WASHINGTON, January 10. /TASS/. If US President-elect Donald Trump decides to take Greenland by military force, Denmark will not be able to do anything about it, especially given the fact that they have donated much of their weapons and warfare systems to Ukraine, Politico reported.
The United States has the world’s largest defense budget, spending $948 billion on its military in 2023, while its armed forces have 1.3 million personnel, and some of them are currently stationed in Greenland, the newspaper writes. Meanwhile, Denmark’s defense spending amounted to $9.9 billion last year, and the kingdom has only 17,000 soldiers.
Denmark’s armed forces are "neither equipped nor trained to resist a US invasion" in Greenland, the newspaper argued. Besides, the kingdom "has also significantly depleted its own arms stocks by giving artillery systems and tanks to Kiev," it continued.
Still, even if Copenhagen had kept its military equipment, "it would be of little use in defending Greenland against a US invasion," the newspaper argued. "The only way to act there is in the air or by sea. Land warfare makes very little sense in Greenland," Politico quotes Kristian Soby Kristensen, a senior researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Military Studies, as saying.
During his first term in 2019, Trump said that the United States could buy Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. The island and the kingdom dismissed that idea as absurd back then, and their views have not changed.