President Donald Trump
The aforementioned headline represents the latest quotation from American strongman Donald Trump, as he ramps up pressure in his bid to acquire Greenland by all means.
He will either buy Greenland or use military means to do so, and, in that case, damn the dire consequences.
With his North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies responding with such rhetoric as “Greenland is not for sale” and “Europe will not be blackmailed,” the situation is heading for the precipice.
The unambiguous tension among the global elephants, the fallout from which brouhaha will be anything but positive for global trade, must attract the attention of those of us here in this part of the world.
We cannot avoid the negative fallouts from the ‘bazooka trade war’, which ammo is the trading of tariff hikes.
The diplomatic engagements are not yielding the desired dividends as the American strongman insists on taking control of Greenland for strategic reasons as he claims.
In a globally connected setting, especially as it pertains to international trade, those of us on the other hemisphere should follow the unfolding diplomatic drama with keen interest. We should however do so with care lest our comments push Trump to descend upon us with an iron fist. With Ghana already on the visa suspension list, we cannot afford to attract further sanctions.
In his reaction to the insistence by the rest of the membership of NATO not to toe his line, Donald Trump has threatened to impose a tariff hike on countries not aligning with his desire to buy Greenland. Therein lies the source of our apprehension. If he can threaten the greatest ally of the US, the UK, with tariff hike, it can only be imagined what will happen to us when our expressed position does not align with the “we shall acquire Greenland by force” rhetoric.
We are constrained to consider the repercussions of the insistence of the disagreeing parties not to allow the US have its way.
Being Europe’s biggest trading partner, any brush with the US by the Brits, France and others will spell trouble for us.
Would the US eventually apply military force to acquire Greenland by calling the bluff of his allies? With home support not in favour for the military option, we wonder whether he would go that far. Fresh from Venezuela and still seizing sanctioned oil on the Caribbean Sea, the threats of Trump should not be toyed with.
An aspect of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s speech to his compatriots yesterday, in the light of the subject under review, could not have summed better the crossroads at which the world is today. “The world has become markedly turbulent in recent weeks,” he said.
In today’s world, geopolitics is not something that happens somewhere else. It shapes the cost of energy, the price of food, the security of jobs and the stability that families rely on to plan their lives, he said, and that is why the Greenland issue should concern us. Anxiety has gripped the world and rightly so.