Blood packs and explosives sent to Greenland were a clear message to Trump, but ‘we will all be sorry’ if threat continues

Apr 12, 2026

Denmark’s move to send blood packs and explosives to Greenland is a clear message to the US: “stay away or we will all be sorry”.

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, an expert on Danish defence, NATO and diplomacy, told The Beacon Denmark has lost faith in US security guarantees following Washington’s constant threats to take the island.

An associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College, Professor Jakobsen said as long as US President Donald Trump is in the White House, the faith in Washington’s defence of NATO allies will not be restored.

“We’ve lost faith in the US security guarantees, at least under Trump,” he said.

“That faith will not be restored until you get a different president who has another take on NATO.”

It comes after the US president repeatedly threatened to take Greenland earlier this year.

This saw him double down on threats, telling a press conference they would “find out” how far he was willing to go to take the island - a semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Fears were ramped up after Katie Miller, former Advisor to the Department of Government Efficiency and wife of Stephen Miller, a White House advisor, posted an image of Greenland on X covered in the stars and stripes of the US flag and the caption “soon”.¹

The feud, which died down slightly after Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, convinced Trump to accept a deal with Denmark, has reignited following the US and Israel’s war in Iran.²

The President called Greenland “THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE” in a post on social media after telling journalists his feud with NATO started over the island.³

But after Denmark, with help from “France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries and also some personnel from the United Kingdom”, sent the explosives and blood packs to Greenland, a clear message was sent, Prof Jakobsen said.

“Hey, this is not going to be 9th of April, 1940 all over again,” he said, referencing Denmark’s surrender to Nazi Germany’s forces in the Second World War.

“We’re going to fight this time, so please stay away or we will all be sorry.”

Prof Jakobsen, who is in the Danish Armed Forces, said he hand inkling ahead of time that the operation would take place, but said there was still a sense of disbelief this action was being taken against the US, a supposed ally.

“If you’d asked me a couple of days before the crisis broke whether Denmark would ever order forces to go to Greenland and tell them to fight the US in the event that the US would try to invade, then I would not have believed it,” he said.

“It’s… unreal that we, all of a sudden, are treating the US as potential enemies who might want to attack our country given that we’ve been in the same alliance since 1949.

The Financial Times reported allies sent personnel to Greenland under the guise of a planned military exercise, with Copenhagen stating this had been relayed to the Pentagon.⁴

But the story, which was originally broken by Danish broadcaster DR, said the real reason they had been sent to the island was to prepare for a possible US attack and invasion.

Prof Jakobsen said it was “unreal” to see colleges equipped for warfighting, but “not against the Russians or the Chinese or some of the usual suspects”, but the US.

Trump had previously said in January that anything less than US control of the island was “unacceptable”.

But Prof Jakobsen said this was confusing as the US has “essentially”, since the Second World War, had military control of Greenland.

The US was, he explains, given free reign to build all the military installations they needed on the island, but following the Cold War, a lot of them were closed as they were no longer needed.

But since Russia has “become a major threat again… the US has done absolutely nothing to increase its military presence in and around Greenland”, with Denmark also asserting there is no current threat from China or Russia to the island.

This lack of build up is despite Trump’s claims the US needed Greenland for the US’ national security.⁵

“It’s not completely untrue when Trump says we only have a couple of dog sleds up there, but that’s because the assessment is that nothing else is required” he said.

“The understanding is that if a serious military threat should develop, then the US will take care of it, as it did during the Cold War, because Denmark on its own cannot do anything against Russia.

“Only the US, in cooperation with the Danish authorities, will be able to deal with that”

Greenland does still play a role in US national security, with the Pituffik Space Base hosting a radar which tracks whether Russia is firing nuclear missiles at the US.⁶

Prof Jakobsen said this sees the US “never give up military control of Greenland,” and nobody expects them to, but what is hard to understand is just what Trump wants - pointing out the US President wants military control over something it has militarily controlled since the Second World War.

“I’ve given up trying to understand what Trump is doing or saying,” he said.

“The other thing we found hard to understand [is] if he wanted to cut a deal with the Greenlandic government over rare earth minerals or critical minerals… well he could have made a phone call and asked for a meeting instead of threatening to use military force,” he said.

But Trump’s stronghanded tactics have resulted in an increase in Danish defence spending, with Copenhagen now spending 3.5% of GDP on defence.⁷

“There’s no way in a very hot place that Denmark would ever have agreed to spend 3.5 % of GDP on defence,” Prof Jakobsen said.

But, he said there is a difference between getting European nations to share the cost of defence and then threatening to take Greenland from the Danes.

“That’s sort of in a different league altogether,” he said.

“Trump has actually been successful with respect to actually getting the Europeans to pay their fair share.

“He’s done that by being very nasty and very rude because when President Biden asked for 3% the year before Trump was elected, we were just laughing at him because he was old and polite and not doing anything.

“Then Trump comes along and he gets 5%. And if he had not been Trump, that would not have happened.”

On 9 April, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s Prime Minister called on Nato allies to push back against Trump’s narrative regarding the island.⁸

“NATO wasn’t there when we needed them, and they won’t be there if we need them again,” Trump posted on TruthSocial, his social media platform.

But Prof Jakobsen said he does not think Trump will follow through with his plans because “nobody in the US understands his argument about Greenland”

“It would probably be even more unpopular than the war on Iran,” he said.

“So in that sense, I think that we have a lot of Americans who agree with us that it would be really, really weird and stupid and crazy to take over Greenland by force.”

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