The Atlantic - The Sacrifice of the Danes
After September 11, Denmark fought alongside the United States. Now the families of fallen soldiers have a message for Donald Trump as he insists on taking Greenland, Isaac Stanley-Becker reports.
Denmark has a population of just 6 million, but it has upheld its part of the NATO pact that has guaranteed Western security for nearly 80 years. The country lost more soldiers per capita in Afghanistan than the United States did.
Sophia Bruun was the first female soldier to fall in combat in Danish history, and her death in June 2010 while serving as a gunner on a Piranha combat vehicle in southern Afghanistan was a “ripple effect of the September 11 attacks, the first time that NATO’s mutual-defense clause was invoked,” Stanley-Becker writes. “Triggering Article 5 obligated U.S. allies to assist, including by sending soldiers like Sophia to fight. This time, if Article 5 is invoked, the United States might be the aggressor.”
“Trump appears unbothered by the prospect that his move against Danish territory might obliterate the American-led order,” Stanley-Becker continues. “But when I traveled to Denmark this month, I found there was still fidelity to principles that seem to have vanished from the American government’s calculations, namely a sense of mutual obligation and basic morality.”
That’s why Danes feel such an acute sense of betrayal when Trump maligns their value as an ally and threatens to claim Greenland for the United States, Stanley-Becker reports: “It’s not right what he’s saying,” said Sophia’s mother, Lene Bruun. “We have done so much for America.”
“For the families of Danish soldiers who died in the American-led campaign against the Taliban, their country’s partnership with the United States is not an abstraction,” Stanley-Becker writes. “Denmark’s loyalty to America brought Sophia Bruun to Afghanistan, and it ended her life.”
Written by Isaac Stanley-Becker