Denmark announced a $2bn Arctic security plan to protect Greenland after US President Donald Trump claimed the island was essential to US “national security.”
Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen urged attention to security in the Arctic and North Atlantic.
We must face the fact that there are serious challenges regarding security and defence in the Arctic and North Atlantic.
His statement came ahead of a visit by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to Berlin, Paris and Brussels to reinforce “European unity” over the Greenland issue.
As Greenland’s ice melts due to global warming, the battle over the island’s natural resources is also escalating. Huge deposits of oil and gas are believed to lie beneath its seas. It is expected that the Arctic could soon offer new shipping routes between the US and Europe.
Frederiksen announced a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as well as with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Denmark is a small country with strong allies. And it is part of a strong European community where together we can meet the challenges we face.
Earlier in January, Trump expressed interest in buying Greenland and the Panama Canal, not ruling out the possibility of deploying military force to control the two crucial objects. However, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Monday that the EU was “not negotiating” on Greenland.
We are not negotiating on Greenland. Of course, we are supporting our member state, Denmark, and its autonomous region, Greenland, but we shouldn’t also go into speculation about what-ifs because this is not the situation right now.
Greenland and Denmark publicly stated that the Arctic island was not for sale, with Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte B. Egede stating that its people should decide their own future. The latest opinion poll showed that 85 per cent of Greenlanders did not want their island to become part of the United States.
