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US senators have introduced legislation to prevent the American military from occupying or annexing Nato territories, including Greenland.
The bill would prohibit the Pentagon and the state department from using funds appropriated by Congress to “blockade, occupy, annex, conduct military operations against, or otherwise assert control” over the territory of a Nato member state.
The legislation from senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, and Republican senator Lisa Murkowski comes as lawmakers in both parties have expressed alarm over President Donald Trump’s renewed interest in acquiring Greenland after the US recently captured Venezuelan strongman leader Nicolás Maduro.
Murkowski said: “Our Nato alliances are what set the United States apart from our adversaries. 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.”
A bipartisan congressional group led by Democrat Bill Keating introduced similar legislation on Monday in the House of Representatives.
Trump on Sunday said the US would have the Danish territory “one way or the other”, prompting Greenland’s premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen to say on Tuesday that the Arctic territory would prefer to remain part of Denmark.
“If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark,” Nielsen said. “We choose Nato, the Kingdom of Denmark and the European Union.”
Responding to Nielsen, Trump said: “Well that’s their problem. I disagree with him. I don’t know who he is. Don’t know anything about him, but that’s going to be a big problem for him.”
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland are planning to meet secretary of state Marco Rubio and vice-president JD Vance in Washington on Wednesday, while a bipartisan group of US lawmakers is set to travel to Denmark later this week to meet senior Danish and Greenlandic officials.
Trump’s Republican allies in Congress have sought to play down the prospect that the US could use force to seize Greenland.
“I don’t think anybody is considering that,” Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, said on Tuesday. “There is no declaration of war pending for Greenland. It’s just not a thing.”
Danish officials have been working to build support for Copenhagen in recent weeks. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark’s ambassador to the US, met a dozen lawmakers from both parties in the first week of January.
“It’s a deliberate tactic to try to influence one part of Washington that we understand,” said one Danish official, who added that, like many foreign governments, Copenhagen had found the Trump White House difficult to navigate.
Danish officials and experts say the meetings — as well as strident statements by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warning that an invasion of Greenland would mean the end of Nato — are designed to appeal to members of Congress and defence companies keen to see the western military alliance continue.
Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, head of the Centre for Arctic Security Studies at the Royal Danish Defence College, said US defence companies relied heavily on Nato for sales to European countries of everything from F-35 fighter jets to ammunition.
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While the US constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war, its role has ebbed over time. “Every modern president has asserted wide powers to use US military force abroad to protect and advance American interests,” said Matthew Waxman, chair of the National Security Law programme at Columbia Law School.
Although lawmakers can pass legislation or leverage their appropriation authorities to place guardrails on a president’s ability to wage war, these options were not without difficulty, Waxman said.
“Checking this particular president is especially hard, but there are ways for Congress to do it, if it can muster some political will.”
