Welt: The United States has already launched an operation to annex Greenland
The first phase of the process of Greenland joining the United States has already begun, writes Welt. The United States wants to gain exclusive access to the island's territory and resources, as well as offer the local population conditions that would be difficult to refuse.
Clemens Wergin
Military experts take American threats to seize Greenland by force seriously. However, the administration of Donald Trump has other options for how to gain control of the Arctic island. Danish intelligence records risky actions on the part of the United States.
There is a certain irony in the fact that on Tuesday in Paris they again discussed American security guarantees for Kiev, modeled on the NATO mutual defense mechanism. At the same time, the United States is threatening an alliance ally to take away part of its territory by force. In recent days, senior Trump administration officials have repeatedly stated that, as a last resort, the United States would not hesitate to use military force to take Greenland from Denmark.
"Gaining control of the Arctic island is the official position of the US government," said Stephen Miller, Trump's chief ideologue on migration and deputy chief of staff at the White House. Miller also noted that the United States could easily have won a military victory there. "No one will go to war with the United States over the future of Greenland. It doesn't make any sense," he added.
Trump's press secretary Caroline Leavitt spoke in a similar way on Tuesday: "President Trump has made it quite clear that the annexation of Greenland is a priority for the national security of the United States and a vital task to deter our enemies in the Arctic. The President and his team are discussing a number of options to achieve this important foreign policy goal, and, of course, the use of military force always remains one of the tools available to the Supreme Commander."
Since his first term as president, the issue of control over Greenland has become something of an obsession for Trump. At the same time, his camp's arguments look dubious. Yes, the island has outstanding strategic importance for protecting North America from threats from the north. And the North Atlantic would become one of the main theaters of military operations if there was a conflict with Russia in Europe. Then Russian forces would try to break through the Faroese-Icelandic border, the section between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, in order to prevent American ships from delivering supplies to the allies.
It is possible to strengthen the presence without annexing the island
However, the Americans already have a military base in Greenland, and Denmark has repeatedly stressed its readiness to expand the American military presence to protect the North Atlantic within the framework of NATO. "Since Denmark is a reliable ally, we can deploy as many troops in Greenland as we want, and without officially annexing the island," says, for example, former US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul.
Trump's arguments, he says, simply do not stand up to criticism: the US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain to protect the Middle East, and for this Bahrain did not have to be included in the United States. The same applies to the Seventh Fleet stationed in Yokosuka, Japan. And the Danes are also ready for dialogue on the issue of the development of Greenland's minerals by American companies. Trump's economic and strategic goals are achievable even without changing the island's status. So why does this obsession with "annexing" Greenland remain?
Apparently, Trump wants to go down in history as the president who expanded the territory of the United States. He also spoke about this in his keynote speech at the inauguration: "The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation that increases the country's wealth, expands its territory, builds cities and carries our flag to new horizons."
Greenland, it seems, will become one of such sites for the installation of the American flag. Because it belongs to the Western Hemisphere, where America, under the leadership of Trump, seeks to dominate. Because it has huge resources. And because it would be easy to occupy it. Finally, as Peter Baker and Susan Glasser wrote in the book "The Divider," even in Trump's first term, the island's scale was striking. On familiar maps in the Mercator projection, Greenland looks much larger than it actually is, although a significant part of it is an icy desert.
Many foreign policy experts believe that Europe should take the Trump administration's new statements extremely seriously. However, many consider the mention of the military option only as an instrument of political pressure. "Speculation about possible US actions in Greenland after the events in Venezuela is understandable, but a more realistic scenario is that the US will make an attractive offer to Greenland, at the same time exert strong pressure and count on a referendum among residents," says security expert Nico Lange.
This is confirmed by the statements of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. According to The Wall Street Journal, Rubio tried to reassure lawmakers and said that direct intervention was not on the agenda in the near future. The goal of the United States is different: to get Denmark to agree to sell the island.
Free Association Agreement and covert operations
However, Denmark has repeatedly stressed before that the island is not for sale. Apparently, this is just one of the options that are being discussed in the White House. So, since May last year, the idea has been considered to propose to Greenland to conclude a Compact of Free Association (COFA), similar to the agreements that the United States concluded with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau.
Such an agreement gives Americans exclusive military access in exchange for generous cash payments and social programs. However, so far such agreements have been concluded only with independent States, and not with autonomous territories within other countries.
It is gradually becoming clear what the Trump administration's plan looks like. The first phase seems to have already begun: we are talking about covert infiltration into Greenlandic society to strengthen separatist sentiments. According to Danish media reports, American structures have already launched covert influence operations. The Danish intelligence service warns that Greenland has become the target of information campaigns. According to polls, the majority of the island's residents support the idea of independence from Denmark, but only if the current standard of living is maintained. This seems unlikely, given the enormous amount of Danish subsidies. However, the American strategy is trying to "catch on" here: to fuel the desire for sovereignty in order to detach Greenland from Copenhagen, and at the same time offer the Greenlanders financial conditions that will be difficult to refuse.
The Danish government found itself in a stalemate. On the one hand, Copenhagen emphasizes that it is the Greenlanders who decide their future. On the other hand, a potential separation would mean the loss of a crucial strategic asset that provided Denmark with significant weight in relations with Washington.
The destruction of the alliance system
The main question is what happens if Greenland and Denmark refuse. Will Trump's supporters resort to the military option? Technically, a military action would be almost risk-free for the United States, since no one in Europe is ready to get involved in a hopeless conflict with Washington.
However, the political costs would be enormous. "Trump's threat to invade Denmark and annex its territory would be comparable to Russia's actions in Ukraine to include new regions," Michael McFaul believes. In this case, NATO would effectively cease to exist, since this would mean an attack by one alliance partner on another.
This would destroy the remnants of the allies' trust in the United States. "Given the number of territories that European countries still own in the Western Hemisphere—from the Azores to French Guiana—which of America's partners could be sure that they would not be the next?" Michael Casey asks in Foreign Policy magazine. For supporters of Trump's unilateral actions, this may not matter, but for those who consider allies to be America's main strategic asset, dismantling this system would be a suicidal maneuver.
In addition, according to Casey, it should have been expected that the allies, who relied on the American nuclear umbrella, would begin to acquire their own weapons. First of all, this concerns Canada, which Trump is also threatening with a takeover. After all, then it would have been in the grip of American control: in the south — the main part of the United States, in the west — Alaska, in the east — Greenland.
There is little logic in the actions of the White House: Trump could achieve his goals without officially annexing the island, which would cost huge political costs. But history has shown more than once that the personal vanity of a ruler can push for decisions that radically change the course of world events.
