JD Vance, Humiliated

But the VP's designs on Denmark are high-key terrifying.

The world agrees now, and not a moment too late: Trump is serious about controlling the Danish territory of Greenland. This would mean the strong-arming—or worse—of Denmark. Denmark is of course a founding member of NATO and a close ally to the U.S. This saber-rattling must be seen as at least as terrifying as Trump’s tariffying protectionism. (Couldn’t resist. It’s a compulsion.)

Vance is especially fixated on a land-grab, taking Greenland from Denmark as if it were his own manifest destiny, and as if the “land mass,” as he calls it were somehow cosmically his very own white nationalist blood and soil. And then the plan is to retreat from the global order entirely. This is precisely Putin’s logic in attacking Ukraine. Take it, and leave the nasty world of globalization, liberalism, and human rights. (I explain Putin’s project in “Russia’s Commitment to Inhumanity,” here.)

But why is Denmark JD Vance’s white whale in particular?

In spinning up a diplomatic crisis with Denmark that recalls the geopolitical posturing that preceded World War I, the vice president is not just risking what’s left of the Pax Americana but scuttling global trade and destabilizing Europe.

Europe was already on tenterhooks with President Trump’s ill-conceived tariff blitz that he announced Wednesday. And Vance recently whined on a notoriously insecure group chat, “I just hate bailing out Europe again.” But the most immediate threat to Denmark is not tariffs or American neglect but the administration’s hurly-burly designs on Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.

Vance’s wife, Usha, was supposed to take a ladylike cultural tour of Greenland last week, but officials in the region called her proposed trip a “provocation,” and she and her husband ended up stuck on a U.S. space base on Greenland’s northwest coast. There Vance leered at the “landmass,” as if Greenland were virgin land and not a division of a sovereign nation.

“Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” he said bombastically. “You have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass and its incredible people.”

Putting aside Vance’s fakey venture-capital language—“underinvested in security architecture”—the vice president elided the obvious fact that the United States is already pledged to defend Denmark and Greenland, just as Denmark, a founding NATO member, is pledged to defend the United States. That’s what “ally” means.