During a White House meeting with top oil and gas executives, US President Donald Trump clarified why it was essential for the United States to “own” Greenland. Re-assuming his self-proclaimed ‘peacemaker’ stance, he argued that the issue had more to do with keeping Russia and China away. The MAGA leader’s renewed rhetoric surrounding the desire to acquire Greenland, possibly using military intervention, comes hot on the heels of America capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
Trump, on his part, has been insisting that he wants to buy Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, since 2019, despite both the US and Denmark being members of the NATO military alliance. Consequently, if Trump goes through with taking over the territory, it would pit the US against the intergovernmental military alliance’s member states.
His long-held desire to take over the world’s largest island has jumped back to the surface once again in the wake of the US attack on Venezuela.
Meanwhile, both Greenland and Denmark has rejected any such insinuations about the island being up for sale.
Trump on Greenland’s ‘ownership’
On Friday (US time), Trump said that the US will take over the island “whether they like it or not” because if America doesn’t do it, China or Russia will step in.
Reasserting that Denmark would transfer Greenland’s ownership “the easy way” or “the hard way,” the US president insisted, “ownership” was necessary because ““you don’t defend leases the same way — you have to own it.”
The American leader’s latest, and sternest, remarks regarding the world’s largest island come merely days after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the US military could seize Greenland.
“The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal,” Leavitt said in a statement, as per Reuters. “President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region.”
Even over the weekend, Trump had argued that seizing Greenland was necessary “from the standpoint of national security.” In the press cabin of Air Force One, he said on Sunday, “Denmark is not gonna be able to do it, I can tell you. You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security in Greenland? They added one more dog sled,” adding that the island was currently covered with Russian and Chinese ships.
On top of that, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that US State Secretary Marco Rubio told lawmakers that the US had no plans of imminent invasion of the island. Instead, he pressed down on the goal being to buy the island from Denmark, as per sources familiar with the discussion cited by WSJ’s Alex Ward on X.
Where does Greenland stand on US ownership?
The island’s party leaders, including the opposition, issued a joint statement on Friday night, calling out the “US’s disregard for our country to end.”
Greenland’s officials firmly asserted that they neither wished to be Americans nor Danes. “We do not want to be Americans, we do not want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” the leaders stated. “The future of Greenland must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Jess Berthelsen, chair of SIK, Greenland’s national trade union confederation, dismissed Trump’s allegations that Russian and Chinese ships have taken over the territory. Pressing Greenland “will not be annexed,” the longtime leader told the outlet, “We can’t see it, we can’t recognise it and we can’t understand it.”
He further added, “In Greenland, it’s hard to recognise the demands Trump is setting. His claims about our waters being full of Russian and Chinese ships, we cannot see that at all. We can’t recognise this postulation. The Danish navy is traveling in Greenland waters, and our big trawlers are also everywhere. If that had been the case, they could have told us already, but there’s no such thing. So what is it that he’s talking about?”
Similarly, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain and Demark published their own joint statement, saying only Greenland and Denmark can make up decisions regarding their territory.