Is it true that Trump will invade Greenland and fight with ‘two dog sleds’? Is NATO going to defend the world's largest island? The MEP Jana Toom (Renew Europe / Estonian Centre Party) on the battle dance around Greenland.
The European Union has emerged from the New Year holidays and found itself in what seems like a different world. A world where it is possible to kidnap the president and oil of another country, or threaten allies with the seizure of a huge chunk of their territory.
The way the US is behaving in Venezuela is outrageous, but Europe is more concerned with the saga of Greenland. After all the threats to ‘do it the hard way if it doesn't work out the easy way,’ the ice has broken: NBC reports that Trump has instructed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to offer Denmark the opportunity to sell Greenland for $700 billion. A meeting between the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland and their American counterparts took place in Washington. The talks led to nothing. As the head of the Danish Foreign Ministry said: ‘It is clear that the president has a desire to conquer Greenland.’
In a normal world, even if someone had the idea of saying, ‘I want your territory!’, it would be enough to say ‘no’ to close the matter. But that's in a normal world. On Tuesday, at a conference organised by my political group Renew Europe, I listened to a speech by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The moderator asked three times, ‘How will a US invasion of Greenland strengthen NATO?’ And all three times, Rutte steered the conversation towards the security of NATO and the Arctic as a whole. One couldn't help thinking that, for the sake of security, it might be possible, or even necessary, to give up Greenland altogether.
I understand that Rutte, like many EU politicians, apparently thinks that if His Majesty is being capricious and wants Greenland, we should pretend that we are not opposed to it. Tomorrow – who knows! – he may get distracted and forget about Greenland, just as he has already forgotten about Ukraine and Venezuela. We depend on America, we still believe that it will protect us, so we mustn't anger Trump.
So Rutte says the right things, flatters Trump, and meanwhile Denmark, Sweden, France and Germany are organising a joint Arctic security mission. But even when Ursula von der Leyen says that ‘Greenlanders can always count on the EU,’ I'm afraid that doesn't mean much. Who is seriously prepared to fight the US for Greenland?
For now, we are playing a strange game. Trump claims that Greenland is not protected from China and Russia by anyone, that its defence consists of two dog sleds. We say: ‘Donald, what are you talking about! We will prove to you that this is not the case!’ And so Denmark is urgently investing tens of billions in defence, in particular buying a dozen and a half F-35 fighter jets for four billion. These fighter jets are American, by the way. And Trump should be happy and calm down… but he continues to push his line.
Why? Because Greenland is not only a huge island with rare earth metals, uranium, iron, oil and gas – all of which lie beneath rapidly melting ice. Under international law, Greenland also claims almost 900,000 square kilometres of the Arctic. For comparison, Canada's Arctic sector is slightly larger, while the US has almost half as much. And the Arctic has resources beyond imagination.
Is it true that Trump will invade Greenland and fight with two dog sleds? We'll see. The U.S. officially recognised Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland more than a hundred years ago, but Trump says he doesn’t need international law. I think he would prefer to buy Greenland. Denmark will not sell it, however, as it cannot overrule the autonomy of Greenland. Plus, without Greenland, Denmark has no future in the Arctic. So tensions within NATO will grow. All this may also affect Estonia, for Denmark is now transferring troops to Greenland and may withdraw them from our Tapa, among other places.
And if NATO and Europe persuade Denmark to agree, it will send a signal to Russia. So the worth of Western agreements will be tested. Ironically, this test is being conducted not by Russia, but by our best ally, who is almost worshipped in Estonia.
There is another sad irony here. Just recently, Denmark demanded that the European Court of Justice repeal the directive on minimum wages – because of the ‘dictate of Brussels’ and so forth. At that moment, the Danes were not particularly concerned about EU unity. Today, when Denmark is threatened by Trump, it is appealing to a united Europe and asking for help. It would be good to learn a lesson from this situation. And that doesn’t only apply to the Danes.