Trump has been talking about taking over Greenland for a while, having claimed that the US will ‘need it for national security’, saying he was ‘talking about protecting the free world’ when he spoke of occupying the world’s largest island.
Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, which has insisted that they will not be selling it to the Americans, and while there is an independence movement in the territory they are not rushing to become the next American state.
In his address to Congress yesterday (4 March), Trump once again spoke of his desire to take over Greenland, saying: “We strongly support your right to determine your own future. And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America.
“We will keep you safe. We will make you rich. And together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before.”
Trump said his government was ‘working with everybody involved to try to get’ Greenland, and despite the lack of desire from Greenland or Denmark for his ideas he made it clear he thinks he will succeed eventually.
“We need it really for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” he told Congress.
Responding to Trump’s ominous declaration that the US was ‘going to get’ Greenland ‘one way or the other’, Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Bourup Egede released a statement declaring that ‘Kalaallit Nunaat is ours’ (Kalaallit Nunaat is the Greenlanders’ name for their country).
He said: “We don’t want to be Americans, nor Danes; We are Kalaallit. The Americans and their leader must understand that.
“We are not for sale and cannot simply be taken. Our future will be decided by us in Greenland.”
Trump’s notion of the US taking over Greenland would seem to run very much contrary to the desire of the 56,000 people who actually live there, which would seem to be a massive obstacle to his plans to take it over.
Denmark’s foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he didn’t think that Greenland wanted to become independent just to end up being ‘an integrated part of America’.
