Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Thursday she viewed US President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to use military force to seize Greenland as a warning to foreign competitors, such as China, to keep their hands off key strategic concerns close to the US.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said Thursday she didn’t believe US President-elect Donald Trump actually intends to use military force to seize control of Greenland or the Panama Canal, saying she read his comments more as a warning to China and other global players to keep their hands off such strategically important interests.
“I think we can exclude that the United States in the coming years will try to use force to annex territory that interests it,” said Meloni, who travelled last weekend to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
She said Trump was simply flagging that he would not let key strategic concerns close to the United States fall under the sway of foreign competitors, such as China.
“My thinking is that these statements are … a vigorous way to say the United States will not stand by while other major global players move into areas that are of strategic interest to the United States and, I would add, to the West,” Meloni said.
China has been threatening for years to invade and occupy Taiwan and has bullying it constantly for the past 2 years
She identified increased “Chinese protagonism” in the commercially important Panama Canal and resource-rich Greenland as being behind Trump’s warning, and said she interpreted his words as part of a “long-distance debate between great powers”.
Speaking in London on Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy also said he did not believe Trump would seize Greenland.
Lammy said that while Trump’s unpredictability and “intensity of rhetoric” were part of his signature style, “we can be guided not entirely by the rhetoric and the language, but by (his) actions as president”.
Trump alarmed many Western capitals this week when he refused to rule out using military or economic action to pursue an acquisition of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and also floated the idea of turning Canada into a US state.
Analysts say such rhetoric could embolden America’s enemies by suggesting the US is now OK with countries using force to redraw borders at a time when Russia is pressing forward with its invasion of Ukraine and China is threatening Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Wednesday he did not believe the US would invade the vast Arctic island that has been part of Denmark for over 600 years.
“There is obviously no question that the European Union would let other nations of the world attack its sovereign borders, whoever they are,” he told France Inter radio. “We are a strong continent.”
Trump’s comments further outlined an expansionist agenda, two weeks before he is sworn into office at the January 20 inauguration in Washington.
“If you’re asking me whether I think the United States will invade Greenland, my answer is no. But have we entered into a period of time when it is survival of the fittest? Then my answer is yes,” Barrot said.
He said the EU should not let itself be intimidated or be overly concerned, but should wake up and strengthen.
(FRANCE 24 with AP and Reuters)