It was sunny in southern Afghanistan on June 1, 2010, and the temperature shortly reached 104 levels. Sophia Bruun was the gunner on a Piranha fight car, guarding two platoons conducting a patrol close to the city of Gereshk. They had been on the lookout for data from locals concerning the Taliban.
One of many Piranhas in Sophia’s battle group had hit an IED very first thing within the morning, blowing off a wheel, however nobody was injured. On the outskirts of a village, they had been fired on by the Taliban. They returned hearth, and the state of affairs calmed. The patrol continued. However seven minutes after midday, an IED went off beneath Sophia’s car, flipping it. She was killed immediately, on the age of twenty-two.
Within the years after Sophia’s loss of life, her mom, Lene Bruun, returned repeatedly to particulars of her service, learning letters from the Danish military that she saved in a metallic trunk in her house west of Copenhagen. Over time, she allowed herself distance from her grief. “You’ll be able to put it away for a short while, generally longer, however then it comes again,” Bruun, who’s 72, advised me over espresso at her kitchen desk. “And also you don’t know what triggers it.”
However nowadays, Sophia’s mom is aware of precisely what triggers her grief: “when Trump says we’re not adequate.” Bruun is a tiny lady, with mushy white hair and advantageous traces grooved into her pale pores and skin. However she turned flushed when discussing the American president, who has been threatening to grab Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. “Preserve your fingers away,” she stated with a swatting movement, as if to thwart Trump’s land seize.
The Trump administration’s designs on Greenland have compelled European leaders to talk brazenly concerning the doable finish of NATO. “If america assaults one other NATO nation, all the things stops,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, warned just lately. A navy strike by the alliance’s strongest member would make its promise of widespread protection out of date—and danger the outbreak of World Warfare III. It’s a bewildering risk for the Danes, who see america as their most necessary ally, the nation that ushered them into the NATO pact and assured their safety for almost 80 years.
Denmark is small, with a inhabitants of simply 6 million. Nevertheless it has tried to uphold its finish of the discount. It misplaced extra troopers per capita than america did in Afghanistan. In all, there have been 43 deaths, a sacrifice that Danes accepted as the price of their worldwide obligations. Sophia was the primary feminine soldier to fall in fight in Danish historical past, her loss of life a ripple impact of the September 11 assaults, the primary time that NATO’s mutual-defense clause was invoked. Triggering Article 5 obligated U.S. allies to help, together with by sending troopers like Sophia to struggle. This time, if Article 5 is invoked, america is likely to be the aggressor.
Trump seems unbothered by the prospect that his transfer towards Danish territory may obliterate the American-led order. “If it impacts NATO, it impacts NATO,” he stated just lately. “However you already know, they want us way more than we’d like them.” Which may be true in a strict sense; U.S. energy eclipses Danish capabilities many instances over. However after I traveled to Denmark this month, I discovered there was nonetheless constancy to rules that appear to have vanished from the American authorities’s calculations, specifically a way of mutual obligation and primary morality.
That’s why Danes really feel such an acute sense of betrayal when Trump maligns their worth as an ally. “It’s not proper what he’s saying,” Bruun protested. “We now have executed a lot for America.” For the households of Danish troopers who died within the American-led marketing campaign towards the Taliban, their nation’s partnership with america will not be an abstraction. Denmark’s loyalty to America introduced Sophia Bruun to Afghanistan, and it ended her life.
Sophia’s mom is the one who instructed that she be a part of the armed forces. She was a spunky child who performed handball and gymnastics. As a young person, she appreciated to celebration. After highschool, she was directionless, so her mom proposed six months within the navy, pondering the expertise would put together her for any occupation and provides her mates from all around the world. She entered primary coaching in 2008, acing the bodily elements, and shortly signed a contract that required her to deploy to Afghanistan. “I used to be livid,” Bruun recalled, by no means pondering when she proposed a short course of navy instruction that her daughter would truly go to battle.
Denmark participated in worldwide operations within the Nineteen Nineties, however its troopers didn’t endure heavy casualties. The nation’s engagement in Afghanistan started in December 2001, as Denmark despatched plane and particular forces to help within the coalition battling the Taliban. In contrast to Denmark’s involvement within the American-led battle in Iraq, starting two years later, the choice to take part in Afghanistan wasn’t controversial, Rasmus Mølgaard Mariager, a historian on the College of Copenhagen, advised me. “Denmark needed to be the American empire’s European Gurkha,” he stated, referring to the Nepalese fighters who had been recruited into the ranks of the British empire beginning within the nineteenth century and proved their soldierly mettle.
Danes can’t boast the identical navy prowess. “This isn’t a Viking folks,” as one U.S. official in Copenhagen put it to me. Veterans I spoke with stated the deployment to Afghanistan was shadowed by two humbling moments of their nation’s historical past, reaching all the way in which again to 1864, after they had been routed by Prussia and Austria. The second defeat was much more chastening. On April 9, 1940, when Nazi forces swept north, invading Denmark, the nation’s navy couldn’t face up to the assault and folded in what is typically referred to as the Six-Hour Warfare. It’s understood to be the quickest nationwide defeat by the hands of Hitler’s armies and gave rise to a chorus, “By no means once more an April 9,” that also motivates Danish troopers, Søren Knudsen, who served three excursions in Afghanistan and later labored on the NATO Protection Faculty, in Rome, advised me. “We’re bored with being bullied by these large nations,” he stated.
Bruun supported Denmark’s participation within the Afghan Warfare. “As a result of we’re such a small nation, we are able to solely go together with different nations,” she stated. “That’s the one approach we are able to survive.” Denmark expanded its contribution in 2006, when the Danish Parliament accredited plans to deploy troops to a British provincial-reconstruction crew and different allied efforts in Helmand province, a infamous Taliban stronghold within the nation’s south. In all, Denmark despatched almost 20,000 personnel, based on estimates. Lots of them helped perform Britain’s so-called platoon-house technique, during which small teams of troopers occupy fortified positions in strategic cities to challenge authority and fend off the Taliban.
Denmark’s troopers engaged within the fiercest fight seen by its forces for the reason that battle towards Prussia and Austria in 1864. The lesson, says Peter Boysen, a deputy commander of Danish troopers in Afghanistan, was that the nation might handle the casualties. “We risked our lives by collaborating in an operation removed from our house,” Boysen, who’s now chief of the Danish military, advised me. And since the struggle was in assist of a NATO ally that had come beneath assault, he stated, it was value it.
As Sophia ready to deploy to Afghanistan in early 2010, her mom was in Greenland. Bruun labored as a nurse on the time, and she or he carried out rotations on the island. Danes have data of the territory—of its unforgiving local weather, and of its folks—that the People can’t replicate, Bruun insisted.
Greenland turned a Danish colony in 1721, when a Christian missionary landed on the island’s west coast. It gained house rule within the twentieth century and is now a self-governing a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, with a Parliament primarily based within the capital, Nuuk. Denmark nonetheless controls Greenland’s protection and international affairs, and it gives the island an annual block grant that largely underwrites policing and well being care.
This week, Greenland’s prime minister positioned his folks’s destiny with Denmark and Europe. “If now we have to decide on between america and Denmark right here and now, we select Denmark,” the prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, stated. “We select NATO, the Kingdom of Denmark, and the European Union.” Requested concerning the feedback, Trump stated that he didn’t know who Nielsen was, however that his alternative could be a “large drawback for him.”
Earlier than Sophia deployed, Bruun shortened her contract and returned to Denmark. Sophia left days later. A few of her mates got here to the airport to say goodbye, alongside along with her mom, father, and youthful brother. “She was trying ahead to it,” Bruun recalled. “She was going out to do what she was skilled to do.”
Sophia referred to as house now and again, reporting that it was scorching and sandy. She wasn’t permitted to say a lot about what she was doing. Sophia’s mom took care of her canine, a cocker spaniel named Minnie, and she or he stuffed letters with particulars of the canine’s actions, together with searching chickens. In a letter house, which her mom learn to me, Sophia expressed enthusiasm about returning to Denmark for depart. “After which she stated, ‘I’ll name, I’m getting up early tomorrow, so now I’m going to mattress.’”
She signed off, “Love you.”
Sophia’s mom was on the hospital in her hometown of Holbæk on June 1 when a health care provider appeared on her ward and ushered her to a gathering room. As quickly as she walked in, a person in navy costume stated, “Sophia is lifeless.”
“I stated, ‘No, not my Sophia,’” Bruun recalled. “‘Sure, Sophia is lifeless,’ he stated.” Her imaginative and prescient turned distorted, and she or he sat down on the ground.
Sophia hadn’t needed a giant navy funeral. In her will, she specified that solely troopers who had served alongside her ought to attend. The ceremony befell on the household’s church, additionally in Holbæk. She was cremated and given a spot within the cemetery. She wrote the phrases now etched throughout her personal headstone: Wished to make the world a greater place to stay in.
Danes are incredulous concerning the threats emanating from Washington, and offended. I spoke with former troopers who stated they had been making ready to ditch their iPhones and Gmail accounts in favor of European alternate options. This month, officers in Denmark’s third-largest municipality vowed that they might proceed funding an annual celebration of Independence Day—believed to be the biggest occasion marking July 4 outdoors america—provided that official representatives of the U.S. authorities had been excluded.
I advised Boysen, the Danish military chief, concerning the feeling of betrayal I encountered, particularly amongst households of fallen troopers. “I do perceive that anger,” he stated. “However I believe we have to ask the president, as a result of he’s the one, I imply …” Boysen trailed off, blowing air via his lips.
Danes have a classy understanding of U.S. politics, they usually take pains to separate the president from the remainder of the inhabitants. Nonetheless, their goodwill will not be infinite. “I believe it could be very troublesome to achieve assist for a U.S.-led mission someplace overseas at this time,” says Lennie Fredskov Hansen, a retired brigadier basic who served as an adviser to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the previous NATO secretary-general, when he was prime minister of Denmark within the 2000s. Hansen advised me that he labored carefully with the U.S. Marine Corps in Afghanistan, the place he felt a way of “brothers in arms.” He expects that particular person Danish and American troopers should really feel that approach. However, he added with a be aware of understatement, “I’m involved about how that may develop sooner or later.”
As for the previous, I discovered that sure attitudes are enduring, together with amongst households of troopers who died in Afghanistan. They haven’t reconsidered their perception within the worldwide marketing campaign towards the Taliban. They usually don’t fault the U.S. for the disastrous final result of the battle—violent extremism and human displacement on a mass scale. They remorse solely that america withdrew so swiftly in 2021. “I’ve to assume, and I nonetheless consider, that the mission was for the perfect,” says Simon Enig, who had two brothers who went to Afghanistan alongside NATO forces; one, Samuel, by no means returned. Final Friday was the fifteenth anniversary of the day he was killed by a roadside bomb. Enig visited his brother’s grave, alongside along with his mom. “We had been simply quiet collectively,” he advised me.
I requested among the mother and father I met in the event that they regretted sending their kids to die in an American-led battle, now that the American president is disparaging Denmark’s contributions to NATO. Perhaps, I put it to them, Denmark shouldn’t have been such a loyal ally to america.
“No,” stated Malene Ebert, whose son Michael served in each Iraq and Afghanistan, and was killed in a firefight north of Gereshk in 2009. “We’re in an alliance, so now we have to meet our obligation.” She additionally stated she reductions Trump’s phrases, and hopes that American voters will elect totally different leaders. “I can’t perceive,” she stated, “why the American folks have chosen an individual like that.”
However Michael’s father, Nicolai Rasmussen, noticed a minimum of one constructive impact of Trump’s stress: Denmark and different European nations spending extra on their very own protection. “I can perceive why he’s saying, ‘Hey, it’s your security. You could pay what you should pay,’” Rasmussen, a gardener, advised me. “I believe that’s truthful speak.” Ebert, a secretary, needed to agree. “I consider that, too,” she conceded. “However I don’t prefer it; I don’t like battle. I might use assets on peace as an alternative.”
For years, the Danish authorities adopted that method. Within the many years after the Chilly Warfare, the nation downsized its navy and scrapped key weapons programs. Greater than 20 years in the past, Denmark decommissioned its ground-based air- and missile-defense capabilities, and commenced to rebuild them solely final yr. In 2024, Denmark pulled out of a significant NATO coaching train, scheduled for the next yr, due to finances constraints. Its absence was a humiliation, however the Danish authorities has pivoted shortly since Trump’s return to the White Home. In 2025, it raised protection spending to greater than 3 p.c of its financial output, the very best in a minimum of half a century.
Denmark has most of the benefits that will be anticipated of a rich, extremely educated society, together with technical experience, cybercapabilities, and an elite special-forces corps. Its limitations are additionally evident. The labor market is tight, so competitors for staff is fierce. Sure advantages that may in any other case be dangled as an incentive to enlist, corresponding to well being care, are already offered to all Danes by the federal government. So Denmark is getting inventive. Final yr, it prolonged its lottery system for doable navy conscription to girls, becoming a member of simply two different European nations, its fellow Scandinavian states of Norway and Sweden, in making necessary service gender-neutral.
Sophia’s mom talked about that change to me, saying it could imply extra troopers like her daughter. “It’s a brand new world,” she stated. We stood in entrance of a collage of photographs of Sophia, which her mom assembled a month after her loss of life: Sophia along with her youthful brother on the airport, making ready to deploy. Sophia via the window of a indifferent automobile door in Afghanistan, pretending to drive. “It’s typical Sophia,” her mom stated. “She was all the time making jokes.”
It is a brand new world, I believed—one during which small nations, like Denmark, which have certain themselves tightly to Washington have quite a bit to fret about: Russia bearing down on Europe, america retreating to the Western Hemisphere, and China flexing its energy in Asia. Denmark has been an particularly beneficiant donor to Ukraine, a lot in order that one U.S. official groused to me that the nation had left its personal cabinet naked. That’s of a chunk with Denmark’s navy observe document. It’s been a succesful and accommodating companion in international wars. However its capability to defend itself, not least Europe and the components of its territory that stretch into North America, is restricted. Danes, after all, by no means imagined they could have to defend themselves towards america.
