Donald Trump has once again shaken Greenland, Denmark and Europe. The American president underlined his desire to seize the immense island, an autonomous territory of Denmark and a point of enormous mineral and geographical wealth. “We need Greenland for national security, we must have it,” he said Monday evening in Florida, shortly after appointing a special envoy for the island. This Tuesday, the Greenlandic Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, responded to the tenant of the White House. “Greenland is our country. Our decisions are made here,” he wrote in a message on the social network Facebook.
The Danish government has also been blunt and warned that it will not give in to the demand to cede the territory. Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen summoned the US ambassador to explain Trump’s statements.
The US president’s statements have increased tensions with Denmark, one of his NATO allies, and with Europe, where a cascade of political leaders have come forward to defend the island’s sovereignty. “Greenland belongs to its people. Denmark is the guarantor of that,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on social media after learning of the appointment of a special envoy for Greenland – Jeff Landry – with a view to its integration into the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump insists he intends to control the island. “We need Greenland for national security, not for minerals. If you look at Greenland, you look up and down… the coast… Russian and Chinese ships everywhere,” he told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida.
“With these words (from Trump), our country is reduced to a question of security and power,” lamented the Greenlandic leader a few hours later. “This is not how we see ourselves, and this is not what we can or should be called in Greenland. We are a people with a long history, a strong culture and a vibrant democracy,” Nielsen said. “Our territorial integrity and right to self-determination are anchored in international law and cannot simply be ignored,” he insisted in a message in Greenlandic and Danish, accompanied by a photograph with dozens of Greenlandic citizens.
Greenland, with a population of around 57,000, is an autonomous territory dependent on the Kingdom of Denmark and has the right to declare independence under a 2009 agreement. Its geographical location makes the island (the largest in the world that does not form a continent) a highly sought-after geostrategically and economically due to its wealth of natural resources. The United States has a military base there (Pituffik), a vestige of the Cold War which gives them a strategic location for their defense and anti-missile missions.
In an interview with a Danish channel, Foreign Minister Lokke explained that he had summoned the American ambassador to draw a clear red line and ask him for explanations on the extremely hostile approach of the Trump administration. “An attack on part of the kingdom is an attack on the entire kingdom,” concluded the head of Danish diplomacy, who stressed that Greenland is protected by American commitments to NATO.
The Danish government led by socialist Mette Frederiksen has been open to strengthening and intensifying defense cooperation with Washington (the two countries are linked by a 1951 agreement allowing the United States to operate military facilities in Greenland). But that didn’t appease Trump. At the start of the year, the White House tenant even affirmed that he did not rule out the use of force to annex the island. Today, the year ends with new threats facing Greenland.
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