The president continued to advance an imperialist vision of American foreign policy, where the U.S. can dominate neighboring countries “whether they like it or not.”
Sounds like something a rapist would say…
The president said that Denmark only claims Greenland because of “the fact they had a boat land there 500 years ago,” appearing to dismiss both the principle of territorial sovereignty and the will of Greenland’s people.
The United States formally recognized Danish sovereignty over Greenland in a 1916 treaty that ceded possession of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean to Washington.
Historical footnote: It was actually Norwegians who settled in Greenland, not Danes. Greenland only became part of Denmark-Norway when Norway was forced into a Union with Denmark for 400 years. In the span of those 400 years the current population of Greenland settled the island, and the one Norwegian settlement left probably due to bad crops or something. There’s no sign of conflict.
In 1814 Denmark-Norway was split up after the Napoleonic wars, but Greenland remained in the hands of Denmark, despite it never having been Danish and the Norwegian settlement being long gone.
Currently the Danes are spending quite a lot of money on welfare in Greenland, which is not yet very wealthy in its own right. There’s a lot of bad things to be said about Denmarks Greenland policy, and their historical claim to the territory is a complete joke, but for now they are providing a decent enough service to the people there.
That Denmark’s claim is a joke of course does not help the case of the US one bit. It belongs to the Greenlanders.
Probably figures that since Epstein got one of the Virgin Islands, he should take another island from Denmark
