He attack on Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro They are just the beginning of the Trump Administration’s plans on the American continent. Greenland is emerging as the next target. In a statement, the White House confirms that the president and his national security team are discussing different alternatives to take over the territory, and that resorting to the Armed Forces to achieve it “is always an option.” These statements came after Trump’s influential domestic policy advisor, Stephen Miller, had defended the annexation of the island under Danish sovereignty even if it is necessary to resort to force to achieve it: “We are a superpower. And with President Trump, we will behave as such.”
“President Trump has made it known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority for the United States and is essential to deterring our adversaries in the Arctic region,” the White House said in its statement. And he adds: “The president and his team address a series of options to achieve this important national security goal and, of course, resorting to the army is always an option that is available to the commander in chief of the Armed Forces (the president of the country).”
Miller, one of the US president’s most trusted advisors — the architect of his immigration policy — had defiantly backed Trump’s wishes, echoing increasingly threatening rhetoric since Maduro’s capture.
“We live in a world where you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, the real world… that is ruled by force, that is ruled by power,” warned the White House deputy chief of staff to CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “These are the iron laws of the world,” he added.
Whether intentionally or not, Miller echoed in that phrase an idea that Trump had already expressed in his press conference on Saturday about the operation in Venezuela, in an indication of the extent to which the White House leadership thinks in unison: “The future will be determined by the ability to protect trade, territory and resources fundamental to national security,” Trump declared then. “These are the iron laws that have always determined global power, and we are going to keep it that way,” he noted at that press conference, in which he announced that the United States is going to govern Venezuela “until there is a reliable transition.”
To defend his annexationist theses, Miller even resorted to US role in NATO. Something paradoxical, given that Denmark is a member country of the Alliance: neither Greenland nor Copenhagen represent a threat to the national security of Washington, which, in fact, has a military base on the island, Pituffik.
“The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, protect and defend NATO interests, Greenland should obviously be part of the United States,” the advisor stated in the interview.
The success of the operation in its immediate objective, of capturing Maduro without American casualties, seems to have given wings to an Administration that since Saturday has notably hardened its rhetoric to unequivocally claim hegemony on the American continent. “This is OUR hemisphere,” wrote the State Department, in a message on social networks with the black and white photo of Trump.
This Sunday, Trump redoubled new warnings. Among the nations that are threatened is Colombia, whose leader, Gustavo Petro, has been one of the first to condemn the attack on Venezuelaand of which the American has come to say that he will be next on his list; Mexico, where the president said that “something is going to have to be done” because, according to him, that country is “controlled by the drug cartels”; Cuba, which maintains that “it is about to fall” because it will no longer receive economic support from Venezuela; and Greenland.
Last week Trump, who over the past year attacked Iran and ordered military actions in Nigeria, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, also warned that would intervene in Iran in case its rulers bloodily repress the protests in the country.
But it is about the Arctic island that he has been most categorical about. “We need Greenland from the point of view of national security,” Trump said aboard the Air Force One on Sunday, heading to Washington.
It is not clear that these threats will lead to concrete action to annex the territory, as the Republican had threatened at the beginning of last year. But his statements and those of Miller—the ideologue of this White House—immediately after the intervention in Venezuela force us to take them seriously. Both the Greenlandic and Danish governments, as well as the major European countries, have firmly reiterated that they will not allow the United States to take over that strategic territory.
In a statement on the social network Facebook, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Prime Minister of Greenlanddemanded: “Enough pressure. Enough insinuations. Enough fantasies about annexation.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen stressed: “I will make it clear that if the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and therefore the security that has been established since the end of World War II,” in an interview with Danish broadcaster TV2, in which she also acknowledged that “one should take the American president seriously when he says he wants Greenland.”
American presence
The great arctic island is one of Trump’s goals since before returning to the White House almost a year ago. Its strategic location, together with the territory’s wealth in natural resources, such as minerals—lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper—and rare earths, profile it as a treasure in the eyes of the Republican, always willing to take advantage of opportunities for economic exploitation.
In March of last year, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, visited the Pituffik space base on a controversial tripaccompanied by his wife, Usha, and the White House National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz. On that visit, Vance spoke out very harshly against the Danish management of the security of the territory of 56,000 inhabitants: “They have not done a good job,” he stated.