Trump's Greenland obsession hits another snag

President Donald Trump's long-running obsession with annexing Greenland is not about to get any closer to reality, per Politico, as the Danish leader who consistently snubbed his demands has retained power going forward.

On Monday, Politico reported that Mette Frederiksen will remain prime minister of Denmark for the foreseeable future. This came after "drawn-out negotiations lasting more than two months" for the creation of a new government, culminating in the creation of "center-left coalition government."

"The four-party coalition is expected to bring together Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, the Moderates, Green Left and the Social Liberals, according to the DR public broadcaster," Politico detailed. "The incoming PM met King Frederik X Monday evening to inform him."

“I think everyone will be surprised by how much we want to do. It is a government platform that is good both for the people in Denmark, for the generations to come, and for animals,” Frederiksen said in a statement.

Greenland is an autonomous territory belonging to Denmark, and throughout Trump's pressure campaign to take control of the massive Arctic island, Frederiksen and her government have been staunch in their opposition. The prime minister has repeatedly asserted that Greenland is not for sale under any circumstances, with the government forming a task force to monitor mentions of the territory in the U.S. and bulking up security forces on it.

Trump renewed his efforts to try and take Greenland upon his return to the White House, asserting that his first-term musings about the idea were entirely serious. Reports from earlier this year suggested that his obsession with the territory might be largely to do with how big it tends to look on maps, an issue skewed by the Mercator Projection. As he pressed harder on the idea, he came close to setting off a major international incident when he refused to rule out using military force to seize Greenland, a nearly unthinkable idea for many experts, given that Denmark is a longtime member of NATO.

Speaking about Trump's threats, Frederiksen herself warned that an invasion of Greenland by the U.S. would effectively mark the end of NATO and the entire post-WWII global order.

"One should take the American president seriously when he says that he wants Greenland," Fredriksen said in a January interview with Danish broadcaster TV2. "If the US chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War."