The best film I have seen about the West’s 20-year debacle in Afghanistan is the Danish-language A War, which showed the tensions and moral complexities facing soldiers in such a struggle.
It is part war movie and part courtroom drama, opening with scenes of a patrol suffering a landmine blast before wrestling with issues of fidelity, grief, guilt and truth as an officer faces trial for ordering a lethal air strike.
Tobias Lindholm, the director, said he made it to “provoke a conversation” about how Danes fought alongside the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan, defining his generation.
It is exactly a decade since that Oscar-nominated film about the wounds of war was released in the UK. It served as a stark reminder about the human cost of Danish support for Washington in those foolish conflicts. This small Scandinavian nation – having rushed again to back the United States after the 9/11 terrorist atrocities – suffered the heaviest per capita losses of any Nato ally in Afghanistan.
Yet less than five years after the end of that doomed mission to defeat the Taliban, this same country that paid such a heavy price in support of Washington now faces a barrage of belligerent threats from the White House about an assault on its own terrain.
As ever with Donald Trump, it is hard to work out what is serious amid all the bile and bulls***. Yet it does seem the 47th US President is serious in his determination to grab Greenland, the world’s biggest island and a self-governing part of Denmark, despite justified fears in his administration that this would destroy pivotal Western friendships.
“We didn’t manage to change the American position,” said Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, after a standoff discussion this week in the White House. “It’s clear the [US] President has this wish of conquering Greenland.”
This idea caught Trump’s eye during his first term, although few leaders in Europe took his talk seriously even after he returned to the presidency last year. Now there is a growing sense of panic – especially since the seizure of Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro. This showed his contempt for the usual diplomatic rules while inflating his ego and ambition still further, leading to boasts that the only restraint on his global power is his own “morality”. This is, of course, a loose concept at best. So the White House brushes aside Denmark’s pleas to stop making threats. And Europe’s statement of support for Danish and Greenlandic sovereignty, followed by sending a tiny military deployment to the island, seems unlikely to cut much ice with this sociopathic man.
Trump arrogantly declares the US “needs” Greenland for its national security to stop it falling under control of foes – much as his pal, Russian President Vladimir Putin, claims Russia needs Ukraine for its self-protection. There are reports that US intelligence is identifying locals to back their cause and covertly inflaming the independence movement in another sinister echo of Kremlin tactics. Copenhagen insists it will not sell or surrender its sparsely populated land.
“This brings tears to my eyes,” said Henrik Berger, an officer who lost comrades fighting alongside the Americans in Afghanistan. “When the US calls Denmark a poor ally, it feels like a slap in the face to those of us who were actually there.”
Delivering threats against a loyal ally, stirring up dissent and refusing to rule out military force is the most grotesque betrayal of both democracy and Denmark – especially when US companies and military already have almost unfettered access to the island.
Trump’s reasoning typically lurches all over the place with claims of protecting national security, boosting local prosperity or seeking access to natural resources. His allegations about Russian and Chinese naval vessels flooding the region are contested, with local people telling journalists they have never seen such vessels. Then he demeans those standing in his way, dismissing Denmark’s defence as “two dog sleds”.
If Trump really wanted to thwart Putin or challenge the autocratic alliance led by Beijing, he would ramp up military support for Ukraine and ratchet up economic pain for Moscow rather than his foolish strategy to shackle Kyiv’s fight for survival. But his desire to annex Greenland seems driven by the unhealthy fusion of history with his vanity.
For more than a century and a half, the US has wanted control over this resource-rich, strategically-significant land. Three administrations have tried to buy it – most recently, former US president Harry Truman’s $100m (£75m) offer in 1946, which was rebuffed. So this excites a crass property tycoon who sees the world in terms of transactions, while adding the biggest chunk of land ever to the United States – an island bigger than Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined – appeals to his extreme egotism.
This discussion offers an added benefit for the White House of diverting attention from running sores such as its failure to end the war in Ukraine or the Epstein scandal. Yet the future of Greenland is a fragile issue. Polls indicate most of the 56,000 people there reject the idea of Trump’s takeover, but there is also deep unease over Danish colonial rule – as I discovered three years ago while investigating a disturbing campaign of enforced contraception imposed on girls as young as 12, which left many women infertile.
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One of the island’s two MPs called it “genocide”, inflicted on indigenous people to cut costs of modernisation and a Nordic welfare system, while the island’s chief doctor told me the covert scheme was so rife that it halved their population.
So we should be under no illusions about the severity and toxicity of this situation. Few Americans share the White House’s desire to annex Greenland. Yet Trump is a greedy bully who feels emboldened by recent events, despises Europe, does not care about destroying Nato and is determined to leave an outsized mark on history.
“Danish soldiers never came home because we took the alliance seriously,” wrote Bergen in an open letter to a former US diplomat. The furore over Greenland shows that we would be fools now to do the same in Trump’s brutish new world order.
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