Trump out in cold on Greenland

If Donald Trump needed evidence of why his clumsy internationalism is not always the best approach to the conduct of US foreign policy, it has come in the result of Wednesday’s election in Greenland. After 40,000 Greenlanders (of a population of 57,000) cast their ballots, the vote did not favour Mr Trump but instead the centre-right Demokraatit party led by Jens-Frederik Nielsen, a fierce critic of Mr Trump’s demands, who has declared Greenland is “definitely not for sale”.

Mr Nielsen, a former badminton champion, is no outlier in his opposition to Mr Trump’s real estate claims. Neither is his Demokraatit party alone in believing its interests, and Greenland’s semi-autonomous governing status, will be served best under existing constitutional arrangements with Denmark, which colonised the territory more than 300 years ago. Recent polls have found 85 per cent of Greenlanders do not want to be bought by the US and be in the frontline in any global power struggle involving America, Russia and China. Mr Nielsen’s Demokraatit party favours a moderate, long-term approach to eventual independence from Denmark.

Mr Trump may be right about the strategic importance of Greenland to the US. The vast island includes not only the major Pituffik air base on the northwest coast, but also, reportedly, a secret underground bunker capable of storing 600 nuclear missiles. But whatever case Mr Trump could make for the US being allowed to take over Greenland has, as Wednesday’s election showed, been seriously undermined in both Nuuk and Copenhagen by the crass, arrogant way in which he has gone about it.