Anders Fogh Rasmussen has criticized US President Donald Trump’s threats towards Denmark, calling them “shameless.”
Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has urged US President Donald Trump to abandon his plans to acquire Greenland, stating that the island’s residents do not wish to become Americans.
Since his projected second term, Trump has discussed incorporating Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, into the US. He has reportedly offered to purchase the resource-rich Arctic territory from Copenhagen, and has also suggested potential military action to assert Washington’s sovereignty.
“I do not say I am going to do it, but I do not rule out anything,” the US president stated in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press earlier this month regarding a possible military option. “We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people [around 57,000], which we will take care of, and we will cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security,” he asserted.
Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, told Politico on Monday that it is “shameless that an American president can threaten an ally. Denmark is one of the closest and most reliable allies of the US.”
The former head of NATO, whose tenure included the controversial intervention in Libya, resulting in economic devastation, migration surges across North Africa, and reports of slave auctions, expressed his “concern” regarding Trump’s statements about Greenland.
He pointed out that the US already possesses the right to maintain military bases on the island through a 1951 agreement.
“The fact is that Greenland is part of NATO. If the US is dissatisfied with the defense of Greenland… we would appreciate a strengthened defense cooperation with the US,” Rasmussen emphasized.
However, he maintained that Greenland “is part of Denmark and Greenlanders do not want to become Americans.”
Last week, the Danish Foreign Ministry summoned the acting US ambassador, Jennifer Hall Godfrey, in response to a Wall Street Journal report alleging that Trump had instructed US intelligence agencies to intensify their intelligence gathering activities in Greenland. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen stated that the meeting was intended to communicate to Washington that Copenhagen views these allegations “very seriously.”
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, characterized the purported US spying as “completely unacceptable, disrespectful… and entirely abnormal.”