United States President Donald Trump has intensified his global campaign for territorial expansion on Wednesday, delivering an address at the World Economic Forum to explain why he believes the U.S needs to acquire Greenland.
Speaking to a room of global leaders and billionaires in Davos, Switzerland, Trump insisted that the world’s largest island is a “unsecured” mass of land that only the United States has the resources and “unstoppable force” to truly protect and develop.
The President’s rhetoric centered on a vision of the Arctic as the next great frontier of global conflict.
He claimed that without American ownership, the territory remains vulnerable to the encroaching influence of Russia and China.
Trump argued that the current lease-based military arrangements are insufficient for the modern era.
Trump also added that he wants U.S to acquire Greenland for legal and psychological reasons.
“You need the ownership to defend it,” the president said. “You can’t defend it on a lease. Number one, legally it’s not defensible in that way, totally. And psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease?”
“All we want from Denmark for national and international security and to keep our very energetic and dangerous potential enemies at bay is this land on which we’re going to build the greatest golden dome ever built,” he said, referring to his plans for a missile defense system.
He then lashed out at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, saying the U.S. would use ownership of Greenland to defend the neighboring country.
“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful, but they’re not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful.”
Trump also for the first time ruled out for using force to acquire Greenland. He and other White House officials, until Wednesday, had declined to rule out the president ordering the use of the U.S. military to acquire the vast island.
“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable,” Trump said. “But I won’t do that. Okay. Now everyone says, oh, good.”
“That’s probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force,” Trump said.
“All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland,” he said.
Trump said he was “seeking immediate negotiations” to acquire Greenland.
The U.S President also continued by saying that “no nation or group of nations” can protect Greenland, apart from the U.S.
Trump joked about Greenland, asking the crowd if they wanted him to say a few words on the topic, drawing his first chuckles from the audience.
He said he has “tremendous respect” for the people of Greenland and Denmark, but argued every NATO ally should be able to defend its own territory, and said that “no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States.”
The president said “our country and the world faces much greater risk than it did before, because of missiles, because of nuclear, because of weapons of warfare that I can’t even talk about.”
The president dismissed the notion that the U.S. wants Greenland for rare earth materials.
“This enormous, unsecured island is actually part of North America, on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere, that’s our territory,” he said.
This comes after Trump issued a tariff threat against Europe days ago. A 10% tariff will be applied to all goods from eight European nations—Denmark, France, Germany, the UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands—unless Denmark agrees to the “complete and total purchase” of Greenland by the United States.
