By Humeyra Pamuk<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) \u2013 When officials from the United States, Denmark and Greenland met last month in the Arctic island\u2019s capital, the session was reassuringly normal, with no discussion of a U.S. military or financial takeover of the Danish territory, multiple people familiar with the talks told Reuters.<\/p>\n
That all changed less than two weeks later when Trump announced a special envoy to the vast island, Jeff Landry, who posted on social media that he would help \u201cmake Greenland part of the U.S.\u201d The appointment and the message stunned Copenhagen and blindsided senior U.S. officials across \u200dthe administration who work on European and NATO issues, the sources said.<\/p>\n
The exclusion of his own diplomats fit the pattern of Trump\u2019s foreign policy-making, which has veered wildly on a range of issues and has often been formulated without the national security officials who in other U.S. presidencies have helped steer policy.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Trump administration\u2019s moves, which included an implied threat to seize Greenland, a plan for new tariffs on U.S. allies and a push to wring concessions from Denmark, which governs Greenland, appeared to be driven solely by Trump and a small group of close aides.<\/p>\n
As Reuters reported this week, those aides included Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who proposed the idea of tariffs, and Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others who tried to steer Trump away from considering military force.<\/p>\n
In many ways it\u2019s an approach that works for Trump, given his suspicion of the Washington bureaucracy and desire to have his decisions implemented quickly. But the sudden announcements and surprise reversals that \u200cflow from it risk lasting damage to relations with key U.S. allies.<\/p>\n
When asked to comment on various examples of White House moves that surprised the diplomats involved \u200cin cases including Greenland, Ukraine and Syria, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said people \u201cwho leak to Reuters\u201d were not clued in on sensitive discussions, and that the achievements of Trump\u2019s national security team spoke for themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president was elected to implement America First foreign policy, and he has done so more effectively through his top-down approach,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
MILITARY ACTION<\/p>\n
The danger in this centralized \u2013 and personalized \u2013 approach became clear over the past few weeks.<\/p>\n
Transatlantic fury over Greenland escalated after a January 5 CNN interview by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Asked whether the White House would, after the military operation in Venezuela two days before, rule out military action to acquire Greenland, Miller declined to \u200banswer directly.<\/p>\n
Trump and officials in his administration appeared to double down on the possibility that the U.S. could use force in Greenland in interviews and on social media.<\/p>\n
The comments sowed confusion and alarm in Washington and among U.S. allies.<\/p>\n
On Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans grew anxious \u2013 the administration appeared to be yet again moving forward with a major military operation without consulting Congress first, two sources familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers phoned Rubio and senior White \u200dHouse officials, laying out their concerns and advising the administration not to move forward, one of those sources said. Some Republican lawmakers \u200balso told administration officials that they feared a potential impeachment investigation over any military invasion of Greenland, the sources said.<\/p>\n
This week, Trump brought down the tension, withdrawing his \u200bthreat to impose tariffs on allies supporting Greenland and saying he had reached the outlines of a deal with NATO on the island\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
Trump said he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had \u201cformed the framework of a future deal \u200dwith respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region\u201d during talks in Davos, Switzerland.<\/p>\n
But military action was never seriously considered, according to two sources close to the administration.<\/p>\n
Kori Schake, a former Pentagon and White House official with the American Enterprise Institute, said that with Trump\u2019s threat to seize Greenland by force, the damage has already been done.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump is so erratic with his threats, there\u2019s no way to establish that he won\u2019t turn right around and do it again. He has made the United States untrustworthy to our closest friends,\u201d Schake said.<\/p>\n
Asked for comment, including about Miller\u2019s remarks, White House spokeswoman Kelly said: \u201cIf this deal goes through \u2026 the United States will be achieving all of its strategic goals with respect to Greenland, at very little cost, forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Landry\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Danish embassy did not have a \u200dcomment for this story.<\/p>\n
Trump and his backers have insisted the U.S. needs Greenland to fend off threats from Russian and Chinese in the Arctic and that Denmark cannot ensure its security. But the United States already has a base on the island and the ability to expand its presence there under a 1951 treaty with Denmark.<\/p>\n
CENTRALIZED DECISION-MAKING<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s practice of centralizing foreign policy decisions, relying on trusted aides and effectively sidelining experts, has been a consistent \u200dtheme of his second term.<\/p>\n
It happened several times during negotiations to end Russia\u2019s war \u200din Ukraine. Most recently in the fall, a 28-point plan to end the war emerged from meetings between Trump\u2019s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, his son-in-law Jared Kushner \u200band Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund, one of Russia\u2019s largest sovereign wealth funds.<\/p>\n
Many senior U.S. officials inside the State Department \u200band on the National \u2060Security Council, who would typically be in the know about the evolution of such a plan, were not briefed on the process, two people familiar with \u200cthe plan said at the time.<\/p>\n
The approach has also been apparent in Washington\u2019s Syria policy.<\/p>\n
In May, Trump met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in front of cameras, effectively granting U.S. support to the former Islamist militant, even as some in his administration had advised against it. His decision to lift all U.S. sanctions on Syria caught many U.S. officials off guard.<\/p>\n
Since then, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack has been the main implementer of Syria policy with officials at the State Department and other parts of the administration having little room to make policy suggestions, according to three sources familiar with the process.<\/p>\n
Communications between Barrack and the subject matter experts in Washington have not been frequent, sources added.<\/p>\n
A State Department spokesperson said: \u201cThere is tremendous collaboration throughout President Trump\u2019s administration, and there are dedicated public servants dutifully advancing key priorities. Then there are the anonymous sources whining to the press who clearly don\u2019t have the judgment or temperament to implement President Trump\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Additional reporting \u2060by Erin Banco; editing by Don Durfee and Mark Heinrich)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Humeyra Pamuk WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) \u2013 When officials from the United States, Denmark and Greenland met…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-427589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}