Responding to President Trump’s insistence that he wants to acquire Greenland, Denmark’s government has announced that it will increase military spending in the North Atlantic by the equivalent of $2 billion.
“Greenland is facing a changing security landscape,” Vivian Motzfeldt, a member of Greenland’s government, said in a statement on Monday announcing the increased spending.
Greenland, a gigantic island in the North Atlantic that is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, has taken on strategic importance in recent years as Arctic ice melts, opening up shipping lanes for international business. Just days into his second term, President Trump called for taking control of Greenland and refused to rule out using military or economic force to do so.
For purposes of national security, Mr. Trump has said, “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
The increased spending by Copenhagen forms part of an Arctic and North Atlantic agreement between Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands that was negotiated last year as strains between the United States, Russia and China spilled into the Arctic. The announcement of the increased money, though, was most likely rushed through as tensions ratcheted up with the United States over Greenland, said Niels Thulesen Dahl, a political analyst at the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.
As part of the measures, the Danish government, along with the governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, will purchase three Arctic naval vessels to patrol the waters around the islands. They will also acquire two long-range drones and satellites to improve surveillance of the area, according to the official statement.
The new budget will also help provide training for young people in Greenland “to acquire important skills allowing them to take responsibility for preparedness,” the Danish government said.
“We must face the fact that there are serious challenges regarding security and defense in the Arctic and North Atlantic,” Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defense minister, said in the statement.
A day after the announcement, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark met with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, President Emmanuel Macron of France and the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Mark Rutte. Her whistle-stop tour of Western allies came after a telephone call with Mr. Trump last week, which European officials described as contentious and at times aggressive.
According to Mr. Dahl, the analyst, “The agreement has become slightly larger than it would otherwise have been,” and he noted that the announcement showed that Denmark and Greenland had shared interests, dispelling the impression that the North Atlantic territory’s inhabitants, many of whom are Inuit people, would embrace the United States if it should try to take over the island.
“Much of the current discussion and tension feeds into a narrative that Denmark and Greenland have no shared interests and that Greenlanders simply want to move as quickly as possible away from Denmark and into the arms of the Americans,” Mr. Dahl said. That, he said, is not accurate.
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