00:00Denmark says it will summon the U.S. ambassador over the appointment of a special envoy to Greenland,
00:05warning Washington to respect its sovereignty.
00:08The governor of Louisiana has been given the new post for the autonomous Danish territory.
00:12He has repeated Trump's call for the U.S. to take over the island.
00:17Dragged out of hibernation and back under the gaze of Donald Trump.
00:23Greenland has returned to the forefront of the U.S. president's mind.
00:27More specifically, his desire to take control of the Danish territory.
00:32Trump announced on social media that he was appointing Louisiana governor Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland.
00:40Landry immediately responded by vowing he would work to make Greenland a part of the U.S.
00:46The appointment and Landry's statement have triggered outrage in Denmark and Greenland.
00:52Out of nowhere, there is now a special U.S. presidential representative,
00:58who, according to the envoy himself, is tasked with taking over Greenland.
01:02This is, of course, completely unacceptable.
01:05Trump has made no secret of his desire to make Greenland part of the United States.
01:11He has repeatedly said the island is essential to U.S. national security
01:15and shown a keen interest in its rich deposits of minerals.
01:20But while Greenlanders largely support independence from Denmark,
01:24polls have also shown an overwhelming majority have no interest in becoming part of the U.S.
01:32They can forget all about that.
01:35Greenland must be independent outside of the U.S., Russia and all major nations.
01:39I don't know what Trump thinks about Greenland.
01:45He just keeps going.
01:50I find it hard to see what his intention is with this.
01:56The governments of both Denmark and Greenland are adamant that the island is not for sale.
02:02But Trump has refused to rule out using force to take what he wants, even from a NATO ally.
02:07Let's cross over now to Rachel Rizzo.
02:11She's a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and joins me now from Salt Lake City in Utah.
02:17So we haven't been hearing about Greenland for months now, and suddenly Trump appoints a special envoy.
02:23What do you make of that?
02:26Well, what you said is correct.
02:28This issue sort of went silent for months after we had been hearing about it over and over again at the beginning of 2024.
02:35And I think a lot of us who watch this issue closely kind of thought that it was a done deal, especially after J.D. Vance's and Usha Vance's trip to Greenland earlier this year that didn't really go that well.
02:47But I think with this news today that he is appointing Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as a special envoy, it shows that this is still very much a live issue for him.
02:57And it's something I think that we need to take very seriously.
03:00He, like you said, hasn't ruled out using force to take Greenland, although I think that's still sort of a crazy idea and it's not something that we should take seriously.
03:09But I do think he's looking for something here.
03:12And what that something is, if it's actually making Greenland a part of the United States, I think we have to see what he's been, what he will be willing to do in order to make that happen.
03:21Quite unsurprisingly, there's been a lot of criticism of the appointing of the special envoy here in Europe, but you're in the U.S.
03:27So the question is, how exactly is this plane in the United States?
03:30Well, I think it's really a confusing issue for a lot of people, because, as I mentioned before, we haven't really heard about Greenland for months at this point.
03:41We thought it was sort of a done deal.
03:42But as you mentioned in your opening in your opening report, polls in Greenland show that Greenlanders do not want to be a part of the United States.
03:53They want to be an independent nation free from the U.S. and free from other countries like Russia.
03:58Polls earlier in 2024 also showed that this was not a popular idea in the United States.
04:06Americans did not want the U.S. to acquire Greenland, either by economic force or by military coercion.
04:14And so I think let's see how this plays out.
04:16But I don't think it's a popular idea on either side of the Atlantic, certainly not in Denmark.
04:22Let's take a look at what Trump says about Greenland.
04:25He says it's essential to U.S. national security.
04:27Is that something you agree with?
04:29Or do you think Trump has other reasons for wanting to annex the territory?
04:33No, I mean, I think he's serious when he says that he believes it's a key, important issue to U.S. national security.
04:43I mean, this is a strategically significant region up in the Arctic.
04:47The U.S. has military assets as well as military personnel stationed there.
04:53There are natural resources in Greenland, like critical raw materials, although this is an island that is covered in, in some places, two miles of ice.
05:05So any venture there to take those critical minerals would be exorbitantly expensive and would take years.
05:12I mean, we're looking at a very long timeline here.
05:16So while it's important, especially when you look at how important the Arctic region is to not just U.S. security, but to NATO as well, I understand that.
05:26But acquiring Greenland does not mean or, you know, the fact that it's important does not mean that the United States needs to acquire Greenland, only that it is working in lockstep with Denmark and our NATO allies.
05:38I think that is much more important than trying to acquire it.
05:42Now, on the point of NATO, Trump has not ruled out military force to take control of Greenland.
05:47And we know Denmark is already adding to its defenses on the island.
05:51What do these territorial tensions between two NATO members mean for the alliance?
05:57I mean, I think this is very significant.
06:00It's obviously not the first time that there have been military tensions between NATO allies.
06:06We saw this happen decades ago, for example, with Greece and Turkey.
06:11But the United States is the foundational member of NATO.
06:16When you look at the mutual defense agreements, when you look at Article 5, the significance of Article 5 really, I think, at this point still lies in the military capabilities and the deterrence capabilities that the United States brings to the alliance.
06:32So the fact that a NATO ally, the United States, is potentially threatening another NATO ally, Denmark, is unprecedented.
06:41And I think it's something that we need to take really seriously.
06:44This is a live issue and something that we're going to be talking about, it seems, for the coming weeks, months, and maybe even years.
06:51And that was Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
06:55As always, thank you very much for your expertise.
06:58Thanks.
07:00Jennifer Spence is the director of the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfast Center for Science and International Affairs.
07:08Jennifer, what do you read into Trump's appointment?
07:11Yes, well, I think we've sort of been here.
07:16We aren't terribly surprised, maybe a little disappointed to see this come back in the news the way that it has.
07:23The fact that a special envoy has been assigned to Greenland is not necessarily in and of itself a bad thing.
07:30I think we much more are concerned by what we see in the position being taken by the new special envoy, Jeff Laundrie, and his very clear position that this is an agenda to take over another independent country.
07:44So what do you think is going to happen?
07:48Well, I mean, we've already seen a very swift response from both Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark.
07:53This is by no means of any surprise.
07:56And I think what we need to sort of look at is also the response of others across the world.
08:01And I think what we're seeing is a very strong response that this is not considered appropriate behaviour and that we really need to begin to consider how we expect the United States to work with its allies.
08:14Trump hasn't ruled out military force to take control over Greenland.
08:18Would he really attack a fellow NATO member?
08:23I don't think we're at that point.
08:26I think that there's a lot of rhetoric involved in what is being said right now.
08:31I think it should be taken very seriously.
08:33I think it should be concerning.
08:35International relations has been built on sort of an element of trust and partnership and allyship.
08:42And we're not seeing that right now.
08:43But this is an inconsistent with what we've seen from the Trump administration, both the first Trump administration and this administration.
08:50And so I think it's fair to say that these these kinds of statements will continue to be made.
08:56But there aren't really the mechanisms.
08:59And I do think we would see a very swift response from the international community if the United States chose to take that kind of approach with its allies.
09:07What about the logic and reasoning behind this?
09:10Trump says Greenland is essential to U.S. national security.
09:14How so?
09:15Well, I mean, there are many sort of elements to this.
09:19There's the military component, the sort of idea of the security and safety of the United States and of the Arctic as a whole.
09:27And so there's that kind of position.
09:29But we also know very clearly that the U.S. has had a military presence in Greenland, that there's been no resistance to that military presence.
09:37In fact, it's very much welcomed as part of the the NATO alliance.
09:42Then there's also an economic component to it.
09:45We've heard around the issues around the potential access to minerals and energy, shipping routes.
09:51And these types of things are also considered quite central to the thinking behind the U.S. administration.
09:57But I would say that we need to keep in mind that these things do not require the acquisition of a country.
10:05And in fact, there's quite a number of opportunities.
10:08And Greenland itself has said they're not for sale, but they're open for business.
10:12And I think that that's a much more constructive approach for the U.S. administration to take at this point.
10:18Jennifer Spence, Director of the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School.
10:22Thank you very much for chiming in.
10:25D.W.'s Terry Schultz joins us from Brussels.
10:29Terry, tell us about the reactions you're seeing to Trump's move.
10:35Hi, Ben.
10:36Yes, we've seen reactions coming in throughout the day, starting, of course, with Danish and Greenlandic officials,
10:41the prime ministers of Greenland and Denmark, putting out a joint statement saying that national borders and sovereignties are matters of international law
10:50and that you, United States, cannot simply annex another country.
10:55The reactions have spread across the Nordic countries with the Norwegian and Swedish foreign ministers putting out statements saying they stand 100 percent behind Denmark.
11:04And Finnish foreign minister Elina Walton even putting out a rather lengthy statement on social media saying that she notes the sacrifices that Denmark has made in its friendship with the United States.
11:15It's casualties, for example, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Denmark has served alongside U.S. soldiers.
11:22And I even had a chance to ask the European Commission at its very last briefing of the year, Ben, the spokesman there giving a very terse, basically one sentence answer,
11:32saying that the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark, which, of course, includes Greenland, is a matter that is essential for the European Union.
11:40So will this appointment of a special envoy by the U.S. president reignite tensions over this whole issue?
11:50Well, it's not only the appointment of an envoy, but, of course, those remarks that you said that he intends to work hard on making Greenland part of the United States.
12:00That's the real outrage.
12:01And, of course, the concern is, and we already see it happening, even with my own question to the European Commission,
12:07that this is going to bring Trump back into that cycle where he says that, yes, Greenland has to become part of the United States
12:14and that he will not rule out using force to make that happen.
12:18Remember those months of very high tension with Denmark and that trip that Vice President J.D. Vance made to Greenland,
12:25where basically the local population turned their backs on him because it was so uncomfortable for them.
12:31I think that Denmark quite rightfully is afraid that this is going to start another cycle of those kinds of statements,
12:37which, of course, are very worrisome for an ally.
12:40Thank you very much.
12:42Terry Schultz in Brussels.
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