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A former prime minister of Denmark said Sunday she is befuddled by President Donald Trump’s attitude toward her country and its territory of Greenland, given Denmark’s long alliance with the United States.
Speaking on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said, “This whole talk about Denmark not being a good ally, that is simply not true. And it is a little bit insulting, to be honest, that we have stood side by side with America for decades.”
She added: “We have deployed with America. We have veterans that have been under U.S. command. And I was also thinking of them when the vice president said that we had not contributed because we have been with America, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya.”
Trump has said that the United States needs to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark, for national security reasons — and has repeatedly said he would not rule out a military invasion to get it. On Friday, Vice President JD Vance scolded Denmark during a visit to Greenland, saying, “Denmark hasn’t done a good job at keeping Greenland safe.”
In response to Vance’s remarks, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Friday: “This is not how you speak to your close allies. And I still consider Denmark and the United States to be close allies.” Greenland’s new prime minister urged unity in response to “the heavy pressure we are exposed to from outside.”
And Thorning-Schmidt said Sunday she was “taken aback” and “quite shocked” by Vance’s remarks.
Thorning-Schmidt was Denmark’s prime minister from 2011 to 2015. In her discussion with Zakaria, she noted that the United States, as part of NATO, previously had a much greater military presence in Greenland than it does now. The United States also made use of unoccupied Greenland for military operations during World War II after Denmark was overrun by Nazi Germany in April 1940.
There is nothing, she said, stopping the United States from ramping up its military presence in Greenland again without needing to take over the whole territory.
“There is a treaty from 1951 where it is very clear that the Americans have huge access to Greenland,” she said to Zakaria, noting that at one point during the height of the Cold War, there were 16 bases on Greenland.
“Are we in such a new situation so we all have to scale up in Greenland? Denmark has just decided to invest massively in Greenland in security,” Thorning-Schmidt said.
“And the irony of all this is that the Americans could do exactly the same,” she added. “Greenland is NATO territory. There’s nothing stopping the Americans from getting more engaged militarily in Greenland, having more bases, if that’s what they want. And I do think that both the Greenlandic people and of course, the people in Denmark would support such a move. So the irony is that it’s very little that the Americans can’t have in Greenland right now without talking about taking over Greenland and all these other things.”
