NATO has set to work to temper tempers in Greenland, the semi-autonomous island under Danish sovereignty that Donald Trump wants to acquire at the stroke of a checkbook. “Planning is underway for a reinforced NATO surveillance activity, called Arctic Sentinel,” the US colonel announced on Tuesday. Martin O’Donnellspokesperson for the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers in Europe, who confirmed the information reported that same morning by the German weekly The mirror.
Two weeks after the meeting in Davos between the American president and the secretary general of NATO, Mark Ruttein which they established, in Trump’s own words, “the framework for a future agreement regarding Greenland”, the Alliance is moving to demonstrate to the White House that Arctic security is an issue that interests it.
The military deployment has not yet materialized. At the moment, they are just plans, and O’Donnell did not want to go into details. According to the information of The mirrorHowever, the order left the office of Alexus G. Grynkewichanother American general, who asked to begin preparations to reinforce surveillance on the Arctic island, rich in natural resources.
The German weekly maintains that the first draft of the operations plan contemplates carrying out regular warship maneuvers, better control of airspace using alliance fighters and the presence of small contingents of ground forces that could be temporarily established on the Arctic island. It is an ambitious step, a step that Rutte would have agreed with Trump.
NATO defense ministers could discuss the first draft in Brussels as early as next week. It is the only way to appease the tenant of the White House, obsessed with the security of what he defined during his speech at the Davos Forum as “a piece of ice in the middle of the ocean.”
Trump reiterates that Greenland is crucial to the national security of the United States—although the word “Greenland” does not even appear in the National Security Strategy that his State Department published in November—and that only the United States can defend it from the threats posed by Russia and China.
In Davos, Trump renounced using force to impose his law, but confirmed his interest in negotiating with Denmark the purchase of an island whose inhabitants say it is not for sale.
In Nuuk they don’t let their guard down. Per Berthelsenmember of the Rules Committee of the Greenland Parliament (Inatsisartut), recognizes himself as a victim of the “psychological terror” of the president of the United States: “It is evident that his threats have influenced both me and my colleagues.”
“Trump has given so many different reasons that I feel confused, because the reasons he has given could have been resolved through a cultivated dialogue, in mutual respect, as allies and on the basis of already existing possibilities,” says the deputy of the liberal Demokraatit, the prime minister’s party, in conversation with this newspaper. Jens Frederik Nielsen. “But, from my personal point of view, there is a fanatical desire to increase the territorial size of the United States in square kilometers.”
In Moscow they fear that the crisis within NATO, instigated by Trump, will end up strengthening the joint position of the allies in the Arctic, a strategic region where the Kremlin also has interests. Therefore, the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Ryabkovwarned that “if numerous American air defense systems are installed in Greenland, Russia will take action.”
The right hand of the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrovdid not specify what Moscow’s eventual response would be, but recalled that New START expires this Thursday, an agreement that Russia and the United States signed in 2010 and that limits the number of “strategic weapons” that both countries can have targeting their respective cities.