As leaders in Europe respond to once-unimaginable threats by the United States to take territory from a NATO ally, one US senator on Monday proposed legislation banning funding for any Trump administration military action against Greenland.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) put forth an amendment to the Senate Defense Appropriations bill “to prohibit the use of funds for military force, the conduct of hostilities, or the preparation for war against or with respect to Greenland,” a self-governing territory of Denmark.
“Families are getting crushed by rising grocery and housing costs, inflation is up, and [President Donald] Trump’s name is all over the Epstein files,” Gallego said in a statement. “Instead of doing anything to fix those problems, Trump is trying to distract people by threatening to start wars and invade countries – first in Venezuela, and now against our NATO ally Denmark.”
“What’s happening in Venezuela shows us that we can’t just ignore Trump’s reckless threats,” Gallego added. “His dangerous behavior puts American lives and our global credibility at risk. I’m introducing this amendment to make it clear that Congress will not bankroll illegal, unnecessary military action, and to force Republicans to choose whether they’re going to finally stand up or keep enabling Trump’s chaos.”
“This is not more complicated than the fact that Trump wants a giant island with his name on it. He wouldn’t think twice about putting our troops in danger if it makes him feel big and strong. The US military is not a toy,” Gallego – a former Marine Corps infantryman – said on social media.
The illegal US invasion and bombing of Venezuela and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife – which came amid a high-seas airstrike campaign against alleged drug traffickers – spooked many Greenlanders, Danes, and Europeans, who say they have no choice but to take Trump’s threats seriously.
“Threats, pressure, and talk of annexation have no place between friends,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said Monday on social media. “That is not how you speak to a people who have shown responsibility, stability, and loyalty time and again. Enough is enough. No more pressure. No more innuendo. No more fantasies about annexation.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned during a Monday television interview that “if the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop – that includes NATO, and therefore the post-Second World War security.”
Other European leaders have also rallied behind Greenland amid the mounting US threat.
“Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” the leaders of Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain asserted in a statement also backed by the Netherlands and Canada – which Trump has said he wants to make the “51st state.”
The White House said Tuesday that Trump and members of his national security team are weighing a “range of options” to acquire Greenland, and that military action is “always an option” for seizing the mineral-rich and strategic island.
This, after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller brushed off criticism of a social media post by his wife, who posted an image showing a map of Greenland covered in the American flag with the caption, “SOON.”
“You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” Miller told CNN on Monday. “But we live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
No war powers resolution has ever succeeded in stopping a US president from proceeding with military action, including one introduced last month by Gallego in a bid to stop the boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has also unsuccessfully tried to get war powers resolutions passed, implied Tuesday that more measures aimed at preventing Trump from attacking Greenland may be forthcoming.
“He has repeatedly raised Greenland, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia. He’s waged military action within Nigeria,” Kaine said of Trump, who has bombed more countries than any president in history. “So I think members of the Senate should go on the record about all of it.”
In Greenland, only a handful of the island’s 57,000 inhabitants want to join the United States. More than 8 in 10 favor independence amid often strained relations with their masters in Copenhagen and the legacy of a colonial history rife with abuses. Greenlanders enjoy a Nordic-style social welfare system that features universal healthcare; free higher education; and income, family, and employment benefits and protections unimaginable in today’s United States.
Pro-independence figures say like-minded people must use the specter of a US takeover to wring concessions from Denmark.
“I am more nervous that we are potentially in a situation where only Denmark’s wishes are taken into account and that we have not even been clarified about what we want,” Aki-Matilda Tilia Ditte Høegh-Dam, a member of the pro-independence Naleraq party in Greenland’s Inatsisartut, or Parliament, told Sermitsiaq on Tuesday.
“I’m in the Folketinget [Danish Parliament] right now, and I see that the Danish government is constantly making agreements with the United States,” she added. “It’s not that they ask Greenland first.”
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) was among observers who noted Tuesday that any US invasion of Greenland would oblige other NATO members to defend the island under the North Atlantic Treaty’s collective defense requirement.
“That’s what Article 5 says. Article 5 did not anticipate that the invading country would be a member of NATO,” Murphy told reporters on Capitol Hill. “We’re laughing, but this is not actually something to laugh about now because I think he’s increasingly serious.”
