President Trump demands that Denmark, a NATO ally, give us Greenland. The Danes refuse and Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.Trump’s insistence on buying Greenland risks NATO cohesion and strategic prudence.
President Trump demands that Denmark, a NATO ally, give us Greenland. The Danes refuse and Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has said, in so many words, not only no but hell no.
Perhaps Secretary of State Rubio — who is also National Security Adviser — could urge him to back down.
Greenland is a strategically-located territory. It is in the path that Russian or Chinese missiles would travel to get to the United States. All but a bit of it lies above 60 degrees North latitude, and it stretches almost to the North Pole.
We already have a base there. It used to be called Thule Air Force Base and is now called Pittufik Space Force Base, and it is relatively close to the northwest corner of the nation, well above the Arctic Circle. The base has existed since it was established in 1946 as a weather station.
It’s mighty cold there, the average annual temperature being about 12 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a place that young Air Force officers (such as I used to be) were threatened with transfer to if they screwed up. (Fortunately, I didn’t.)
The president has raised tariffs by 10 percent on European countries that opposed his demand, including goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland. The tariff increases will rise, the president said, to 25 percent on June 1 and remain in place until a deal is reached for what he called the “complete and total purchase” of Greenland.
