For Danish authorities, the threat of a possible US attack on Greenland was taken seriously. In January, Copenhagen sent troops, explosives and blood to the islandhas now been announced by the public broadcaster DR, cited by British media, such as Sky News or the The Telegraph.
The explosives, explains DR based on information gathered from senior officials in the Danish government, but also from sources in the Danish, French and German secret services, Their objective was to destroy the runways at the airports of the capital, Nuuk, and Kangerlussuaq, a former American military base.
Already the bags of blood, transported on Danish military planes, were intended to guarantee the treatment of the wounded in the event of conflict.
Donald Trump has long argued that Greenland should be under US control, having repeated, especially since his return to the White House in January 2025, his intention to annex the island.
The US has had a military presence in Greenland since World War II, when Denmark, occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940, left the island, then its colony, without protection.
American authorities, after a quick agreement with the Danish ambassador in Washington and bypassing the collaborationist government in Copenhagen, established airfields, weather stations, and defenses there, allowing them to monitor German submarines in the North Atlantic.
In 1951, Denmark and the USA formalized the agreement, signing a defense treaty that gave Washington authorization to have military installations on the island. In the following decades, as the Cold War unfolded, the Pituffik base, then called Thule, gained new importance due to its geographical location in the Arctic and is today the only one still in operation.
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