The town of Ilulisat in Greenland on Sept 2, 2021. European leaders have been focused in recent days on what many consider inflammatory statements from Donald Trump and his allies. The president-elect has said he would like to make Greenland part of the United States. (Photo: New York Times)
NEW YORK — Christian Ulloriaq Jeppesen remembers how this all started.
In 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term as United States president, Trump floated the idea of the United States buying the island of Greenland. At the time, most people in Greenland (and Denmark, the European country that controls it) thought his suggestion was a joke.
“Everyone said, ‘Ha-ha, you can’t just buy a country; he doesn’t mean it,'” Jeppesen, a native Greenlander and a radio producer, said by telephone. “Obviously, that was the wrong way to take it. Look at where we are today.”
Now Trump has doubled down on his insistence that the United States needs to annex Greenland for security reasons. And that has Greenlanders asking the same questions as everyone else, but with a lot more uneasiness.
Is Trump just being bombastic again, floating a fanciful annexation plan that he may know is a stretch?
Or is he serious?
Based on his comments in the past few weeks, Trump appears completely serious. Never mind that Denmark’s leadership has said the territory is not for sale, and its future must be determined by the local population.
“For purposes of national security and freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in late December in a social media post announcing his choice for ambassador to Denmark.
At a news conference Tuesday, the president-elect took an even more surprising swerve. He refused to rule out using military force to get Greenland.
France and Germany are taking Trump seriously enough that they both issued statements Wednesday defending Greenland’s territorial integrity and warning against the threat of any military action.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said the principle of the inviolability of borders applied to every country, “no matter whether it’s a very small one or a very powerful one.” The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said that it was “obviously out of the question” to threaten another country’s “sovereign borders.”
“Do I think the United States will invade Greenland? The answer is no,” Barrot told France Inter radio. “Have we entered an era in which the rule of the strongest is returning? The answer is yes.”
A further sign of Trump’s interest in Greenland came Tuesday when his son Donald Trump Jr suddenly showed up on the island.
Donald Trump Jr departs from the airport in Nuuk, Greenland, on Tuesday. (Photo: Reuters)
The president-elect’s son landed in the afternoon in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk; toured some sights, including a statue of an 18th-century Danish Norwegian missionary; and was hosted by a Danish Trump supporter. He said the reason for the trip was personal, not official, but the president-elect posted about his son and “various representatives” visiting and said, “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN.”
“This is all getting sc
Read More