The loneliness of America’s model ally

Donald Trump has no desire to play global cop. That is tough on Denmark, a loyal sheriff’s deputy.

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These are bracing times for America’s most feckless allies.

President Donald Trump has turned his wrath on free-riders with puny armed forces, who ignored years of requests to do more.

If those laggards feel friendless in a dangerous world, much of the blame is on them. But this is a frightening moment, too, for a smaller group: countries that spent decades trying to be useful to America, their superpower protector.

Often, helpful partners fall into one of two camps: those that contribute useful services to an alliance, and those that hold territory in strategic places.

Until recently, Denmark imagined that it ticked both those boxes. A country of picture-book prosperity, near the top of global rankings for the contentment of its six million people, Denmark is too small to deter enemies alone. For decades Denmark’s solution has involved signalling that it is an unusually willing member of Nato.

After the fall of the Soviet bloc ushered in a unipolar age, led by an America ready and able to police the world, Denmark ditched years of semi-pacifism to become an eager sheriff’s deputy.

Mr Anders Fogh Rasmussen, prime minister from 2001 to 2009, then Nato secretary-general from 2009 to 2014, dates this “fundamental change in mindset” to the first Gulf War in 1990 to 1991, when Denmark sent a warship to enforce a UN blockade of Iraq.

Deployments in the Balkans followed. After the Sept 11 attacks in 2001, Danish expeditionary forces served alongside Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, later joining Nato air strikes on Libya.