Trump’s Nordic Encounter

The Global South knows what US imperialism means. The Nordic countries are beginning to catch on.

Northern lights above Nuuk. Photo by Aningaaq Rosing Carlsen - Visit Greenland.

The United States, though fiercely militaristic across much of the globe, has been a friend and protector to the Nordic countries. Unlike Iraqis, Afghans, Vietnamese, and other peoples around the world who have become acquainted with the uglier realities of American empire, the Nordics have done well by the transatlantic relationship.

Freed from hot conflicts and dangerous geopolitical entanglements, the Nordics have been left alone to develop their natural resources and industrial base, from Denmark’s Novo Nordisk to Norway’s highly profitable oil sector, netting it the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, and Sweden’s globally-oriented companies like IKEA and Spotify.

With Donald Trump’s second term, however, it’s a relationship that looks increasingly uncertain.

Trump’s bellicose statements on Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, followed by his suggestion that the United States might not come to NATO members’ aid unless defense spending increases, and his seeming “pivot to Russia”—a historic adversary of the Nordics—have all helped cast doubt on the U.S.-Nordic relationship.

Trump-Induced Anxieties

Norway’s reliance on American-made F-35 fighter jets is a case in point. Some have started asking pointed questions about the risks posed by Trump’s America to the northern European nation’s military hardware.

To be sure, Norway isn’t alone in this regard. As the Financial Times asked in March: “Can the US switch off Europe’s weapons?”. But with more than fifty F-35s in its fleet, and as the first country to have received its full order from the manufacturer Lockheed Martin—the final two jets were delivered in April—the issue has seemed especially pertinent in Norway.

While Norwegian defense experts insisted that the U.S. had no “big red button” with which to disable the jets, experts also noted that a reliance on U.S.-made parts and weapons meant the country would only be able to operate the fleet for a matter of “months” without full U.S. support.

No one seems to think this is likely to come to an end any time soon. Even Denmark, more directly assailed by the second Trump administration over Greenland’s sovereignty, renewed its commitment to buying F-35s in March. And Norway looks set to permit a record 12 U.S. military bases on its territory, under the provisions of a 2022 defense agreement.

But the fact that these questions are even being asked is arresting. Indeed, the very notion that Washington might pose a “risk” at all would have been unthinkable, at least in public, just six months ago.

Arctic Troubles

Trump’s aggressive actions toward Greenland has been a significant source of anxiety in the Nordic countries, nowhere more than in Denmark itself.

Despite Denmark’s loyal service in the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump’s increasingly insistent message that “we’re going to get” Greenland, a territory that has been under some form of Danish rule for centuries, has ruffled the Danish public and the political establishment.

Certainly Denmark put itself in a difficult position with its reluctance to deal with its historical role as colonizer. Failing to recognize long-simmering resentments and grievances against the mainland has left Greenland vulnerable to Trump’s propaganda blitz.

Take just one example: Starting in the 1960s, Denmark implemented a forcible fertility control program in Greenland, leading fertility rates to plummet. Nearly 4,500 girls and women—around half of Greenland’s population of women of reproductive age at the time—were made to use contraceptive coils. The demographic effects were staggering: Greenland’s population remained essentially at a standstill throughout much of the 1970s.

Controlling Greenlandic women’s fertility can be seen as a form of eugenics, echoing Denmark’s forced sterilization law in effect from the late 1920s to the 1960s. And while Denmark ordered an official investigation of the spiral case in 2023, with results expected this year, some have felt the process has been too long-drawn and have demanded an immediate apology. 67 Greenlandic sued the Danish government in 2023.

There are other contentious issues, such as the size of Denmark’s annual cash transfer to Greenland’s authorities, and reports of racism towards Greenlanders as they travel to mainland Denmark for work or school.

Some Danish politicians have given voice to such racism. The Danish center-right politician Søren Pape Poulsen’s 2022 remark that “Greenland is Africa on ice” brought to bear colonial, racist notions about both the African continent and Denmark’s former colony.

There are legitimate concerns about Denmark’s colonial past and current attitudes towards Greenland, then, which have pushed more Greenlanders to call for full independence, including then-Prime Minister Múte Egede in his 2024 New Year’s address.

But Trump and his team have strategically, and ruthlessly, exploited these issues. Following a January visit to Greenland’s capital Nuuk, Trump’s son, Don Jr. appeared on Fox News’ Hannity and claimed that Greenlanders were treated as “second- and third-class citizens” by Denmark. At a Mar-a-Lago press conference that same week, Trump questioned the legality of Danish control of Greenland: “People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it.” And during a visit to the U.S. Pituffik Space Base in northwest Greenland, Vice President J.D. Vance accused Denmark of having “underinvested in the people of Greenland.”

In these and many other ways, Trump and his team have used the rhetoric of anticolonialism to advance their own imperial designs on the Arctic territory. It’s a clever, manipulative inversion.

And it’s leading Denmark to reassess its relationship with the United States. Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told Marco Rubio in early April that the U.S. was carrying out an “attack on the Kingdom of Denmark’s sovereignty.” American aggression has even prompted Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to ask: “What are we to believe in about the country that we have admired for so many years?”

And yet, Denmark’s government has vowed to implement a 2023 agreement allowing the U.S. to access three air bases on Danish soil, even though recent polling showed that more than 40 percent of Danes—a majority—opposed the move. PM Frederiksen has also vowed to continue working with the U.S.: “If we let ourselves be divided as allies, then we do our foes a favor. And I will do everything that I can to prevent that from happening.”

The Limits of Autonomy

This contradiction—between the threat of annexation and continued loyalty—shows that even for wealthy northern European nations, there are real limits to how far one can push back against American power.

Quite where all of this will end remains unclear. But the Nordics seem likely to turn increasingly inward to their regional neighbors and Europe at large. Already, Norway, which has long remained outside the European Union, is beginning carefully to broach the question of a renewed EU membership bid—even as Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has said the timing for another referendum isn’t right. And Denmark and Norway promised in February to “increase cooperation on defense.” Sweden and Finland joined the Norway-led Nordic Response military exercise last year.

But the Nordics are unlikely to abandon the U.S., if only because the U.S. is unlikely to allow them too much leeway or latitude. In late March, Finland’s president Alexander Stubb flew in to Florida to play golf with President Trump. The bonds remain tight, and American military force is, obviously, formidable.

There’s no Nordic nuclear umbrella either, even as scattered voices have started calling for a Nordic nuclear weapons program—once unthinkable in the land of the Nobel Peace Prize.

But tough questions are being asked, and basic stances reassessed. In this regard, the Nordics are catching up to parts of the world, including large swathes of the Global South, that have long understood the true nature of U.S. power.