President Donald Trump has said the U.S. will revisit its stance on Greenland in the coming weeks.
Asked if he expected to take action on the territory, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday: “Let’s talk about Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine. We’ll worry about Greenland in about two months. Let’s talk about Greenland in 20 days.”
He added: “We need Greenland from a national security situation. It’s so strategic.”
A related question I have: Was the US ever (publicly) interested in “acquiring” Greenland before Trump? His comments are the first of the sort I ever noticed, but I could imagine the idea having a longer tradition.
They were literally offered Greenland by the Danish ambassodor during WWII, and could have kept it after the war, but chose to hand it back. So no, the purposes of the US with Greenland has been served perfectly fine with the previous diplomatic arrangements they have had.
There is no sense to this other than Trump sees how big and beautiful it looks on a map in the same colour as the US territory.
Probably wants to put his name on it like everything else this psychopathic tacky asshole does.
Trump has flouted the idea in 2019 already, and there is some history. But just to be clear, the mere fact that the USA have expressed interest in Greenland one way or another over the centuries does of course not legitimize that interest! And afaics there’s nothing more to it. Just “interest” a.k.a. greed, expansionism, imperialism.
Thanks, very interesting. I think I had read about the US occupying Greenland during WWII (defensively), but not about the buy offers.
And yes, obviously nothing legitimises these threats. I was just interested to see whether Trump came up with it or whether it has some history in US political circles, which it appears it does.
I remember George W Bush talking about buying Greenland from us back in the 2000s. We thought he was a crazy bastard but I actually miss Bush. He was the fun kind of incompetent.
Before that there was a very embarrassing moment in time during the 50s where the US illegally used Greenland for nuclear experiments and left the nuclear waste on Greenland and pissed on us when our government tried to get them to take responsibility for the clean up. I see that as an invasion too, but it was kept hush hush for years. It’s still a problem now that the ice is melting.
No