Europe set up a showdown with Donald Trump after its leaders joined Canada and Denmark to rally behind Greenland, insisting it “belongs to its people” as the US president doubled down on threats to imminently annex the strategic, mineral-rich island.
The major clash between long-term allies came while 27 heads of state and government, including military officials and two US envoys, gathered in Paris to determine Ukraine’s security guarantees following any potential peace deal with Russia.
It is a tinderbox point of contention between the continent and the US, which has piled pressure on Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and agree to truce conditions many Ukrainians see as an effective surrender.
Despite backlash from Europe the White House insisted on Tuesday it is “discussing options for acquiring Greenland”.
“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” the Trump administration said in a statement.
“The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilising the U.S. military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” the statement added.
Earlier in the day, leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain had joined Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen in defending Greenland’s sovereignty.
“Greenland belongs to its people,” the statement said. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney later echoed the same point ahead of the Paris gathering, telling reporters in Paris: “The future of Greenland is a decision exclusively for the people of Greenland and Denmark.”
Rose Gottemoeller, who served as deputy secretary general of Nato during Mr Trump’s first administration, told The Independent that the most powerful member of Nato positioning itself as a “hostile actor” was putting the alliance through an “existential” crisis which posed the greatest threat to law-governed order since the Second World War and enshrined in the UN Charter.
“To ask the US military to attack a US ally, a legal treaty ally, and take over the island of Greenland from our Danish ally crosses the red line of legality,” she said.
“Denmark was one of the original members of Nato. We’ve been allies for a long, long time. It would be unprecedented.”
“It is essentially back to a ‘might is right’ kind of approach,” she continued.
The world’s largest island is a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark and thus part of the Nato military alliance.
