By Janet Ekstract, NEW YORK- In his address to the European Parliament on Monday, January 26, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte made it clear that Europe absolutely needs the U.S. to defend itself. As Rutte said: “If anyone thinks here again that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming. You can’t. We can’t. We need each other.” Rutte praised Trump on his bringing up the issue of Arctic security, as he said: “I think he’s right. There is an issue with the Arctic region. There is an issue of collective security, because theses sea lanes are opening up, and because the Chinese and the Russians are more and more active.” Regarding the situation with Greenland, the NATO chief said that moving forward, there will be two actions taken. Rutte said the first involves NATO taking more collective responsibility for Arctic defense to prevent Russia and China’s access to the region, militarily and economically. The second course of action involves continuing trilateral discussions between the U.S., Denmark and Greenland. Rutte emphasized that he won’t be participating in those discussions because he said he has no mandate to negotiate on behalf of Denmark and would not do that.
Meanwhile, Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen who met in early January with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House while acknowledging the meeting was “constructive” also made it clear in his press conference after the meeting that a “fundamental disagreement” still exists. Trump had insisted on imposing tariffs on the eight European nations who had engaged in military exercises around Greenland after Trump’s aggressive rhetoric on “taking” Greenland at any cost. After Trump met Rutte on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos last week, he backtracked on the tariff threat and said they had reached “a framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland.” The exact framework is not yet, clear but a number of options were discussed and while Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Danes could negotiate on everything but she said “we cannot negotiate on our sovereignty.” Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen also said that sovereignty is “a red line.”
In terms of details, anonymous officials told the New York Times that one option might be Denmark ceding sovereignty over small areas of Greenland where the U.S. would build military bases. Such an arrangement would be similar to the status of two similar bases in Cyprus that have been under UK sovereignty since Cyprus became independent in 1960. Though Trump has vociferously insisted that China and Russia are threats to Greenland, China has aggressively pushed back on that narrative. But analysts and experts on the region have published articles about the strategic interests of both China and Russia in the Arctic region. Meanwhile U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the U.K. has called for creating an Arctic Sentry as she said it’s “very similar to the approach that Nato has taken to the Baltic Sentry.” This would involve a mission to increase the surveillance of ships in the Baltic Sea. In his speech at the European Parliament, Rutte said that if Europe plans to go it alone on defense then each nation would need to increase defense spending to 10% and build up their own nuclear capability which he said would cost billions of euros.
