‘Battle Hymn of the Republic Empire.’ Marsh Family, Faversham, UK, Jan. 10. 2026.

Editor’s note. This post I began in January, but events outpaced my ability to keep up with them. So I set it aside. From time to time, I’d pick it up again, but events — and Trump’s ability to change the subject on an almost daily basis — kept getting ahead of me. Now Greenland is back in the news, and the chickens Trump set in flight with his bullying have come home to roost. So I’ve revived the old journal and updated it. Events are moving fast, and it may be out of date again by the time I get it uplinked. But I think it’s still a timely reminder of something we all learned in kindergarten — if you dump on your friends, they’ll dump on you.

Did President Trump admit to the prime minister of Norway he’s no longer interested in pursuing peace since he was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize, for which he had been clamoring almost a year? Or has he simply not learned how to talk when adults are in the room? You be the judge.

Either way, there is a bright line from his exchange in January with Norway’s Jonas Gahr Støre (pronounced STIR-eh) and his current military adventures in Iran, where, in political scientist Scott Lucas’ memorable phrase, the only plan is “to go in and kill people and blow up stuff.” Says Lucas, an Alabama native who moved to the UK at 21, covered politics for British newspapers and now teaches at Univrsity College Dublin:

[The Trump regime] wanted to show American dominance. They had shown American dominance in Venezuela, by forcing the regime into accomodation [by acquiescing in the capture and extradition of former president Nicolás Maduro]. They tried to show dominance by seizing Greenland, in Europe. They’re tryig to do it by undermining the EU. Now they’re trying to assert dominance in the Middle East and in Iran. 

End result, according to Lucas, is a “very chaotic and uncoordinatied” war in Iran and what already looks like the demise of the American-led rules-based international order created in the wake of World War II.

While friction between NATO and Trump marked his first term and the first year of his second, it came to a head with Trump’s demand that Denmark sell Greenland to the US (which he termed doing it “the easy way”) or cede the autonomous region of Denmark to the US after a military invasion (“the hard way”). Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen pointed out, correctly, that Greenland is not for sale, and its people do not want to become part of the USA.

Støre got involved Jan. 18 when he and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who has a reputation in Europe for being something of a Trump whisperer, suggested the three of them get together to “de-escalate” what was turning into a very public quarrel involving Trump, the Danish government, NATO and the European Union. Støre texted:

Dear Mr President, dear Donald – on the contact across the Atlantic – on Greenland, Gaza, Ukraine – and your tariff announcement yesterday. You know our position on these issues. But we believe we all should work to take this down and de-escalate – so much is happening around us where we need to stand together.

We are proposing a call with you later today – with both of us or separately – give us a hint of what you prefer! Best – Alex and Jonas

Trump’s response, which came to be known as the “Dear Jonas” lettter (and even got its own Wikipedia page), was immediate, with copies sent widely, apparently at Trump’s direction, to other NATO officials and diplomats:

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway?

There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States.

The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT

It’s not clear what “boat” Trump was talking about, but it can’t be the Viking ship an 11th-century Norwegian expat named Lief Eriksen sailed from Greenland to an outpost in now what is Newfoundland. (If anything, it would suggests Greenlanders have a better claim to North America than we do to Greenland.) Nor is it clear why he thinks the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian government; it is administered by an independent foundation headquartered in Oslo and announced in a ceremony at Oslo’s city hall, as Støre repeatedly pointed out to Trump.

Several weeks ensued of back-and-forth between Trump and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland’s prime minister Múte Bourup Egede. In the end, after an angry speech at Davos, Trump backed down, claiming to have negotiated “the framework of a future deal with regard to Greenland” (or discovered it in a 1951 treaty with Denmark), but a sudden chill — along with widespread popular demonstrations in Europe and Greenland alike — was noticable between allies who had long shared small-d democratic values.

Reaction in Europe to all of this was instantaneous and dramatic. Nor was it limited to diplomatic and govrnment spaces. The Marsh Family, a satirical singing group in England made up of Ben and Danielle Marsh and their children Alfie, Thomas, Ella, and Tess, were up on YouTube Jan. 19 with a cover of Erma Franklin’s 1967 “Piece of My Heart” repurposed and retitled, “Piece of Denmark” Among the new lyrics: The guy-toddler bone-spur baby’s grabbing Greenland in a huff! So come on [repeated four times]! It’s mother-f&*king piece of Denmark, he’s crazy!” Their blurb for YouTube reflected a sense of betrayal widely felt in Denmark, which had loyally supported Amrican-led military intervention in Afghanistan:

Our treatment pays tribute to the Danes (who suffered proportionally among the highest casualties in wars supporting the USA after its triggering the collective security clauses of NATO in places like Iraq and Afghanistan), and who are being shaken down at the moment by the likes of Trump, Vance, and Miller in their bid to bully Europe to agree to the annexation of autonomous Greenlanders.

Similarly, American historian Anne Applebaum, who was in Copenhagen in January, noticed the chill immediately as appointments were canceled and “nobody wanted to say anything on the record at all.” Everything was in a state of flux, and Applebaum recorded “a sudden sense of almost Kafkaesque absurdity.” Toward the end of February, she visited Copenhagen again and realized the chilled relations were lasting:

Think about what this means: Denmark began preparing [in January] to go to war with the United States. Danish soldiers arrived in Greenland. European soldiers joined them, from France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, and the UK. Officially they were there to exercise a fight against Russia or China, but everyone understood they also came to show solidarity with Denmark, just in case. The Greenlandic people started preparing as well. Ken Harbaugh, writing in the Atlantic, points out that this is a well-armed population, with more than 35,000 long rifles on an island of 56,000 people. Perhaps other preparations were made as well. Were anti-aircraft guns put in place? Cyber defenses?

The invasion did not happen. Trump ditched the idea in a long, rambling speech at Davos, where he confused Greenland and Iceland several times. But the post-traumatic stress in Copenhagen remains. Danes now download apps that can identify US products, so that they know not to buy them. A traditional Danish-American Fourth of July party, first held in 1912, may lose its local funding, or be cancelled. Several people asked me if Americans know how angry they are. I told them that no, probably most Americans do not know how angry they are. I think that made them angrier. [Links in the original.]

As early as Jan. 10, the Marsh family had noted, in a sendup of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, that Trump’s behavior, not only with regard to NATO, betrayed values America and its European allies had held dear. In the accompanying blurb on YouTube, they explained:

The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is an iconic American song, drawing on lots of roots and precursors, but pulled into its most famous shape by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe. During the American Civil War it became a signature marching song for the Union Army, linked to patriotism and faith, and has since become part of the canon of American national music. We do not attempt or treat it lightly, but our version reflects on how the first week of 2026 has already seen Trump’s troops advancing his domestic and foreign policy agendas. Every marching step is another step away from the principles and traditions embedded in the song: we have seen the transgression of international law in Venezuela, the murder of unarmed Americans in Minneapolis (and its defence by the administration), the US’s withdrawal from multiple international organisations, and explicit threats issued to other sovereign powers and polities, including Greenland.

Two months later, when Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were bombing Iran, Scott Lucas of University College Dublin made very much the same point when he tidily summed up Trump’s evolution from self-proclaimed Nobel Peace Prize candidate to peevish, belligerent Commander-in-Chief. At the beginning of March Lucas told Maddie Hale of the Times of London’s radio service. Hale asked him if Iran will harm Trumps legacy as the American invasion of Iraq did President George W Bush’s. Lucas laughed, and explained:

It’s not going to cost Trump his legacy, Maddie, ‘cause I’m going to tell you what his legacy is: It’s destruction. It’s destruction at home. It’s destruction of, actually, a sane, decent political space, and it’s destruction abroad. A man who […] got into office in 2016 by breaking all the norms, including accepting Russian help, a man who has broken the norms of the US system by trying to be an authoritarian leader, is now breaking all the norms.

And it’s not just because he’s breaking international law in Iran. It’s because he and his advisers go in with a Plan A, we’re going to go in and kill people and blow up stuff. They don’t have a plan B for [what happens] if killing people and bowing up stuff and doesn’t work.

Update (March 17, 2026). As Trump’s war with Iran and the strategic implications of closure of the Strait of Huz enter fluid, unanticipated phase, xxxx “Isaac Stanley-Becker interviewed Danes and other Europeans whom Trump had denigrated earlier for an “Trump Is Learning That His Bullying Has Consequences.” While events are moving fast and Trump is up to his old tricks of sending out contradictory messages, Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, a specialist in U.S. foreign policy at the Danish Institute for International Studies, had a message that will probably withstand the test of time:

No matter when the oil resumes flowing, this chapter in the broader Iran saga already has a clear conclusion. European countries have adapted to Trump’s transactional, and often fickle, approach to foreign policy. They will make decisions on the global stage based on shrewd assessments of their own interests, not magnanimity toward the United States. And perhaps that’s a good thing, said Søndergaard. “One could argue that the U.S. may be well served by allies that are willing to give critical feedback instead of a knee-jerk ‘Yes, sir’ reaction.”

You can only kick a dog so many times before it bites back. Trump, who is the first president since Andrew Johnson not to have a pet in the White House, is learning the truth of this proverb.

“’No Words’: Copenhagen Veterans Hold Silent Protest After Trump Questions NATO Sacrifice,” APT, YouTube, Jan. 31, 2026 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQV-0JebcqQ.

I can’t think of anything I can add to that. Nor would I even want to try.

Links and Citations

[Updated, revised and published, March 18, 2026]

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Published by Pete Ellertsen

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