Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
In a recent interview, the United States Homeland Security Advisor said that “no-one would fight the U.S. over the future of Greenland”.
After the U.S. military operation, that resulted in the capture of the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro, happened during the weekend, Donald Trump has repeated his desire to make Greenland a part of the U,S,.
Greenland, the massive island near the Arctic, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which is part of NATO, effectively putting Greenland under the collective protection of the alliance.
But the U.S. is a member of NATO as well, so what would happen, if the U.S. actually decided to launch a military operation to annex Greenland?
What the NATO treaty says
The North Atlantic Treaty, the foundation of NATO, outlines 14 articles on what the alliance is about, how to respond to external aggression, how to cooperate and how a country can choose to leave the alliance.
However, it does not specify how to throw out a member, that does not want to leave themselves.
As a side note, the treaty also doesn’t say anything about how the alliance should react, if two member-countries should end up in an armed conflict.
Basically, the alliance is based on trust, union, diplomacy and has not taken into account to possibility of a member state attacking another as well as the possibility to throw out a member.
So the NATO treay does not give us any answers to what would happen if the U.S. actually annexed Greenland.
“Obviously, Greenland should be part of the U.S.”
In a recent interview with the CNN, United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller said that the formal position of the Trump administration is that, Greenland should be a part of the U.S..
“Obviously, Greenland should be part of the U.S.,” Miller said.
The BBC quotes Miller for also saying that “no-one would fith the U.S. over the future of Greenland
He did not answer the interviewers questions on whether he could rule out the use of force to achieve this goal,
Sources: CNN, NATO documents, BBC
