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 searching 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 underneath Sophia’s car, flipping it. She was killed immediately, on the age of twenty-two.
Within the years after Sophia’s dying, 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 dwelling 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, instructed 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 girl, with delicate white hair and superb strains 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. “Maintain your fingers away,” she mentioned 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 overtly concerning the attainable 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 A navy strike by the alliance’s strongest member would make its promise of frequent protection out of date—and threat the outbreak of World Warfare III. It’s a bewildering risk for the Danes, who see america as their most essential 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 cut price. 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 dying 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 combat. This time, if Article 5 is invoked, america is perhaps 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 mentioned just lately. “However , 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 occasions over. However after I traveled to Denmark this month, I discovered there was nonetheless constancy to ideas that appear to have vanished from the American authorities’s calculations, particularly 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 have now completed 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 shouldn’t 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 recommended that she be part of the armed forces. She was a spunky child who performed handball and gymnastics. As a young person, she preferred to get together. 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 buddies from all around the world. She entered primary coaching in 2008, acing the bodily parts, 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 struggle.
Denmark participated in worldwide operations within the Nineties, however its troopers didn’t undergo heavy casualties. The nation’s engagement in Afghanistan started in December 2001, as Denmark despatched plane and particular forces to assist within the coalition battling the Taliban. In contrast to Denmark’s involvement within the American-led struggle 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, instructed me. “Denmark needed to be the American empire’s European Gurkha,” he mentioned, 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 mentioned 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 School, in Rome, instructed me. “We’re uninterested in being bullied by these huge nations,” he mentioned.
Bruun supported Denmark’s participation within the Afghan Warfare. “As a result of we’re such a small nation, we will solely go together with different nations,” she mentioned. “That’s the one means we will survive.” Denmark expanded its contribution in 2006, when the Danish Parliament authorized 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, in accordance with 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 undertaking authority and fend off the Taliban.
Denmark’s troopers engaged within the fiercest fight seen by its forces for the reason that struggle towards Prussia and Austria in 1864. The lesson, says Peter Boysen, a deputy commander of Danish troopers in Afghanistan, was that the nation may handle the casualties. “We risked our lives by taking part in an operation removed from our dwelling,” Boysen, who’s now chief of the Danish military, instructed me. And since the combat was in assist of a NATO ally that had come underneath assault, he mentioned, it was price 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 dwelling rule within the twentieth century and is now a self-governing a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, with a Parliament based mostly within the capital, Nuuk. Denmark nonetheless controls Greenland’s protection and overseas affairs, and it offers 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, mentioned. “We select NATO, the Kingdom of Denmark, and the European Union.” Requested concerning the feedback, Trump mentioned that he didn’t know who Nielsen was, however that his selection could be a “huge downside for him.”
Earlier than Sophia deployed, Bruun shortened her contract and returned to Denmark. Sophia left days later. A few of her buddies got here to the airport to say goodbye, alongside along with her mom, father, and youthful brother. “She was wanting ahead to it,” Bruun recalled. “She was going out to do what she was educated to do.”
Sophia referred to as dwelling sometimes, reporting that it was sizzling 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 dwelling, which her mom learn to me, Sophia expressed enthusiasm about returning to Denmark for depart. “After which she mentioned, ‘I’ll name, I’m getting up early tomorrow, so now I am 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 gown mentioned, “Sophia is lifeless.”
“I mentioned, ‘No, not my Sophia,’” Bruun recalled. “‘Sure, Sophia is lifeless,’ he mentioned.” Her imaginative and prescient turned distorted, and she or he sat down on the ground.
Sophia hadn’t needed an enormous navy funeral. In her will, she specified that solely troopers who had served alongside her ought to attend. The ceremony occurred 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: Needed to make the world a greater place to dwell in.
Danes are incredulous concerning the threats emanating from Washington, and indignant. I spoke with former troopers who mentioned they had been making ready to ditch their iPhones and Gmail accounts in favor of European options. This month, officers in Denmark’s third-largest municipality vowed that they’d proceed funding an annual celebration of Independence Day—believed to be the most important occasion marking July 4 exterior america—provided that official representatives of the U.S. authorities had been excluded.
I instructed Boysen, the Danish military chief, concerning the feeling of betrayal I encountered, particularly amongst households of fallen troopers. “I do perceive that anger,” he mentioned. “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 complicated understanding of U.S. politics, and so they take pains to separate the president from the remainder of the inhabitants. Nonetheless, their goodwill shouldn’t be infinite. “I believe it will be very troublesome to realize assist for a U.S.-led mission someplace overseas at this time,” says Lennie Fredskov Hansen, a retired brigadier common 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 instructed me that he labored intently 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 means. However, he added with a notice of understatement, “I’m involved about how that can 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. And so they don’t fault the U.S. for the disastrous final result of the struggle—violent extremism and human displacement on a mass scale. They remorse solely that america withdrew so unexpectedly in 2021. “I’ve to suppose, and I nonetheless consider, that the mission was for one of the best,” 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 instructed me.
I requested a number of the dad and mom I met in the event that they regretted sending their kids to die in an American-led struggle, now that the American president is disparaging Denmark’s contributions to NATO. Possibly, I put it to them, Denmark shouldn’t have been such a loyal ally to america.
“No,” mentioned 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 satisfy our obligation.” She additionally mentioned she reductions Trump’s phrases, and hopes that American voters will elect totally different leaders. “I can not perceive,” she mentioned, “why the American folks have chosen an individual like that.”
However Michael’s father, Nicolai Rasmussen, noticed a minimum of one optimistic impact of Trump’s strain: 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’ll want to pay what you must pay,’” Rasmussen, a gardener, instructed 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 struggle. 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 protection capabilities, and started to rebuild them solely final yr. In 2024, Denmark pulled out of a serious 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 % of its financial output, the very best in a minimum of half a century.
Denmark has lots of the benefits that may 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 employees is fierce. Sure advantages which may in any other case be dangled as an incentive to enlist, akin to well being care, are already supplied to all Danes by the federal government. So Denmark is getting inventive. Final yr, it prolonged its lottery system for attainable navy conscription to girls, becoming a member of simply two different European nations, its fellow Scandinavian states of Norway and Sweden, in making obligatory service gender-neutral.
Sophia’s mom talked about that change to me, saying it will imply extra troopers like her daughter. “It’s a brand new world,” she mentioned. We stood in entrance of a collage of pictures of Sophia, which her mom assembled a month after her dying: Sophia along with her youthful brother on the airport, making ready to deploy. Sophia via the window of a indifferent automotive door in Afghanistan, pretending to drive. “It’s typical Sophia,” her mom mentioned. “She was all the time making jokes.”
It is a brand new world, I believed—one during which small nations, like Denmark, that sure 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 report. It’s been a succesful and accommodating companion in overseas wars. However its capability to defend itself, not least Europe and the elements of its territory that stretch into North America, is proscribed. Danes, in fact, by no means imagined they may have to defend themselves towards america.
