Greenland party leaders reject US calls for control of Greenland – JURIST

Greenland party leaders issued a joint statement Friday that the autonomous territory rejects the US calls for acquisition. Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four other party leaders stated: “We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders.”

The autonomous territory and world’s largest island under the Kingdom of Denmark has been part of an international disagreement concerning China’s and Russia’s risk and the United States strategy acquiring the country.

President Trump commented the US is “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.” Trump’s interest in Greenland has remained unaffected since his first term, when the president considered it “essentially a large real estate deal“.

According to the Atlantic Council, the Arctic—where Greenland is located—is now undergoing a large contest, in which Russia and China are increasing their tenure in the region. Greenland is an important asset, with its defense mechanisms, such as early warning systems and missile tracking radar systems feeding directly into US homeland defense.

In a poll carried out by Verian for the Danish news media Berlingske and the Greenlandic media house Sermitsiaq, 85 percent of Greenlanders do not want to be a part of the US, while 6 percent support the opposite. The remaining 9 percent were undecided. Another poll by YouGov shows that 16 percent of interviewed Americans consider Greenland a “very important issue” to US national security, 22 percent answered “somewhat important” and 12 percent said “not very important”.

Reacting to the dispute, France President Emmanuel Macron stated that the US is freeing itself from the international rules it was still promoting until recently. Germany’s foreign minister stated that the “fate of Greenland will be decided by Greenlanders and the Kingdom of Denmark,” further adding that the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders are UN principles which must be upheld.