Summary
Trump renewed calls for the US to annex Greenland for “national security” reasons during an Oval Office briefing, claiming “I think it will happen.”
Greenland’s outgoing Prime Minister Múte Egede responded on Facebook: “Enough is enough,” and planned to summon all Greenland’s political parties for a joint rejection.
Likely incoming Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen also called Trump’s statement “inappropriate.”
Trump also undermined Denmark’s claim to Greenland, saying it was “very far away and really has nothing to do” with the island.
Danish Defense Committee Chairman Rasmus Jarlov warned that US annexation “would mean war between two NATO countries.”
For what “national security reasons”? I’d like him to elaborate. Is Greenland somehow threatening the US? the only country threatening other countries in the area is the US.
I imagine it’s to put defences in the Arctic…
But if Putin and Russia are fantastic and great people why does America need to guard the Arctic?
For those evil Norwegians, they might try to spread universal Healthcare!
He has americans convinced that they need to annex greenland to protect them from Russia and China. For some reason they think China is closer to greenland than to Hawaii …
But Trump loves Russia, aren’t they great? Why would they ever be a threat?
I don’t know a single American that believes what you just said. Most of us recognize this as bullshit.
Note: I’m not in a deep red state
It’s the same playbook used by Putin with Ukraine
Let me guess, natural resources.
Also strategic control of the melting and ever more passable Arctic, along with Russia. This also partly explains why Trump wants Canada.
Not to detract, but I never noticed how phallic Sweden and Norway looked from that angle
A sane president who values geopolitical allies would just work out a deal with the host country to install more military bases in the region of concern, rather than burning every partnership we have by being aggressively expansionist.
The US already has that agreement!
Dismissing it as insanity undermines the culpability of what Trump is doing.
The point isn’t whatever ‘national security!’ bullshit they’re putching it as, the point is to piss of Greenland to the point of severing our relationship with them. Same with the shit he’s doing to Canada, Panama, etc.
Trump’s goal is to weaken the US, and he’s accomplishing that in part by cutting us off from our allies.
But an insane president will bluster about things he doesn’t want to actually do (like Canada and Greenland) as a distraction to keep us focused on this nonsense while he raids the government coffers for all the retirement money he can get his grubbly diseased hands on.
I’m betting he wants to charge fees for ships traversing the northwest passage, and he wants that revenue to go to the US, not Canada or Greenland/Denmark.
They already have strategic control over Greenland. Denmark would let the USA do almost whatever they want on greenland.
Denmark probably were the USAs biggests bitch in Europe until they started threatening Greenlands sovereignity.
Just another case of Trump apparently not understanding that you can be powerful in other ways than bullying and threatening people, and often more powerful. Or it’s all in the service of furthering Putin’s agenda and weakening the West. Or both.
Yep.
If anything it’s cause for national insecurity, given that if they invade, per NATO rules, an attack on one is an attack on all.
But Trump is used to getting what he wants by breaking the rules and facing no consequences, so I guess it’ll be a FAFO thing.
I must admit, I do fear that if it comes to that NATO will fight the usual way - strong worded letter. For a buffoon who can’t even read and only responds to a fat stick to the face.
This is going to be interesting because Article 5 assumes an attack on a member state by a non-member state.
By attacking Greenland, Trump would violate Articles 1 and 2 (pledging to use peaceful means to settle a dispute and contribute to friendly relations though you could argue he’s violating the latter right now).
I think the whole point of this act is to force NATO to kick the US out of NATO, which is exactly what Russia (and by extension Trump) wants.
The most direct route from Russia to the US is North though the Arctic - so during the cold war there was a lot of first strike detection stuff setup in Arctic areas.
Probably that “economic freedom safe space” thing he’s been talking about? The one with no rules to follow so the “hard decisions” “rugged individual” “pat’rats” don’t have to put in effort. Isn’t Greenland mostly natives? Yeah that’s probably it.
Greenland is one of the only (the only?) largely indigenous governed country (ish) in the world and one of its official languages alongside Danish is Greenlandic, an inuit language. So, yea, for some shitty old white American dude to continue to demand annexing this country is some fucking wild bullshit.