Turns out that with all of Trumps trumpeting about making Greenland part of the USA, assuming that Denmark just gives up the territory under economic and military pressure from the USA, might not be all that different to the scene from Shrek, given the condition of Denmark’s military:
Today it consists of ships that cannot sail. Planes that cannot fly. And cannons that cannot fire. Everything is missing, from soldiers, air defense, artillery, anti-aircraft defense, submarines, tanks, night combat equipment, weapons, ammunition, radios, and binoculars to things as banal as socks, notebooks, and printer paper.
And I thought Germany’s military was in shit condition back in early 2019:
- For the Eurofighter Typhoon, Germany’s main fighter aircraft, the Luftwaffe, can actually call combat ready only four—out of a total of 128.
- Out of 244 Leopard 2 tanks, 105 were called “ready for use,” but only nine could be fully armed.
The quote comes from an interview with one Peter Ernstved Rasmussen, former reserve officer in the Danish Life Guard, as he talks about a book he’s published detailing the problems with the Danish military. This is far worse than what Trump was hitting his European NATO allies about in his first term, their pathetic level of military spending. To fix this situation the Danes would have to bump military spending to at least 5-10% simply to fix things quickly enough to matter within NATO, and how will they do that when Climate Change costs are rising?
Rasmussen sounds rather sympathetic to Trump’s position:
The Danish government is in a state of disarray. Instead of bringing the relationship with Greenland into balance, successive governments have continued the overlord mentality. It is with good reason that the Greenlanders feel provoked. So does the United States, because we have never wanted to take security seriously. Now the bill is coming, and it will be expensive.
With the exception of the newish Eastern members of NATO like Poland, Estonia and others who have living memories of living under the Soviet thumb, the rest of NATO is a mess. The real question is whether Denmark is the worst? Given the fractured nature of Belgian politics I wonder if their military is in worse shape, if that’s possible?
No Minister 
The Danish and their military have had a rather chequered past over the centuries, often choosing the wrong side of history. My wife is half Danish and on my side we have an interesting connection with that country. My great great grandfather Charles Fenwick (1775-1832) was the English Consul General in Denmark at a time when relations between the two countries broke down. Charles was forced to escape to Sweden, and from there ran a spy ring that resulted in information being passed to the English navy, whereupon the British Fleet were able to locate the entire Danish navy and sink every one of their ships.When visiting family & friends in Denmark in 2013 I recounted the story, expecting some negative feedback, but was amazed by the hilarious reaction from all of them. They had no confidence in their military to be effective in any way.
The Danes are one of the European countries who have not spent anywhere near the NATO benchmark of 2% of GDP that was agreed to back in 2014 (The Wales Declaration). They are still at around 1.6% of GDP.
That said they are way more capable than the NZDF with respect to their ability to contribute actual combat capability to their regional security architecture than us, as another small western liberal democracy of just over 5 million.
In terms of hard combat power they offer 2 all arms multirole brigades, 2 special operations units with JagerCorps and SSR, 5 very capable multirole frigates and will soon have two squadrons of F-35A JSF’s.
So I would not sit back and think that everything is going to be honky dory with how the Trump administration will feel about the state of our own contribution to regional deterrence, and the flow on effect of how our other cornerstone regional trade and defence partners such as Australia, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan are going to consider us.
Consequences and pressure will also come down the pipeline from them as well with respect to finding the right quantum of defence spending and the avoidance of tariffs or reduced market access. My expectation is that all NATO plus FVEY’s and IP4 nations (which is us) will be expected to be very quickly surpassing 2% of GDP Defence Spend including the possession of hard combat capabilities across all domains – air, maritime, land and space/cyber.
The country in Europe that I predict is going to get absolutely smacked by the Trump administration is Ireland which spends just 0.3% of GDP on Defence, has no combat capability other than around 50 guys in their Rangers unit, virtually non existent security intelligence capabilities and yet has a massive trade surplus with the US running into the tens of billions.
Other than the Swiss they are also the last neutral country in Europe and are not part of NATO nor formally aligned with even the EU’s own defence community. So at least we wont be first on the list of those countries which will be made an example of.