You're expect to take an action against Greenland.
Well, I don't want to talk about Greenland.
Let's talk about Venezuela, Russia in Ukraine.
Right after the dramatic capture of Venezuela's president by US forces, Donald Trump claimed he didn't want to talk about Greenland, but he just couldn't help himself.
I will say this about Greenland. We need Greenland from a national security to the situation. It's so strategic. Right now Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships.
All over the place.
We need Greenland from the standpoint of nationals.
It isn't the first time Trump has shown an interest in the island. He's talked about buying Greenland for years, describing it as a large real estate deal. But now in no uncertain terms, Greenland's Prime minister has pushed.
Back Cornland big. I so will say Greenland does not want to be owned by the USA. Greenland does not want to be governed by the USA. Greenland will not be part of that.
Trump has ordered the military to draw up an invasion plan for the island. Meanwhile, high level talks between the foreign ministers of Greenland, Denmark and the White House has ended in stalemate. Sweden, France, and Norway have begun sending armed forces to Greenland at Denmark's request, and Donald Trump is doubling down.
We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not, and we're not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.
I'm Nicole Johnston, and you're listening to seven AM Today. Defense editor at The Economist Shashank Joshi on why Trump wants Greenland and how his plan could change the world. It's Friday, January sixteenth, Shoshank. When Trump says we need Greenland for national security, what does that mean?
Well, I think it means many things. Some Republicans have argued that it means Russia in China pose a threat to the Arctic, and Greenland is a vital outpost for monitoring those threats, and that Denmark is incapable of protecting
the island against those threats. I'm a little bit skeptical of that explanation, in part because Donald Trump is also at the same time negotiating with the Russians on business deals for drilling in the Arctic as part of his Ukraine diplomacy, which leads me to wonder is it really about security. I think it is much more about two other things. One of them is the resources that are under Greenland's earth, which are some of the rare earth materials that the modern economy is in great need of.
I think it has something like forty million tons of rare earth in what's called oxide form. So that's one of the biggest reserves in the Earth, possibly second biggest, aft to China. And of course, as your listeners will know, China has a great dominance over the global supply of those rules and materials. So that's part of the answer.
But I think part of the answer is also that if you go back to Donald Trump's inaugural address about a year ago, this time of year ago, he cited President William McKinley, and he cited the concept of manifest destiny.
And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts.
And I think he would simply like the administration to be the first one in many, many years, in a century. Perhaps that has resulted in the growth of American soil, the expansion of America on a map.
One that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations.
And I think that that sense of control, that sense of growth, animates him. Indeed, just as we're talking, he has posted a social media image presenting himself as the acting President of Venezuela. I think all of that appeals to him.
Can you lay out for a Shishenk how Greenland's government currently works and how it connection to Denmark functions well.
Greenland effectively has its foreign policy and many of those other big picture issues like communications run from Copenhagen from Denmark, which is sort of the parent government. It's part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is not a kind of colony. It's not, for example, the equivalent of Micronesia to the United States, a state of free association, although it is self governing domestically for many domestic issues. It has a democracy, It has a local government with elections taking place with
a vibrant democratic process. But it is not, as I think Donald Trump put it, a sort of protectorate or colony that is there simply by virtue of Denmark having landed a canoe on the island dis Donald Trump put it.
Trump is insisting that Chinese and Russian ships are swarming around Greenland? Are they and what is their presence there?
No, they're not. But I took Trump to be speaking figuratively talking about heightened Russian and Chinese activity in the region. If that's what he meant, then that's fair enough. There is heightened Russian and Chinese activity. Russian submarines have been more active, you know, Russian ice breakers have been more active.
And of course the melting sea ice in the Arctic region means that there are new sea routes opening up that allow the Chinese to go from the North rather than all the way down through the Atlantic through the Pacific, and so that also is going to increase the level of Chinese commercial and dual use activity in the region.
In fact, there's the story from a few years ago in the first Trump administration where James Massis, and you may remember him as Trump's first Secretary of Defense, he complained to the Danes because the Chinese, a Chinese company was building three airports on Greenland, and the Americans saw this as a strategic project, as a potential threat, and that was eventually mixed after coordination between Denmark and America.
So Trump, to me, not that there's kind of an armada of ships, you know, patrolling up and down Greenland's coastline, but that there is additional civilian, industrial, scientific, military, intelligence, Russian and Chinese interest in activity throughout the Arctic, including in the waters around Denmark. And I think if we don't exaggerate that point, it's fair enough.
We know that Trump's interest in Greenland isn't you. He's been talking about it for years. But how has his position or his game plan on it changed, especially in the second term.
I think very simply, his desire to acquire Greenland has intensified, and his willingness to talk about military options or to leave them prominently on the table has grown. What we saw is that whereas the pursuit of Greenland was slightly haphazard and superficial in the first term, it's been much more concerted and serious in the second. And I think a bit of evidence to that is a Tora Greenland by jd Vance, the Vice President back in March. Vice
President JD Vance and second Lady Ushavance in Greenland. Today it comes as President Trump says, the US needs the island for nationals. You need to ensure that America is leading in the Arctic, because we know that if America doesn't, other nations will fill the gap where we fall behind, and other efforts, some of them identified by Denmark's intelligence services, by US intelligence agencies, to cultivate networks of influence in Greenland,
including amongst the country's independence movement. There is clearly an effort to try to push the independence movement against Copenhagen, against Denmark. In addition to that, we've also seen more serious proposals developed in the White House about how exactly America could pull away Greenland, including the suggestion that they could pay a large lump sum payment to the residents of Greenland to persuade them to join the United States.
Perhaps they say something called a compact of free association, which is a type of arrangement America has with other very small nations around the world in which America has basically untrammeled and free access in return for certain privileges for those countries. Now, Greenland is a horrified by this. They don't really seem very tempted by money or by these blandishments, but the fact that the administration is working up these options in a very serious way is quite distinctive.
It's quite different from Trump.
One coming up, how europe is reacting and what it means for NATO. Shashank how A Danish and more broadly, European leaders responding to this latest move by Trump.
Alarm, horror, deep concern. You see this in the fact that Denmark's approach was initially to say, we're not going to take a public fight with the US on this. We're going to have quiet diplomacy. We're going to talk to them behind the scenes, behind closed doors. And when other European governments asked the Danes, hey, what would you like us to do, Denmark said, actually nothing, Just stay quiet, stay calmed. You know, we're going to deliver this message
in private. Just leave it to us. This time everything has changed. The messaging is public. We have the Danish Prime minister saying an attack on Greenland would be the end of NATO.
Well, if the US chooses to attack another NATO country, then everything stops.
We have the Swedish Prime minister expressing grave concern. Sweden, the Nordic countries, the Baltic States, and several large countries in Europe are standing together in support of our Danish friends. We have states that normally are very cautious about criticizing in the United States, like Kastamer's government here in the UK, and even they have signed up to joint statements with other countries rebuking the Americans, saying that Greenland is a
bilateral matter between Denmark and Greenland. The future of Greenland is for Greenland, and the Kingdom of Denmark for Greenland in the future of demok only. And so I think you see a much more public strategy of rebuke and pushback, with some question swirling around as to well, should we have more military exercises around Greenland? Should we put troops
on Greenland to try to deter an American annexation? But I think the great kind of paradox is that you have this European panic over American predatory behavior over Greenland, but at the same time Europeans need the United States to provide security guarantees for any ceasefire in Ukraine, and we saw that with the presence of Jared Kushner, the President's son in law, and Steve Whitcoff's envoy for Ukraine
in Paris just a week ago. And Europeans have to walk that tightrope in a very careful way.
As you said, the Danish Prime Minister has threatened an end to NATO if Trump pursues this. Trump's repeatedly been dismissive about NATO. Could we be about to see the end of it?
Not yet, I think we're still some from that scenario. But I do believe that if he decides to try to absorb Greenland without the permission of anyone else, for example, by annexing it legally, even without a shot being fired, even without a so called invasion of Greenland, I think that that would be the end of NATO. Because NATO is an alliance that relies on political cohesion, it relies on trust, and America is the backbone of the alliance.
You know, an American four star general is the supreme Allied command of Europe, the sacure, who sits in the NATO military headquarters its shape near Brussels, and leads the alliance and writes up its war plans. American military equipment is the backbone of the alliance, specifically air power that would be used to defeat Russia. And so if there is no longer any trust that America would come to the aid of Europe, because in fact, it is just
cannibalized part of Europe to the West. I think that that would spell the end of NATO as a functional defensive alliance against Russia. You would see effectively a moment of profound crisis in Europe that would result in defense spending climbing up to near double digit rates and a sense of wartime panic.
So what would that scenario I mean for Russia and China.
Well, I think on the one hand, Russia in China will be delighted by a world in which they feel they can take territory against all semblance of international law on the basis of force. That world is good for China, it's good for Russia, and so too is a world in which the Western Alliance is unable to mount a unified response to their aggression, is unable to agree on sanctions, is unable to agree on joint exercises, is unable to come to the defense of a country like Ukraine or
of Taiwan in the event that that was attacked. Having said that, China views Taiwan in quite different terms, China used Taiwan, as your listeners will know, as part of Chinese territory, and whether you agree with that or disagree with That is not the point. The point is legally they don't feel that they need any legal backing to be able to seize Taiwan by force. And I don't
know if this will drastically change their options. But if I was see Jinping and I were looking at this Trump administration, I would say this, remaining three years of the Trump administration, I am not going to find a president who is likely to be more amenable to cutting a deal with me over the conquest of Taiwan if I seize Taiwan and then promise, for example, the free flow of semiconductors from the island to America, just as you know he wants the free flow of oil from Venezuela.
He doesn't care about the democratic status of Taiwan. He just cares about the economic benefit to the United States. And I think that that would shape my judgment is China in a way that would favor invasion or conquest or annexation of Taiwan, and that I believe is a very dangerous thing.
What do you think Trump is going to actually do in Greenland? What could happen next?
I find it very hard to predict Trump's future actions, but I think that there is a growing risk, although still below fifty percent, so still mercifully unlikely, that he simply declares large parts of Greenland to be sovereign base areas to be in his control, to be part of the United States. He wouldn't have to invade, he wouldn't have to fire shots. He would simply say that Petufic Space Force Base in Greenland is henceforth sovereign US territory.
He could also, and I fear that this is also something he's been willing to do, impose heavy tariffs against Denmark, against the EU. He could put sanctions on Danish officials until they negotiate with America to allow Greenland to succeed and sell it to the United States. But he believes everything can be bought, and I think that he will first go down the route of attempting to buy it, and only when that route is completely closed will he entertain more extreme options.
In my opinion, thank you so much for your time, Thank you very much for having me. Also in the news, Anthony Alberizi says he's stunned by Susan Lee's claims that Labour's hate crime and gun reforms are unsalvageable. The Coalition has spent weeks criticizing the Prime Minister for not immediately recalling Parliament to deal with legislation in the aftermath of
the Bondai attacks. Now, with Parliament due to razume on Monday to debate new laws, the Coalition has signaled they won't support them and says the legislation has been rushed and the Adelaide Festival has issued an unreserved apology to Palestinian Australian author doctor Runda Abdulphatar after canceling her invitation from Adelaide Writer's Week. The decision sparked a widespread boycott of writers, resignation of the program director, a mass resignation
of the board, and the cancelation of the festival. Now, the Adelaide Festival has released a statement saying they retract the claim that it would have been culturally insensitive for Abdulphata to participate, that artistic freedom is a powerful human right, that the board fell short, and that she's invited to speak at next year's event. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven am. We'll be back tomorrow.