Trump won on Greenland, media goes quiet. By Arnaud Bertrand:
Looks like what happened was:
Trump: “We’re going to buy Greenland!”
Denmark: “Absolutely not, Greenland is not for sale! But you can have it for free”
(I’m aware that Denmark is saying they kept “sovereignty” over it, but not sure what that word means when another country has permanent veto power over who can invest on your territory and occupies the place militarily) …
Long story short — which may surprise some — the Danes lied the most: Trump is pretty much correct in saying that this new deal grants the US control of Greenland. …
- The US secured a permanent military foothold that even an independent Greenland would inherit whether it likes it or not
- The US now has veto power over any non-NATO military presence in Greenland, and over who can invest in its strategic infrastructure and resources (beyond NATO and the EU)
- Denmark signed away its say over the principle of new US bases, with only the right to discuss the “implementation details”
- Danish authorities no longer set the rules for US military movement across the island
- And all of it is now justified by the defense of “the American continent”
I don’t know in which universe this even remotely “recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination,” as Danish PM Mette Frederiksen put it.
Yes, the preamble of the text cynically “reaffirms” Danish sovereignty but, in my book, when you let a foreign country put bases on your soil, move its troops without following your rules and veto who else can come in, in perpetuity, after it spent two years threatening to take you by force, the word for that is anything but “recognized sovereignty.”
Greenland comes with a long history of deceptive naming, like “green land.”