition

Mark Rutte

Mette Frederiksen

NATO summit

Pete Hegseth

Trump administration

Turkey

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