President Trump confidently said Thursday in the Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that he believes the United States will eventually annex Greenland. He even linked it to NATO security.
“I think it’s going to happen,” Trump told reporters. “And I just think, I didn’t think much about it before, but I’m sitting with a guy who could be very helpful. You know, Mark, we need this for international security,” Trump said, acknowledging Rutte next to him.
“I don’t want to drag NATO into this,” Rutte replied thoughtfully, but agreed that the Arctic region, and especially Greenland, is critical to Western security at a time when Russia has increased its military presence there in China.
But the center-right Democracy Party just won Greenland’s parliamentary elections this week, and Greenland’s likely new prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has surprised many by quickly taking such strong action against Trump’s Greenland rhetoric:
“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders and we want our own independence in the future,” Nielsen, 33, told Britain’s Sky News. “And we want to build our own country.”
That didn’t stop Trump from saying during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Thursday that the Greenland election was “very good for us” and “the person who did their best is, in our opinion, a very good person.”
Nielsen, celebrating his party’s surprising margin of victory, said Greenland must stand together “at a time when there is great interest from outside.”
Just four years ago, the Democrats won less than 10% in the last election, but they won nearly 30% in Tuesday’s election. Much of the campaign and debate leading up to this ignored Trump’s gaze on Greenland, focusing primarily on issues like health care and other purely domestic concerns.
The center-right Democracy party has long advocated a slower approach to independence, while another opposition party, Naleraq, which received 24.5% of the vote to Democracy’s 29.9%, has called for a faster severance of ties with Denmark.
Trump makes provocative annexation statements about Greenland, while NATO’s Rutte sits and reacts nervously…
Greenland, a self-governing region of Denmark, has been moving toward independence since at least 2009. Trump’s transition team began consulting with private sector experts in November on potential ventures in Greenland. Among the ideas are rare earth mining projects and a new hydroelectric power plant, which points to the island’s renewable energy potential. The internal administration discussions underscore Washington’s growing interest in the Arctic as a buffer against Chinese influence.
“Trump is taking full advantage of Greenland’s aspirations for independence,” said Jacob Kaarsbo, an independent foreign security adviser and former chief analyst at the Danish Defense Intelligence Agency. “I can easily see a scenario where Greenland moves away from Denmark after the upcoming elections.” But the question remains whether that will mean anything for the United States. The recent rhetoric from the Young Democracy party suggests that it will not.
