The bipartisan bill would bar funding for any move to occupy or annex the territory of a NATO member state.
Senators in the United States have introduced a bill aimed at preventing President Donald Trump from seizing NATO territory, including the self-governing Danish island of Greenland.
The bipartisan NATO Unity Protection Act introduced on Tuesday would bar the Department of Defense and Department of State from using funds to “blockade, occupy, annex or otherwise assert control” over the territory of any other NATO member state.
The bill, authored by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Lisa Murkowski, comes amid growing concerns over Trump’s repeated insistence that Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, must be brought under Washington’s control, using force if necessary.
“This bipartisan legislation makes clear that US taxpayer dollars cannot be used for actions that would fracture NATO and violate our own commitments to NATO,” Shaheen, who represents the state of New Hampshire, said in a statement.
“This bill sends a clear message that recent rhetoric around Greenland deeply undermines America’s own national security interests and faces bipartisan opposition in Congress,” the senator said.
Murkowski, a rare Republican critic of Trump who represents Alaska, said the 32-member NATO security alliance was the “strongest line of defence” against efforts to undermine global peace and stability.
“The mere notion that America would use our vast resources against our allies is deeply troubling and must be wholly rejected by Congress in statute,” Murkowski said.
Jessica Peake, an expert in international law and the laws of war at the University of California in Los Angeles, expressed hope that the bill would receive broad support in Congress.
“If such a bill were to pass, it should place restraint on the president acting unilaterally and continuing to threaten our NATO relationship,” Peake told Al Jazeera.
“However, President Trump has made repeated threats against NATO in this term and the last, and we have seen in other instances that President Trump is willing to flout congressional authority when it suits his broader agenda.”
Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland have alarmed Washington’s European allies and prompted warnings about the end of NATO, which is built on the principle that an armed attack against any one member is considered an attack against all.
Trump, who claims that control of the vast Arctic territory is crucial to US national security, has brushed aside concerns about splitting the alliance, which has been a cornerstone of the Western-led security order since the end of World War II.
Trump has also claimed that China or Russia would take control of Greenland, which is home to vast reserves of fossil fuels and critical minerals, if the US does not.
“I’d love to make a deal with them. It’s easier,” Trump said on Sunday of his plans for the territory.
“But one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”
In a rebuke to Trump, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Tuesday offered some of their most forceful comments yet in defence of Copenhagen’s sovereignty over the territory.
“If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark,” Nielsen said at a joint news conference in Copenhagen.
“We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU,” he said.
Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his counterpart in Greenland, Vivian Motzfeldt, are to meet on Wednesday with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance in Washington, DC, for talks on the escalating crisis.
A bipartisan delegation of US lawmakers, including Democratic Senator Chris Coons and Republican Senator Thom Tillis, is to arrive in Denmark on Friday for talks.
The vast majority of Greenland’s 57,000 residents have expressed opposition to US control of the territory, according to polling.
In a survey commissioned by the Danish paper Berlingske last year, 85 percent of residents said they did not wish to join the US with just 6 percent in favour.
Analysis: Why Greenland and Europe might have to offer Trump concessions
Europe might offer a minerals deal and greater US security presence on Greenland. But will that be enough to satiate Trump?
What can small nations do to prevent being gobbled up by bigger, more powerful ones?
This is no abstract question for Greenland right now. It’s very real. And it has no easy answers. Greenland’s autonomy, its future, hangs in the balance.
Greenland is a territory of Denmark. Since 2009, it’s been largely self-governing, and has the right to pursue independence at a time of its choosing. Independence is the wish of all its political parties. But with economic self-sufficiency some way off, it’s sticking with Denmark for now.
Not if United States President Donald Trump has his way. He wants Greenland for the US. Since the bombing of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro, realisation has dawned that he is deadly serious about this. The White House has pointedly refused to take military force off the table, although the real estate mogul-turned-president would likely prefer a simple cash deal.
Europe is in diplomatic crisis mode. Denmark is a NATO member. The idea of NATO’s chief guarantor – the US – annexing territory from a member state seemed preposterous until recently. No longer.
So what can Denmark’s friends do to stop it?
The uncomfortable truth is that if Donald Trump sends in troops, Greenland would likely fall in days, perhaps hours. Trump has mocked Denmark’s forces there as “two dogsleds”. And though this doesn’t meet any truth test, his point holds. Greenland is sparsely defended. Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command in Greenland consists of a handful of warships and search and rescue teams.
The US, meanwhile, already has a major base in northwestern Greenland, under a 1951 pact that also allows Washington to set up more bases on the island. Nearly 650 personnel are stationed at the base, including US Air Force and Space Force members.
Copenhagen is tooling up. It has announced $4.2bn in extra defence spending for the Arctic. And it is buying 16 more F-35 fighter jets (from, of course, the US). But even so, Denmark would have little chance against the full might of the US military.
So a diplomatic united front has been launched. As with other Trump-created crises, Europe’s leaders are adopting an approach that could be called transatlantic judo. Like judo wrestlers, they’re trying to redirect Trump’s energy – his strident, America First unilateralism – and persuade him that the best expression of this is collegiate, transatlantic multilaterism.
Essentially, they’re saying, “Yes, Donald. You’re absolutely right to raise Arctic security as a big problem. We totally agree. While we’re not sure that invading Greenland is the answer, NATO is the solution.”
We’ve heard this message from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in recent days. And the British and German governments have both suggested NATO forces be deployed to Greenland to boost Arctic security. A German delegation was in Washington, DC, before Wednesday’s meeting between State Secretary Marco Rubio and the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers.
While the Europeans try their judo, Donald Trump’s approach is more sumo. Wielding the great geopolitical heft of the US, the president is unyielding. To all entreaties from bewildered Europeans, he remains unmoved.
When they say he can have all the US military presence on Greenland that he wants under the 1951 treaty with Denmark, he says he wants more. When they say a unilateral annexation of Greenland would be the end of NATO, he shrugs as if that might be a price worth paying. When they question his claims that Russia and China are poised to take over Greenland themselves, he just repeats them.
Appeasement or capitulation is possible. If the Europeans were panicked enough, they could lean on Denmark to give Greenlanders the independence referendum that’s been talked about for years. If Greenlanders chose full sovereignty – as a majority ultimately want – Europe could claim Greenland’s fate wasn’t their problem any more. But we’re not in that place yet.
For now, European leaders are united behind Copenhagen and Nuuk. Denmark’s sovereignty is inviolable, they say. And Greenland is not for sale.
What we could be inching towards is a fudge. Something that everyone can take as satisfactory-ish. Maybe a resource deal for US access to Greenland’s abundant deposits of metals and rare earth elements. And maybe a beefed-up US military presence. Enough for Trump to claim a win. And for Europe to breathe a sigh of relief that NATO still has a heartbeat.
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