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Mallory Moench
US President Donald Trump has said he no longer feels obliged to think only of peace after he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
In a message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump blamed the country for not giving him the prize.
In his reply to Trump, Støre explained that an independent committee, not the government of Norway, awards the prize which last October went to Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado.
In the same message to Støre, Trump insisted the US needed “Complete and Total Control of Greenland” – the semi autonomous Danish territory. Asked later if he planned to use force to seize it, he replied “no comment”.
Denmark is a fellow member of Nato – a defence alliance with the US as its most influential partner. It works on the principle that members should defend each-other in case of external attacks.
There has never been an attack by one member against another since the alliance was founded in 1949.
Denmark has warned that US military action in Greenland would spell the end of Nato. It has received support from European members of the alliance – some even sent a handful of troops to Greenland last week in a move seen as symbolic.
However, Trump followed that deployment with an announcement to impose a 10% tariff on goods from eight Nato allies – including the UK – from 1 February if they opposed his proposed takeover of Greenland, and threatened to raise it to 25% by June.
It was in this context of heightened tension that Jonas Støre sent a message to Trump was on behalf of himself and the Finnish President, Alexander Stubb.
The two European leaders said “we all should work to take this down and de-escalate – so much is happening around us where we need to stand together”.
In his reply, Trump wrote: “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper’ for the US.”
He went on to say that Denmark could not protect Greenland from Russia or China, and questioned, “why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also”.
“I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States,” he said.
“The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland,” he concluded.
The sparsely-populated but resource-rich Arctic island is well placed for early warning systems in the event of missile attacks and for monitoring vessels in the region.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday that any decision about the future status of Greenland “belongs to the people of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark alone”, and called the use of tariffs against allies “wrong”.
Also on Monday, Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen and Greenlandic Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Motzfeldt met Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Last week, the Danish and Greenlandic governments, together with Nato allies, decided to increase military presence and exercise activity in the Arctic and the North Atlantic.
Several European states sent small numbers of military personnel to Greenland in a so-called reconnaissance mission.
Trump has made no secret of his desire to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and on Monday insisted that “Norway totally controls it [the Nobel Prize] despite what they say”.
“They like to say they have nothing to do with it, but they have everything to do with it,” he told NBC News.
Trump says he deserves the award, having ended eight wars since his second term as president began last year.
The White House has previously listed these as conflicts between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo.
BBC Verify has examined Trump’s claim which include a number of “wars” which had lasted just days, although were the result of long-standing tensions, and in some cases – for example Egypt and Ethiopia – there was no fighting to end.
There has also been fighting between Rwanda and the DRC, despite the two sides signing a peace agreement.
The peace prize was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.
Later, when US forces seized and removed Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from Caracas, accusing him of drug trafficking and other crimes, Trump did not endorse Machado as the country’s next leader and instead backed Maduro’s vice-president as the interim head of government.
Machado, who has praised Trump, met him at the White House last week and gave her medal to him. The Nobel Foundation had said the award could not “even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed”.
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