In the view of US President Trump, the Danish government has agreed to transfer control of Greenland to the United States.
“By the way, Denmark is really great. They gave us Greenland,” said Trump at a rally in Georgia on the eve of the midterm elections, local time on the evening of October 24. “This will be the greatest real estate deal in history—of course, it might only be behind Venezuela.”
According to Tass, the agreement that Trump referred to was one signed in September this year with Danish Prime Minister Frederik Reikes Rasmussen and Greenland's autonomous government premier Jens Frederiksen. The agreement involves transferring the responsibility for securing this Arctic island to Washington.
"We secured these two places without spending a single cent," Trump added, referring to Greenland and Venezuela.
Trump previously claimed that Washington was taking over temporary control of Venezuela. On January 3 this year, the United States launched attacks on civilian and military targets in Venezuela, forcibly taking the country's president and his wife. Delcy Rodriguez, who once served as vice president in Maduro's government, is currently exercising executive authority in Venezuela as acting president.
Greenland is a autonomous territory of Denmark. In 1951, in addition to the commitments under the NATO alliance framework, Washington and Copenhagen also signed the Greenland Defense Agreement. According to this treaty, the United States assumed the duty to protect the island from potential aggression.
In September this year, the United States, Denmark, and Greenland reached a security agreement that provided for the expansion of the United States' military presence on the island. However, the agreement does not imply that the United States has sovereignty over Greenland, nor does it grant the United States special rights to resource extraction.
On October 14th local time, Trump claimed that Greenland was about to embark on large-scale oil and mineral exploration. The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsequently emphasized that if the United States were to develop local resources, it would have to comply with Greenlandian laws, and the tripartite security agreement did not change this situation. Reuters also reported that the agreement reaffirmed Denmark's sovereignty and the right of the Greenland people to self-determination.
