Dear Prime Minister Frederiksen:
My name is Jim Pinkerton. I am an American who wants to see Ukraine survive as a free and independent nation within a prosperous and strong Europe. Of course, I am also an American patriot, claiming no higher title than citizen.
Still, I am deeply concerned that relations between the European Union and the United States are imperiled—and am further concerned about the perilous fate of Ukraine.
With those concerns in mind, I am humbly enclosing my five-part action plan for your consideration. In the spirit of this age, I consider these suggestions to be a good deal for the well-being of peace-loving countries on both sides of the Atlantic.
Such win-win mutuality is important, because we’ve entered into a post-Atlanticist period of power politics. Might doesn’t make right, but it is mighty. Old assumptions, based on faded memories of World War Two and the Cold War, no long animate top players.
Donald Trump is dismissive of Achesonian alliances, and Vladimir Putin has no interest in peaceful coexistence. In between, the European Union sits as a soft target. As it is discovering, its delicately rendered aspirations to soft power mean little in the context of menacing hard power. Meanwhile, poor Ukraine, which does, of cruel necessity, take seriously its own defense, finds itself at grave risk of being overwhelmed by Russia, now reinforced from the Far East.
In this brutal tournament of nations, the EU, as well as Ukraine, is losing.
There’s still time to remedy this imbalance of forces, and yet safeguarding requires realistic thinking. No more illusions about soft power, that’s a lost horizon. Today, it’s hard power—money and military might—that turns world events. Europe must once again be a purveyor of hard power.
President Trump, ever the transactionalist, speaks of “cards,” arguing that Ukraine doesn’t have cards to play and that Europe, similarly, has a weak hand. And he’s right.
But you, Madame Prime Minister, can change this. You have cards you can play. You can make a deal for the benefit of Ukraine, your own country, and Europe as a whole. You can deal with Trump and, even more enduringly, you can deal for Europe.
Yes, you can do all this. This very December, Politico EU named you as the second-most powerful leader in Europe. In fact, you are the most powerful European, because the number-one figure in the power ranking is . . . Trump. As the publication says admiringly of you, “Over the past six years, the 48-year-old Danish prime minister has quietly exported her own brand of hard-headed social democracy across the continent—a blend of left-wing welfare politics and right-leaning toughness on migration and defense.” With the greatest respect, ma’am, you know how to get things done.
So with that great respect, please allow this Atlanticist American to offer some suggestions that you could implement—for the betterment of Denmark and of Europe. Five suggestions, in fact.
^^^
But first, a note about how the Danish deep state is operating—operating in a way that militates against a constructive deal that safeguards Europe. Your intelligence service, the DDIS, now officially regards the US as a potential threat. Now of course, it’s standard due diligence for national security apparats to consider many dire scenarios. But here’s the thing: They don’t have to consider them publicly, releasing these findings, as yours did.
Needless to say, this news from DDIS, gleefully amplified by Danish partisans, rocketed around to all the international prestige media, including The New York Times. The calculus, on the part of at least some elements of your government, seems clear enough: They would rather attack Trump than defend Ukraine. After all, it’s anti-Trumpery that earns favor among Western elites. So some Dane, or Danes, could have a bright future, granting bragging interviews with, say, the BBC or CNN, talking about how Denmark zinged the Dreaded Trump.
Yet if the Danish government comes to be seen as just another bunch of Trump-bashers, your effectiveness as a deal-maker will be undermined.
In the meantime, Europe doesn’t lack for high-placed Trump-phobes. For instance, Josep Borrell Fontelles, the former EU foreign policy chief, tweeted that the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy amounts to a “declaration of political war” on Europe. We might ask: What is Borrell accomplishing here? Is he helping Europe to become stronger in its own defense? Or is he just venting? If the latter, then he’s not much of a diplomat—he’s just a pundit. What Europe needs is diplomacy, not X-based contumacy.
Of course, there’s no point in arguing with those who don’t like Trump—or who, in fact, detest and despise him—and yet I will say that even if DDIS and Borrell are right and the Americans are a potential threat, the Russians are an actual threat.
Right now, in real time, they are chewing up Ukraine and there’s little doubt, that Putin, who called the breakup of the Soviet Union a “genuine tragedy,” would love to devour the Baltic states, Finland, Moldova, and Poland—to name countries that Russia has, in the past, swallowed.
Moreover, as Danes, at least, recall that back in May 1945, after Hitler was dead and World War Two was coming to an end in Europe, the Red Army tried to occupy all of Denmark. Indeed, the Soviet Union held on to a bit of your territory for as long as they could—a year after VE Day—until Anglo-American pressure pushed them out. Why this aggression against a victim country? Because the Soviets were both Stalinist hegemonists and Slavic imperialists.
In fact, those same Russian chauvinists ruled much of Central and Eastern Europe for another four decades. And further back, Russian armies campaigned in Italy and the Tsar and his troops entered Paris. Today, Kremlin insiders still talk about those military conquests as the good old days that could be new again.
Indeed, if the Russians were tough and ruthless enough to push all the way to the Pacific Ocean—they actually crossed into big pieces of North America—there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t similarly push, if they could, to the Atlantic.
Already, Russian drones have buzzed Denmark; indeed, nearby Germany has reported some 2000 drone incidents so far in 2025. Furthermore, drones of suspicious origin have even flown over Ireland, which is 1200 kilometers east of Copenhagen.
It’s the Russians who are coming. The bear, not the eagle, is at your gate. Indeed, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz played the ultimate negative card, comparing Putin to Hitler. For his part, Putin refers to European leaders as "little pigs," and shows little or no interest in any actual compromise peace solution in Ukraine.
But what about Trump’s tweets? Yes, for sure, Trump talks publicly more than Putin, but he talks about many things that prove to be more musing than threatening. For instance, Trump spent a lot of time talking about Canada as a 51st US state, and nothing came of that.
Yet still, Trump is such a rich target, so click-bait-y, that everyone wants to focus on him, and what he says. But you don’t need to. You have other fisk to fry. Because Trump is, after all, going to be the US commander-in-chief for another 38 months. To quote from one of his predecessors in the White House, you need strategery.
So with these three long years in mind, you might wish to consider the words of Danish politico Henrik Dahl:
Washington states openly what has been implicit for years: Europe is no longer a strategically privileged ward of the United States. The institutions and assumptions of the post-war order have decayed—and the bill for Europe’s illusions has arrived.
In other words, the real problem isn’t Trump, it’s Europe. Had Trump not come along, Europe would likely have been living with its Venusian illusions for even longer, becoming all the weaker as Mars encroached, from the South as well as the East. As one European diplomat conceded to Politico EU, “[Trump] might be doing us a favor by prompting us to be stronger, more capable allies.”
Now some might be telling you that Trump is a wind-storm, that can be ridden out until he blows himself away. The November 2025 elections went badly for Trump’s Republican party, and another set of elections in December, in the red states of Florida and Georgia, also went poorly for the GOP. So it’s possible that the Democrats will do well in 2026, and 2028—and that they will then reverse Trump’s direction.
But maybe not, or not completely. The Democrats generally dislike Trump with an EU-like intensity, and yet interestingly enough, their policy platform contains little about the EU or Europe. Of all the many rhetorical hammers with which Democrats attack Trump, the ones entitled “Preserve the Atlantic Alliance” and “Slava Ukraini” are barely visible.
Notably, the new-style Democrats in ascendance, such as AOC and Zohran Mamdani, say little about foreign policy, other than, of course, Gaza. Beyond the Middle East, when cutting-edge Dems look overseas, they see the Global South, and perhaps climate change—not Kyiv, Krakow, or Copenhagen.
Of course, it’s also possible that Republicans will rally in 2026 and 2028. If so, that’s good news for JD Vance, the leading Republican hopeful for the next presidential nomination. Much more than Trump, Vance is imbued in post-liberal Euroskepticism.
To be sure, there’s plenty of support in Congress for Ukraine and the Atlantic alignment, and yet the Atlanticists are mostly older, while the youngers are tending toward either Mamdanism or Carlsonism.
Bottom line: No matter who wins the coming elections, prospects for a genuine revival of Atlanticism are dim—and could even grow dimmer. In the wary words of Germany's Merz, “Trump did not come about overnight. And this American policy will not simply disappear overnight. It may be that things will become even more difficult with his successor.” The successor more difficult? Yikes!
In the meantime, as Europe struggles with the disposition of those Russians billions in Belgium, NATO chief Mark Rutte warned on December 11 that the Russians could attack a NATO country within five years. Interestingly, he issued that ominous prediction without much regard for whether or not a Steve Witkoff-instigated Ukraine deal is ever signed. Rutte’s implication is clear: Whatever Putin does or does not ink, the Russians are still going to advance.
In thinking about the liberum veto nature of the EU, one is reminded of 18th century Poland, which was so politically dysfunctional that it was partitioned out of existence, without a fight, by three countries, including, of course, Russia.
And now, Trump and Vance have provided clarity: The Americans might well not be there to defend Europe. So if it is to survive, the continent must armor up. If it doesn’t armor up, it won’t survive.
^^^
So what is to be done? Here are five suggestions:
First, stop poking the eagle on green ESG legislation, which not only hampers trans-Atlantic relations, but also hinders EU growth. Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor Company, which has been active in Europe for a century, warns that the entire industry is at risk if the EU moves forward with green rules. A few days later, the EU responded with a ruling that doesn’t require CO2 emissions to come down 100 percent by 2035—they need only come down 90 percent. That “improvement” will likely prove invisible to international auto investors.
Yet since China is still building coal plants, all this green cost is just costly virtue-signaling. As your fellow Dane, Bjørn Lomborg, has been pointing out for years, Europe’s green efforts are all for nought in the face of what’s happening in Asia (and the rest of the world), which is power from carbon fuels, with no end in sight.
Truly, EU green policies are Merkel-esque in their a) idealistic hopefulness, b) practical fecklessness, c) homefront destructiveness, and d) deep state-driven counter-productiveness. It was not unnoticed in the US that Denmark has been a driving force within the UN’s oh-so-green International Maritime Organization, which was recently pushing a global tax increase that could only be described as Merkelian. The US kiboshed it. (No wonder the stock price of Denmark’s leading windmill company, Ørsted, has been plummeting.)
Yet even after these green failures, there’s more affront coming, and your country, ma’am, is once again deeply involved. On December 9, The Washington Reporter detailed, “The European Union is moving ahead with its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), a far-reaching climate and supply chain mandate that could drive up costs for Americans by making energy bills more expensive.” This EU initiative has drawn the ire of, for example, the National Association of Manufacturers, the venerable and powerful trade association. NAM has been cheering a bloc of Republican committee chairs on Capitol Hill, who jointly declared, “Europe is free to create a hostile business climate for companies in their own jurisdiction,” and yet, the GOP lawmakers demanded, American companies must be insulated against this bureaucratic onslaught.
Then the Reporter adds the Copenhagen kicker: “Denmark in particular is one of the countries pushing CSDDD.”
So there’s recommendation number one. Hold off on the green, starting with CSDDD. Don’t make Trump madder, or at least, don’t give him more aggrieved allies. Yes, green policies are probably popular with your own political base—and many Democrats here in the US stand by them, too—and yet you’ve got at least three Trumpy years ahead, politically. In addition, economically, if present trends continue, you have a further, bleaker, horizon. If Denmark and the EU are, in fact, destined to go it alone, that’s all the more reason to back off on CSDDD, because Europe can’t afford to be that enervated. Maybe remind the greens: If the Russian army marches into Copenhagen, CSDDD enforcement will, of course, be mooted.
Second, come to the United States and meet Trump. Yes, the EU discourages lone member states from making their own foreign policy, and yet these are extraordinary times. Just last year, Mario Draghi, a blue-chip European, issued his watershed report, pushing to the edge of diplomatic nicety while warning that Europe was at risk of deluge. Just this month, the centrist economics-minded Substack, Noahpinion, was headlined, “Europe is under siege: Menaced by Russia and China, abandoned by America.” In the article, author Noah Smith insisted, “The most important thing Europeans need is to panic.” [emphasis added]
If tis is a panicky moment, then going outside the EU channels that have led to this failure seems entirely appropriate. After all, ma’am, you and Trump can bond by talking about shared hawkishness on immigration; you’re a cinch to get along better with Trump than the familiar EU cast of characters, for whom, The New York Times reports, Trump has “long held contempt.”
If you do come here, talk with Democrats, too, and Danish-Americans, and anyone else, and yet please understand that the only person with more power in Europe than you is . . . the man on the other side of the Resolute Desk. A further footnote: A recent Politico EU poll finds that while European publics aren’t fond of Trump, they do reckon that he is stronger than their own leaders. So again, best to try a new tack.
Third, while you’re in the US, try to make friends with Elon Musk. Here again, the EU deep state has been disserving Europe—by imposing a gratuitous fine on X, it has made an enemy of the man who is arguably the most powerful media magnate in the world today. That is, on top of his trillions worth of rockets, cars, and AI.
Musk being Musk, he’s fighting back, and he has both personal resources and the ear of the Trump administration. As you know, not only is he attacking the EU on a daily basis, but he asserts that X is getting more downloads and more usage within the EU--more than any European media outlet. Which is to say, the X-based opposition could be gaining. Admittedly, it’s hard to know exactly what’s real in cyberspace. Yet even if the numbers are bot-bolstered who needs him as an enemy, especially when he is clearly, in his heart, Europhilic? (Between the Roman Empire and Tolkien, much of the right-wing elite is, in fact, decidedly Eurocentric.)
Moreover, Musk is still, and always, a vigorous proponent of solar power. So a leader who can broker with the open-borders bureaucrats in Brussels--she can find a way to make nice with Musk.
Oh and by the way, if the Eurocrats have less power to diminish free speech, they might also have less power to diminish the European economy. It’s ironic that the European Union, which was launched, in part, to be a Colbertian counterweight to the US, has proven, instead, to be a Naderite millstone around its own neck. Today, the not-so-funny joke about the EU is that it has plenty of regulators, but no so many industries to regulate. As David Heinemeier Hansson and many others have noted, the Eurocracy is strangling both its economy and expression. Sad!
Fourth, in your dealing with both Trump and Musk, you could play your best single card: That card is called Greenland.
As we all know, Trump loves deals. That’s one reason why he likes the businesslike prospectuses of Witkoff and Jared Kushner. After all, if it’s something fresh, not dusted off from a file drawer at the State Department, he can claim at his own. The Sinatra song: “I did it my way.”
This author has written much about Greenland; I was an unabashed supporter of the US buying Greenland. Repeat, buying, as in, a voluntary purchase. I wrote, “The US acquisition of Greenland would be akin to the acquisition of Alaska in 1867—or to the US purchase of the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917." (And plenty of others, including names that you know, have made similar arguments.)
But if Greenland is not for sale, so be it. Yet even if Denmark is able to reject the US as a money-bearing suitor, it might not be able to repel other kinds of advances. For instance, what would Denmark do if 1000 Chinese came ashore in Greenland? They might say that they have been shipwrecked, or that they are seeking asylum. Yet they might also be brandishing weapons, insisting that they won’t leave until their case is heard by the European Court of Human Rights—an ACLU on steroids—which could take years with no certain outcome whatsoever. In the meantime, these Chinese might choose to dig in and fortify. And they might invite more Chinese to visit and stay with them in their compound. Or, if not Chinese, perhaps Russians, or Bangladeshis, or Somalis. A far-out Raspail-ian scenario, to be sure, but thanks to that dystopic novel, the idea is out there.
And this is just one threat-scenario. I hope DDIS has given you a full briefing on just how undefended is Greenland from any foreign force.
Here’s the point: Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does geopolitics. Greenland as a giant nature preserve only works if there’s a robust force of “park rangers” to defend its perimeters.
Estimates as to the value of minerals and other resources in Greenland vary widely, but they are all in the trillions, and the truth is, nobody really knows, because, while there’s been some effort to revive mining--you get credit, ma’am—nobody has really gone looking everywhere, across its 2.2 million square kilometers. We do know, however, that when prospectors go looking, they keep finding—news accounts concerning new discoveries of something, somewhere, are a daily occurrence. The Earth, after all, weighs six sextillion tons, and every ton of that is some kind of natural resource. Moreover, as mining technology improves, and we find ways to dig deeper, we will find more of everything. In the meantime, the only thing we know for sure is that Greenland accounts for about .5 percent of the Earth’s surface, including offshore waters. Which is to say, it covers about 1/200th of the resources of the Earth, which are randomly distributed across the planet.
So here’s the possible deal to present to Trump & Co.: Vastly expanded development of Greenland. While maintaining full Danish sovereignty over the territory, you could open up the land mass to mining, geothermal development, the sale of frozen latifundia, the building of underground cities—any sort of ambitious enterprise that Trump, Musk, Donald Trump Jr., Peter Thiel, et al. can think of. Of course, they’d have to pay you for the rights to do any of this in Greenland. And the money you get from them could in turn go to aid Ukraine.
For their part, the most go-go of American developers should keep in mind that legality and due process are important to commercial success. That is, if Americans were to somehow wrest control of Greenland by force majeure, the result would be a legal and ethical cloud over the investments. To be sure, the Russians and Chinese might not care, but issues of boycotts, lawsuits, and political turmoil would haunt American Greenland for a long time. Far better, from a strictly kroner-and-øre point of view, to have the Danish government supervising—with a light touch, of course—all this new investment.
Following the wisdom of the Laffer Curve—lower tax rates generate more economic activity and thus more revenues—Denmark would have plenty of money to donate to Ukraine.
Indeed, this geopolitical arbitrage—American wealth for Ukrainian arms—might force the Russians to the bargaining table, bringing with them, finally, a real desire for a settlement. And from there, you would be in good stead for a Nobel Peace Prize!
To be sure, along the way, there’d be objections: Developing Greenland isn’t “green.” So yes, any new course will likely face resistance from within your own coalition. That’s why it’s so fortunate that you’re a strong leader. Moreover, the danger from the Russians is more imminent than the danger from CO2, so you can declare that the imperative of statslige grunde, uh, trumps lesser concerns.
Fifth, engage the future of Europe in the fullness of dimensions, including the spiritual dimension. The European Project has prided itself on its liberal secularism; for instance, it mostly elides consideration of its own Christian heritage. And indeed, it would seem that the EUrocracy is, for sure, hostile to conservative Christianity. As American critics say, EU governance of Europe is like National Public Radio running the US.
Yet the problem with this regime, as you are now experiencing, is that Cartesian/Kantian/Comtean rationalism is no way to run a polity. Perhaps most obviously, utilitarian hedonic calculus counsels the individual to avoid fighting in a war—because one might get maimed or killed. Alas, few want to fight for a multicultural trade zone. But they will fight to defend the honor of Europa.
The logic of young men (and young women) being willing to die isn’t logic at all: It’s non-rational. And yet it’s profound: reasons of pride, and solidarity, and okay, too, thumotic spirit—which some call “toxic masculinity.”
So any plan for reviving Denmark’s strength should include the spiritual, the metaphysical, even the supernatural. Including your national icon of collective power, Holger Danske! What would Holger be doing today? After brooding, and seeking the blessing of Odin, he'd be unsheathing for his sword. Out of the chthonic depths of boggy history, a hero would rise.
I’ll add that this is a world enraptured by tales of heroes, wizards, elves, X-men, warhammers, and yes, little mermaids. These fantastic characters aren’t all good, of course. Some are wicked: Sauron and his Wraiths and Orcs. And yet they all, good and bad, add up to epics and dramas that stir souls and fill out narratives—tales that the good guys can use to rally other good guys. Re-enchantment is what’s needed. So Conan the Barbarian, meet your comrade in arms, Holger the Dane, back and ready to rumble. You tough two, joined by brave young hobbits and backed by the admiring citizenry of the Shire, will fend off evil.
If the EU doesn’t think this way, maybe it should start, because statecraft is soulcraft—and souls need to be inspired. That’s Europe needs a vision of itself that’s more than just a circle of gold stars on a blue field. To put the point on imagery another way: to be lovable, it has to be tangible. It can be a symbol, sure, but it must be an historical symbol originating in blood, soil, and mythos.
Europe needs a martial embodiment of itself that includes that quintessence of chivalry—and berserker bravery. That’s how defenders are reminded of what needs be defended. That’s how to bring back the romance of the knights of the West.
Needless to say, I’m not urging uncontrolled violence: I’m urging carefully targeted violence, when needed. In Weberian terms, the state should monopolize violence—and be good at deploying it, in the form of an army. It’s a stern but true statement that the only defense against violent men is good men—and okay, like-minded women—who are better at being violent. That is, they have better discipline and better technology. They have, in a word, a stronger military. As the European Vegetius put it, to protect peace, prepare for war. That’s the path to Pax Europa.
^^^
Okay, so those are my five suggestions. I should make plain now what I should have said earlier in this missive: Nothing herein represents any kind of trick. I am being transparent in my communication to you, and I can look my fellow Americans in the eye and say, “It is my sincere conviction that these suggestions to a foreign leader are in the best interest of our country.” It’s the happy residue of good intentions that they are also in the best interest of a free Europe.
To be sure, some will say that this list is right-wing, too right wing for liberal Europe. I would say, instead, that it’s a combination of realism and traditionalism, which is admittedly, somewhat conservative. Your immigration policy is proof of that; there comes a time when the nation, and its ways, needs to be defended. It’s that core insight, and the acting on it, that has made you such a consequential figure.
And let’s face it: Illusions and aspirations aside, reality itself is conservative. It’s about what exists. As the American Ralph Waldo Emerson explained, “There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.”
So conservatives of the Aristotelian, Burkean, persuasion declare: Look to your own history for inspiration. Gather the fragments and shore up against ruin—by building a fortress. Accept the blunt fact that there is no holiday from history, that war is not just in the past, but in the future. Mindful of a risky future, be strong to say safe. Peace through strength.
I’ll close with an illustration that recalls a painful moment in Danish history—a moment you won’t wish to see repeated. It reminds us that when an attacker brandishes a sword, the defender, too, needs a sword—and quite possibly, needs Holger’s broadsword.
In a way, Denmark was warned. On September 30, 1862, the civilian leader of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck, delivered a message to his fellow Prussians: “It is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided . . . but by iron and blood.” Was that right-wing militarism? I suppose. For sure it was macht-politik. And for Bismarck’s vision of a Greater Germany, it was a first step.
With a shudder, Danes remember the second step. Just a year-and-a-half after that speech, Prussian (and Austrian) troops attacked Denmark, overwhelming your country’s gallant defenders. The fighting was over in six months, and in the tough peace that followed, Denmark lost a full 40 percent of its territory.
So the Danes learned the hard way that not every country respects norms and the rule of law. Some are, in fact, outlaws. And the outcome is likely to be settled by, yes, jern og blod.
Nobody wants a larger war in Europe. The smaller war—still terrible, to be sure—in Ukraine is bad enough. The best way to defend Europe, today, is not to get in tiffs with Trump. Yes, there’s a difference of values, but in the meantime, more urgently, there’s a difference in strength. And that’s what needs to be addressed.
That’s where you, Madame Prime Minister, can be a Queen of the Deal, the Lady Danske who saved Europe.
Sincerely,
James P. Pinkerton
