President Donald Trump followed his weekend military incursion into Venezuela with comments that suggested warnings to several other countries, including Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, and Greenland.
Some Europeans and the leaders of several of the countries he mentioned, appear to be taking him seriously.
“Trump’s rhetoric, including his suggestion over the weekend that Washington may have to ‘do something’ about cartels that are ‘running Mexico,’ is reviving fears in Mexico City,” Politico reported.
Trump said the government of Cuba might just fall on its own, but, as The Washington Post reported, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “went further, indicatingthat the United States might be willing to give it a push.”
With Trump having targeted Greenland for months, some of the territory’s leaders are now concerned it could be at risk.
“Danish officials think they know how Donald Trump might seize Greenland,” The Atlantic reported.
“In a late-night Truth Social post, the president announces that the Danish territory is now an American ‘protectorate.’ Because neither Denmark nor its European allies possess the military force to prevent the United States from taking the island, they are powerless to resist Trump’s dubious claim. And as the leading member of NATO claims the sovereign territory of another state, the alliance is paralyzed. Arguing that possession is nine-tenths of the law, Trump simply declares that Greenland now belongs to the United States.”
According to The Atlantic, this hypothetical scenario has been discussed by Danish officials and security experts in recent months. It “may have seemed faintly ridiculous,” but after Trump’s incursion in Venezuela, including his “ensuing insistence that the United States now ‘runs’ Venezuela—it seemed far less so.”
“For months, Danes have anxiously imagined an audacious move by the Trump administration to annex Greenland, whether by force, coercion, or an attempt to buy off the local population of about 56,000 people with the promise of cutting them in on future mining deals. Now those fears are spiking.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has “argued that the president’s threats are credible.”
“Unfortunately, I think the American president should be taken seriously when he says he wants Greenland,” she told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR).
But The Atlantic warned, “if the U.S. goes down that road, NATO will effectively cease to exist the moment the first military personnel enter Greenlandic territory.”