Trump ties Greenland demands to Nobel Prize in message to Norway leader

US President Donald Trump said that he no longer felt obliged to think only about peace after he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

In his message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump blamed the country for not giving him the award.

In his response to Trump, Støre explained that the award given to Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado last October was given by an independent committee, not the Norwegian government.

In the same message to Støre, Trump insisted that the United States needed “Complete and Total Control of Greenland,” the semi-autonomous region of Denmark. Asked later if he planned to use force to capture her, he replied “no comment.”

Denmark is a fellow member of NATO, a defense alliance in which the United States is the most influential partner. It works on the principle that members defend each other in case of attacks that may come from outside.

Since the alliance was founded in 1949, no member has attacked another.

Denmark has warned that US military intervention in Greenland would mean the end of NATO. It received support from European members of the alliance; It even sent a handful of troops to Greenland last week, in a move seen by some as symbolic.

But Trump followed that deployment with an announcement to impose 10% tariffs on goods from eight NATO allies, including the UK, from February 1 if they oppose his bid to take over Greenland, and threatened to raise this to 25% by June.

It was in this environment of increasing tension that Jonas Støre sent a message to Trump on behalf of himself and Finnish President Alexander Stubb.

“We must all work to defuse this situation and reduce tensions; there is so much going on around us that we must stand together,” the two European leaders said.

In his response, Trump wrote: “Given that your country has decided not to award me the Nobel Peace Prize for stopping 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel obligated to think only of Peace, although it has always been dominant, but I can now think of what is good and proper for the United States.”

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 anyone else since its founding, and now NATO needs to do something for the United States,” he said.

“The Earth is not safe unless we have Complete and Complete Control of Greenland,” he concluded.

The sparsely populated but resource-rich Arctic island is well positioned for early warning systems and monitoring of ships in the area in the event of missile attacks.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday that any decision on the future status of Greenland “belongs solely to the people of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark” and described the imposition of tariffs against allies as “wrong”.

Also on Monday, Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen and Greenlandic Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

Last week, the governments of Denmark and Greenland decided to increase their military presence and exercise activities in the Arctic and North Atlantic together with their NATO allies.

Many European states sent small numbers of military personnel to Greenland on so-called reconnaissance missions.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, insisting on Monday that “Norway has complete control of this” [the Nobel Prize] “Despite what you said.”

“They like to say they have nothing to do with it, but they have something to do with everything,” he told NBC News.

Trump said he deserved the award for ending eight wars since his second presidential term began last year.

The White House had 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 examined Trump’s claim These include a series of “wars” that, although the result of long-standing tensions, lasted only a few days, and in some cases – for example, Egypt and Ethiopia – there was no conflict to end.

Conflicts also continue between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, despite the two sides signing a peace agreement.

The peace prize was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.

Later, when U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and removed him from Caracas, accusing him of drug trafficking and other crimes, Trump did not endorse Machado as the country’s next leader and instead supported Maduro’s vice president as head of the interim government.

Machado, who praised Trump, I met him at the White House last week and gave him his medal. The Nobel Foundation said the prize “cannot be transferred or distributed further, even symbolically.”

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