Trump tightens the screws on Greenland

0:02Jon Sopel:This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:05Lewis Goodall:The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States. That is the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump's most close, most trusted advisers, refusing to rule out the use of military force against Greenland, therefore refusing to rule out the use of military force against a sovereign ally, Denmark, and therefore, by extension, refusing to rule out the complete implosion of the NATO alliance.

0:55Jon Sopel:Yes, if people have been sleeping uneasily since Nicolas Maduro was lifted and kidnapped in Venezuela, they're not going to sleep any better listening to Donald Trump's right hand man. And so it comes to pass that six European nations, including the UK, as well as France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark, have had to issue a joint statement saying, America, it's none of your business. Is Donald Trump going to take a blind bit of notice? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:37the news agents it's john it's lewis and that clip that you heard of stephen miller and it's

1:45Jon Sopel:hard to exaggerate his importance to the trump operation because he was there in the first term there in the second term he is if you like the intellectual underpinning of kind of maga and America first. Although sometimes he sounds like he's from a skit on Saturday Night Live, that he's kind of anger and in fury about some of the issues that he's asked. But it's worth listening to that more extended interview that he did with Jake Tapper on CNN, because I think it is so revealing about so much of America's thinking right now and the thinking of this administration about if America wants it, it has it.

2:27Jon Sopel:Can you rule out that the U.S.

2:29Lewis Goodall:is ever going to try to take Greenland by force? Well, let me let me go back a step. The president has been clear for months now. So I know you're treating this as breaking news. The president has been clear for months now that the United States should be the nation that has Greenland as part of our overall security apparatus. Right, but your wife posted that like hours after the Venezuela operation. That's why it's newly relevant. No, and I'll talk with you about it for an hour. I think it's a really important conversation. I just wanted to reset, Jake, by making clear that it's been the formal position of the U.S.

3:08Lewis Goodall:government since the beginning of this administration, frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration, that Greenland should be part of the United States. The president has been very clear about that. That is the formal position of the U.S. government. Right, but can you say that military action against Greenland is off the table? What do you mean military action against Greenland? Greenland has a population of 30 ,000 people, Jake. The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?

3:42Lewis Goodall:The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States. And so that's a conversation that we're going to have as a country. That's a process we're going to have as a community of nations. So you can't take it off the table that the U.S. would use military force to seize Greenland. You can't take it off the table. I understand, Jake, I understand you're trying very hard to, which again, is your job. I respect it. It's great to get exactly the headline, right that catchy headline trying to get an answer that says that says miller refuses to rule out the the united states should have greenland as part of the united states there's no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you're asking of a military operation nobody's going to fight the united states militarily over the future of greenland we did speak about this about on the show yesterday talking about some of the places that could be on the table for potential territorial acquisition by the Trump administration.

4:45Lewis Goodall:But even since that show, it feels that the screws are being tightened on Greenland and on Denmark in particular, which, as we were saying yesterday, poses a problem of a different order of magnitude by comparison for European powers and for our own government, for Keir Starmer, than the Venezuela crisis has done. Why? Well, because the Venezuela crisis is basically a long term problem, basically around the breakdown of international law potentially and of the rules-based order the truth is is that both of those things have been fraying for a long time anyway as we discussed and the truth is is that very often american administrations have never really obeyed international law when it hasn't suited them so that is a sort of slightly more diffuse crisis and to be honest like it's not like any european power particularly cared about the maduro regime quite the opposite this is different This is different because this concerns what is effectively European sovereign territory.

5:43Lewis Goodall:It is Danish sovereign territory. It is part of, therefore, the NATO alliance. Therefore, if Trump actually is serious about using military force against Greenland, and to be fair to Miller, he is right. They have been talking about this for a long time. I was checking, John, we did an episode about this last January. I wrote a piece about this last January. We were saying then we need to take them seriously in terms of what they're saying. This isn't just a sort of Trump one type of bravura and bravado and trolling people. There are deep intellectual forces at work within the White House, which genuinely see territorial expansion as the key to continued American hegemony and success, geopolitical success in the 21st century.

6:26Lewis Goodall:We might talk a little bit about that, but those trends are real. Therefore, this should be taken seriously. and if it is taken seriously let's be honest the US could take as Miller was saying there no one would fight them it's true the Danes aren't going to fight them we're not going to fight them France aren't going to fight them you know European powers aren't going to fight them for it but what it would do at a stroke is destroy the fundamental pillar of both US European Western geopolitical security which has existed since 1945 which is the NATO alliance why well because of course you would have two NATO allies going to war with each other effectively, which has never happened before.

7:03Lewis Goodall:And how can any defensive alliance possibly endure when one member of that alliance has become an offensive power against another member of the alliance's sovereign territory?

7:15Jon Sopel:It is so kind of hard to compute when you've grown up your whole life with the NATO alliance and the whole idea that America doesn't need. I mean, America has got a military base on Greenland because it is part of NATO. And the Danes have said to the US... It's like America going to war against itself. And also the historical assertion that Miller makes there of what right have the Danes got to have Denmark? Well, what right have the Brits got to have the Falkland Islands? And if Donald Trump suddenly decides that it's in America's geopolitical, geostrategic interest to have the Falkland Islands, it's going to take them.

7:52Jon Sopel:I think it's time we got Virginia back. Let's go get Virginia. The Commonwealth of Virginia, we want it back. Yeah, we had it. It was ours. Exactly. So I think that this kind of idea that there is no respect for anyone's territory and that you have a right to move in is what makes this so different from anything we've talked about before. Look, there is an intellectual argument, an intellectual case of the strategy behind what Donald Trump is doing. And it's this. What do Venezuela and Greenland have in common? Well, they both have a lot of rare earth minerals. Venezuela has oil. But in Greenland, there are all sorts of things that are vital for setting up AI data centres and the like.

8:39Jon Sopel:And if there is a global battle going on, it is between China and the United States for dominance of all of that. It's very interesting that on Air Force One the other day, Donald Trump was, you know, the clip that got played out endlessly was of Donald Trump going after all the kind of talking about the rogue nations that they might go after next, like Colombia, etc. There was a clip of Howard Lutnick, who is the Commerce Secretary, talking about in Venezuela, we want to revive the mining industry. This is about the battle for AI and the fact that China has a kind of almost the control of the supply of the essential rare earth minerals that you need in, you know, high kind of electronics and all the rest of it.

9:24Jon Sopel:And that therefore America needs to have this stuff if it is going to compete with China. And therefore what Greenland has should be America's as well. The problem with that argument is, of course, well, Greenland isn't part of America, nor is Venezuela.

9:41Lewis Goodall:I think it is definitely true. We have to sort of break down the sort of conflicting kind of impulses here. And some are kind of like much more basic and some are more sort of intellectual and strategic. You've identified, John, I think you are right. There is a strand within thought on the modern American right, which is to say that, look, the battle of the 21st century is basically going to be a battle of empires, right? And you could argue that that was true of the sort of post-war period between the USSR and the US. But that was different. That was as much as anything, to some extent, at least an ideological battle between two competing systems of government, two competing systems of civilization.

10:19Lewis Goodall:The argument goes in 21st century is a far more mercantile, far more hard power base, really about ideas so much. Trump isn't talking the language of ideas or democracy or liberalism or any of the things we typically associate with America and American presidents. He's talking about hegemony. He's talking about maintaining America's role as the dominant superpower. And they think that that battle is largely against China to a lesser extent against Russia and those sort of big powers. And therefore, the 21st century is going to be based on technological prowess. And in order to fuel that technological prowess, you need all of the sort of different resources that you're talking about.

10:56Lewis Goodall:I think that's true. And I think, you know, I was speaking to a Republican operative on my Sunday show who was absolutely explicit about that. I mean, she even started to say, you know, rather disturbingly, you know, thing is about the US, we're too small, we need more space. I'm like, I don't think we should be getting into, it's a bit of dangerous territory when we start talking about.

11:11Jon Sopel:How do you translate that in German? Is it called Lebensraum or something? Yeah, let's leave that to one side.

11:15Lewis Goodall:But yeah, it was pretty, you know, and she was completely explicit about it. And I have to say, I know a lot of listeners felt that it was quite chilling.

11:22Emily Maitlis:President Trump pretty much on day one wanted Greenland. Remember, he also wanted Canada. He also wants the Panama Canal. Look, you can't not call this guy a modern-day imperialist, right? He wants the same thing that Putin wants, that Xi Jinping wants, even Bibi Netanyahu wants. They want more land. And right now, I don't think anyone is pushing to stop him. But he's not going into wars, necessarily. He's not like Putin, going in and just bringing in the troops across the border. He's trying to make a deal. and whether or not that deal is successful, we're not sure. But we know that the envoy working on Greenland, this is not going to be boots on the ground.

12:02Emily Maitlis:We're not invading. This is certainly more an art of the deal president who's going to do something, hopefully, to secure Greenland.

12:11Lewis Goodall:Any rational reading of this, it doesn't make any sense for a couple of reasons. On the security stuff, I mean, you've already alluded to it. Denmark has basically already offered the United States whatever it wants. It already has the only base that's there. And actually, over successive American administrations, including the Trump administration, the last one, it's gone from a 10 ,000 American soldier peak to about 200 today. So on that basis, the Americans can't consider it such an enormous security threat. On the resources side as well, the Danes, again, have been very, very open about the idea of American companies wanting to invest in Greenland mining and those rare earth minerals.

12:50Lewis Goodall:And for whatever reason, American companies have largely chosen not to exploit it. Right. So, yeah, there are geostrategic things that you can pull on. But when you actually sort of dig down into it, I'm not sure how much water it holds. Again, go back to what we were saying yesterday. I think that some of this is just more impulsive about Donald Trump's psychology. and there are these intellectual strands at work, but part of it is simply that Donald Trump is looking for a legacy. He's looking to do something that other American presidents have not done for a long time. He's looking to expand American territory.

13:23Lewis Goodall:He's looking for a real estate deal and whatever form that takes, he will, I think he would prefer and they would prefer to basically a bit like, you know, to basically bully the Danes and the Greenlanders into giving them what they want, but are as part of that deal and that leverage, therefore refusing to take off the table ultimate sanction which is military action.

13:42Jon Sopel:Well further to that exactly that last point you were making Lewis the Economist is reporting that Trump is looking to kind of offer some kind of deal to offer the Greenlanders about why they would like to be part of the United States of America and as apparently said exactly as you said it's a real estate deal and that there would be a COFA a compact of free association which which American officials are discussing. And apparently it's a sort of the idea that American armed forces operate freely in these signatory countries. There are other places in the Pacific, small nations that have got these COFA deals.

14:16Jon Sopel:And the advantage for Greenlanders is it becomes a huge free trade area for them. And so that they profit from it as well. And in return, you plant the stars and stripes on Greenland. But again, it's just not respecting the idea and not accepting that Denmark has sovereignty over Greenland. And it's for Denmark and the Greenlanders to decide this stuff, not for the US to come in and say, look, you know, I'm going to give you a bump up of 10 percent if you sell me your house. Just sell me Greenland and I'll give you 10 percent more than the estate agents are valuing it at.

14:51Lewis Goodall:That is the difference that we're seeing play out with this administration by comparison to others, which is that generally speaking, obviously not always, but generally speaking, American presidents would at least pay lip service to the idea of national self-determination. And if they were going to intervene, they would usually say that they were doing so partly to facilitate that national self-determination. Whereas we heard it from Miller there. He has no regard whatsoever. Never mind Danish self-determination or sovereignty. But Greenland, what did he say? There's only 30 ,000 people who live there.

15:22Lewis Goodall:As if that makes it completely irrelevant. We're fine. We'll do whatever the hell we like. There's no problem. There's only 30 ,000 people living there. What's the cutoff point? Is it 50 ,000, 100 ,000, 200 ,000, a million? Before the rights to self-determination start to kick in? This is what is, I think, different about this administration. And clearly as well, it poses an absolutely profound and indeed really disturbing problem for European powers. because European powers, obviously, their belief is they've basically already offered the Americans everything that they could possibly want, short of full annexation, which clearly no Danish government could possibly adhere to or possibly give into and survive.

16:01Lewis Goodall:Therefore, what next? And I think clearly the strategy is, look, there's obviously been a lot of criticism, which I do understand and sort of played my own part in when I've been interviewing government ministers. But there's a lot of criticism of government ministers and Stam himself for not being more truculent over Venezuela and indeed over Greenland now. It's clear what they want to do is diffuse it, if they can, and get to some really big meetings which are coming up imminently in the next week or two on Ukraine, where obviously they still want to try and keep Trump's favour to provide the security guarantees for the deal that they've been working towards now for over a year.

16:38Lewis Goodall:The hope is that somehow they can just diffuse this, move on, Trump forgets about it. And it is hard. Sat here right now, it feels to me like it could go one of two ways. One is that that comes to pass, at least for a while, and Trump just moves on and gets bored and he does that. The other one is there is something just more serious going on here. And that's what it feels disturbing to me, sort of being sat at this moment, because we've got two paths before us. One is kind of a bit more of the sort of familiarity that we know with Trump, which is a bit of a circus. He leads people all the way up to the top of the hill and he marches them down again.

17:09Lewis Goodall:And the other one is basically the destruction of the NATO alliance. And that binary, to me, is scary and feels deeply, deeply weird and in an almost novel place.

17:19Jon Sopel:When you talk about the talks on the future of Ukraine and the need to get security guarantees for Ukraine, for its future and viability as a sovereign nation. at the moment given what you've heard from Stephen Miller that we've played on this episode of the podcast given what you've heard from Donald Trump over the past couple of days I mean what value would you place on an American promise to say yeah we'll do this to help I mean America doesn't recognize anyone's sovereignty that much it seems it doesn't seem to recognize Greenlands it doesn't seem to recognise Venezuela as it says it's going to run Venezuela because it could do it better than the Venezuelan government which means broadly speaking you've got a right to go into any country you fancy anywhere in the world if you think you can do a better job of running the economy than the current incumbent so I think that the element of trust as well must also gnaw away at European leaders as they watch this nightmare unfold what's going on actually you know you made me think that

18:26Lewis Goodall:I mean, we're sat here talking about, you know, the stakes being literally the implosion of NATO and everything that could involve. To be honest, I always feel like it's done now. You know, when you've got the key member of the alliance threatening openly to seize, to annex the sovereign territory of another member of the alliance, Denmark itself as well. No, no minnow in military terms. You know, it's been there for America. It was involved in the Iraq war. You know, it's been a steadfast ally of the United States. Right. And when you've got the key military component of that alliance, the US, threatening to take some of their territory, on what basis can you say that alliance currently exists?

19:02Lewis Goodall:You know, NATO is one big confidence trick, right? It is one big deterrent. The idea being that we just convince the rest of the world, convince our enemies, the USSR, then Russia principally, that we are so united that if you come for one of us, you better not because we're all coming for you. Does anyone seriously believe that right now, particularly with everything going on? So that confidence trick that is NATO, it seems to me, is already fundamentally, fundamentally undermined by comparison to where it was even a year ago. And that is scary enough.

19:30Jon Sopel:I did some reporting from Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan and there was a huge British presence and there was a huge American presence and there was a very, very significant Danish presence. They have fought alongside, you know, and their soldiers have died in battle. that Americans have sought to fight, whether in Iraq, whether in Afghanistan, and have been steadfast allies. What I think that America doesn't seem to compute why it is so shocking for Europe to see, you know, allies that have stood steadfastly with the United States being treated in this high-handed way as if they have no say and they have no rights in all of this.

20:13Lewis Goodall:52 Danes died. 52 Danish soldiers died. I just looked it up in Afghanistan, in Iraq, you know, fighting alongside and for, for basically, let's be honest, America. And the thing that I think that I really think long term, I mean, there's all sorts of things that go wrong in the short term. But I think the real misjudgment that Trump is making right now, again, we talked about it a little bit yesterday. I think the fraying, the long term fraying of these alliances, the fact that, you know, I think Trump will eventually go. But who in Europe and in other America, in terms of other America's allies are going to fundamentally trust the United States again?

20:44Lewis Goodall:That has a cost. I also think, you know, we've been talking a lot about the return of spheres of influence politics. And Miller there was doing it again. He was talking about basically saying the Western Hemisphere, that is ours. And by implication, other hemispheres, other parts of the world, that's up to them. Now, I can really see why that works for China. I can really see why that works for Russia. I don't really see why it works for the United States. Because the United States is a global power and has been so at least since 1945, if not before. It has global commitments and entrenchments all over the world, not least, of course, Taiwan.