European leaders released a joint statement Tuesday, outlining the importance of Arctic security, but stressing that “Greenland belongs to its people,” hours after White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said it was “the formal position of the U.S. government… that Greenland should be part of the United States.”
Miller also said, in an interview Monday with CNN, that “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.”
Greenland has been a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, and has been tied to the small European nation for 300 years, though it has its own elected government. The largest island in the world, it is located to the northeast of Canada and is about the size of Sweden. It is largely covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet and is home to only around 60,000 people.
Its location between the U.S., Russia and Europe makes it strategic for both economic and defense purposes — especially as melting sea ice has opened up new shipping routes through the Arctic. It is also the location of the northernmost U.S. military base.
“NATO has made clear that the Arctic region is a priority and European Allies are stepping up. We and many other Allies have increased our presence, activities and investments, to keep the Arctic safe and to deter adversaries,” the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the U.K. and Greenland said in their joint statement on Tuesday.
“Security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United States, by upholding the principles of the U.N. Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders. These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them. The United States is an essential partner in this endeavor, as a NATO ally and through the defense agreement between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States of 1951,” the U.S. allies said.
“Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
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On Monday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said an American military move to seize control of Greenland would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance.
“If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops,” Frederiksen told local media on Monday. “That is, including our NATO, and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War.”
When asked Tuesday if the U.S. would use military force to take over Greenland, Miller told CNN: “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.”
Some U.S. lawmakers pushed back against the idea of asserting U.S. control over Greenland.
Democratic Rep. Steny H. Hoyer and Republican Rep. Blake Moore, who co-chair the bipartisan Congressional Friends of Denmark Caucus, said in a joint statement that “sabre-rattling about annexing Greenland is needlessly dangerous.”
They said any U.S. attack on Greenland “would tragically be an attack on NATO.”
“We already have access to everything we could need from Greenland,” the two lawmakers said, noting that Denmark’s government has already given the U.S. permission to deploy additional military forces there, or to build more missile defense infrastructure on the island.