A growing number of Republicans in Congress, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, are opposing coercive efforts to annex Greenland.
Congress has a great deal it needs to be doing, “but there is one thing we should not be doing, one thing we should not be spending our time on, and that is any effort to annex Greenland,” Murkowski said on Jan. 11.
In her more than two decades in the U.S. Senate, Murkowski has served as co-chair of the Arctic Parliamentarian Conference.
She noted that U.S. interest in Greenland dates back to discussions in 1867 when Alaska was purchased from Russia. In 1946, former President Harry Truman reportedly made an offer of $100 million in gold to purchase Greenland and that offer too was rejected, she said. What followed was a cooperative agreement allowing for a U.S. base at what is now Pituffik Space Base on Greenland.
“The statements being made now suggest that taking Greenland, by force or coercion, is not only an option, but perhaps a priority, with military action on the table,” Murkowski said. “That is profoundly troubling. Many of us would like to quiet this rhetoric and make clear that such an option is not only unacceptable, but off the table entirely. Unfortunately, we have not received that assurance.”
Others opposing the President Donald Trump’s push to annex Greenland include Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky; Jeanne Shaheen, D- NH; and Reps. Steny Hoyer, D-MD, and Blake Moore, R-Utah.
Murkowski noted that Greenland and Denmark have made it abundantly clear that Greenland is not for sale.
“We must take that message seriously,” the senator said. “Greenland is a peaceful democracy and a faithful ally of the United States, dating back to World War II when it played a pivotal role in the Allied victory. To this day, Greenland continues to host critical U.S. assets at Pituffik, providing invaluable strategic cooperation.”
On Jan. 11, Sen. Paul said in an interview with ABC News that he doubted that Trump’s remarks about taking over Greenland by force would materialize, urging the president to avoid making such threats.
Paul added he is not disputing Greenland might be a country the U.S. wants to buy, but “you don’t get there by angering and denigrating the people who live there and saying ‘We’ve going to march the Marines in and take (it) if you don’t sell it to us.'”
Utah’s Rep. Moore called talk of annexing Greenland “needlessly dangerous and a threat to NATO unity.” Moore is the co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Friends of Denmark Caucus.
