Emmanuel Macron flies in to show his support for Greenland

THERE ARE two ways of looking at the trip made by Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, to Greenland on June 15th. At one level it was a defiant message to America’s Donald Trump, who continues to threaten to annex the island, a semi-autonomous territory that belongs to Denmark. The symbolism was certainly stark: Mr Macron’s plane touched down on the way to see Mr Trump at the G7 meeting near Calgary, in Canada. The seizing of territory, declared Mr Macron sternly after stepping on to the tarmac in Nuuk, the capital, is “not what allies do”.

Joining his hosts—Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, and Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister—Mr Macron pointedly boarded a Danish frigate, on patrol in the region, for a chilly tour out on a fjord. The trio then took off together by helicopter, to fly over some of the island’s melting ice caps. In the face of strategic competition for the Arctic, the show of support for the territory’s sovereignty was clear. At an open-air press conference in the picturesque historic centre of Nuuk, before a small crowd of curious locals, Mr Macron declared: “Everybody thinks, in France, in the European Union, that Greenland is not to be sold, not to be taken.” The crowd broke into applause.

The contrast with the visit to Greenland in March by J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, was arresting. Mr Vance flew in to the remote American military base in Pituffik, home to the American navy’s most northerly deep-water port, and did not venture elsewhere. Denmark, he declared, had “not done a good job by the people of Greenland”. The island, and the Danes, were not amused. “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders” was Ms Frederiksen’s tart response.

At another level, though, Mr Macron’s visit was about something broader. The French president sees the forces tugging at Greenland and Denmark as a test of his longstanding ambitions for European “strategic autonomy”. The island is home to 43 of the 50 critical minerals listed by the American government, and of interest to Europeans seeking to “reshore” industrial supply chains. American threats seem to be pushing Greenland closer to Denmark and the EU. Above all, Denmark, which has long looked to America and the transatlantic alliance, is now rethinking its own security.

Standing beside Mr Macron in Nuuk, Ms Frederiksen thanked France and stressed the importance of co-operating on Arctic security, given Russia’s expanded military capabilities in the region and China’s ambitions. In this respect both France and Denmark would prefer to work with a co-operative America. But the two leaders struck a remarkably similar note about the need to do more alone. Mr Macron raised the idea of conducting joint military exercises in the region. The Danish leader talked about a willingness “to take a greater responsibility for our security here.” Mr Macron declared that “we have to reduce our dependency.”

When the French president started to talk about European strategic autonomy after he was first elected in 2017 his European friends tended to nod politely and put it down to French notions of grandeur. Now the term is commonplace in European capitals. France has helped to edge the debate forward, and Mr Macron has learned the value of alliances—such as the one he has built with Denmark—in order to broaden support for his ideas. For Mr Macron, though, it is not enough to have been right. If France is to remain credible on strategic autonomy, it also needs to boost its own defence spending significantly, at a time when its public finances are severely strained. Applause beside a sunny fjord in Greenland is one thing; hard cash is quite another.■