Donald Trump may have chickened out on seizing Greenland in favor of bombing Iran but his allies in Europe are still having nightmares about his landgrab push.
Denmark, the NATO member that formally owns the autonomous Arctic territory, was so freaked out by the president’s threats of invading Greenland that they even came up with a wild plot to bomb runways on the vast island, according to Danish outlet DR.
The plan was designed to “prevent U.S. military aircraft from landing soldiers on the island if President Donald Trump ultimately chose to take Greenland by force.”
Danish soldiers also reportedly traveled to Greenland with “blood from Danish blood banks, so that the wounded could receive treatment if it had come to battle.”
Trump, who has previously threatened to annex the island “the hard way,” has since thoroughly preoccupied himself with an all-out war in the Middle East.
But, following his lightning invasion of Venezuela in January to capture President Nicolas Maduro, there was a time not so very long ago when NATO did credibly seem on the brink of war with itself.
“When Trump keeps saying he wants to take over Greenland, and then what happened in Venezuela happened, we had to take all scenarios seriously,” a high-ranking source in Denmark’s security service told DR.
“Trump doesn’t have the same level of people around him as before who would talk him out of it,” they added. “It’s super dangerous.”
Another source in the Danish Defense Ministry described the days following Trump’s invasion of Venezuela as the greatest danger the country has faced since April 1940, prior to its occupation by Nazi Germany in the midst of World War II.
A third warned that while the rest of the world may for now have moved on from the crisis, in Denmark, there is little sense of any cause for comfort.
“This is not over,” they said. “Trump is here for three more years. And no matter what happens, the distrust and challenge to the Commonwealth will persist as long as he has set out to go down in history by expanding the territory of the United States.”
The Daily Beast contacted the White House and the Danish prime minister’s office for comment on this story.
“As the President has stated, an agreement is being worked on, and will be amazing for the U.S.A. Greenland is a strategically important location that is critical from the standpoint of national security, and this deal is very important to advancing U.S. national security,” a White House spokesperson said.
The Danish PM’s office declined to comment.
