Trump’s Greenland ambitions sets up security ultimatum to transatlantic alliespublished at 18:53 GMT
18:53 GMT
Tom Bateman
US State Department correspondent
Just hours before
the White House meeting, President Trump posted that the United States needed
Greenland for its national security, adding that Nato would not be an effective
deterrent without America’s vast power. Anything less was unacceptable, Trump said.
At the same time, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland were
pictured outside the Danish embassy in Washington, “standing together” they
said.
Both foreign ministers have reiterated their position
that Greenland is not for sale, and Greenland’s representative quoted an
opinion poll suggesting only 6 per cent of the island’s inhabitants were in
favour of becoming a part of the United States.
We still don’t know exactly what happened in their meeting with the US Vice-President JD Vance and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It was expected to be a highly tense exchange over the future of the territory, though Danish media has quoted officials as saying it “went well”.
In the run up to it, Denmark’s defence ministry
said it was boosting military deployments to Greenland, its apparent offer to
Washington to fend off Trump’s designs; but he has already derided its
security on the island as amounting to two dog sleighs.
Seemingly emboldened by
his raid to snatch the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and becoming the first
openly annexationist US president in more than a century, Trump is laying
down an ultimatum to America’s historic transatlantic allies – give us Greenland,
or your security backing from Washington is at risk.