Team Trump’s arguments for owning Greenland are taking a troubling turn

Robert O’Brien’s tenure as national security adviser in Donald Trump’s White House was difficult as O’Brien did not appear to fully understand the exact nature of his responsibilities.

For example, the New York Times published a rather extraordinary report in early 2020 noting that when convening National Security Council meetings, O’Brien had a habit of beginning the meetings by handing out printouts of Trump’s latest tweets. The Times report, which was not independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that the move presented an “implicit challenge” to those in attendance: their job was to “find ways to justify Mr. Trump’s policies.” , to implement or explain.” , not to tell the President what it should be.”

For most of the last century, the White House National Security Council existed to provide advice and information to presidents. In the Trump era, the model was reversed: O’Brien told NSC members what the then-president already believed and instructed them to support the positions Trump already held.

Four years later, for reasons unknown, the president-elect decided that the United States should own Greenland, leading O’Brien to do the same thing he had done four years earlier. The Hill reported:

Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien said in a Sunday interview that Denmark should allow the U.S. to “buy” Greenland if it cannot defend the self-governing country, noting that the territory will become increasingly important in the coming years become. In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” O’Brien described Greenland as a “highway from the Arctic to North America” and noted that the autonomous country, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, will become increasingly important , as the climate warms in the coming years.

O’Brien got the ball rolling on Saturday with a thread posted on social media in which he insisted that Trump was “100% right again,” this time about Greenland. “If our great ally Denmark cannot commit to defending the island, the US must intervene, as (the president-elect) said,” he added.

A day later, O’Brien went one step further on Fox News. “(Greenland is) strategically very important for the Arctic, which will be the decisive battlefield of the future, because as the climate gets warmer, the Arctic will be a pathway that may even limit the use of the Panama Canal,” he argued and suggested that some Republicans will only accept the reality of climate change if they seek to expand the territorial boundaries of the United States.

“Denmark is now at the forefront of the war against Russia and China. They are like the Baltic states. Because of their vast territory in Greenland, they resemble Poles. And that’s why they have to defend Greenland,” O’Brien added. “And if they can’t defend it, we have to, and we won’t do it for free.”

As if that wasn’t enough, the former White House national security adviser went on to say in the same on-air interview that if Denmark were reluctant to pay the United States to defend Greenland, he had an alternative in mind. “You can let us buy Greenland from (Denmark), and Greenland can become part of Alaska,” O’Brien said. “I mean, the native people of Greenland are very closely related to the people of Alaska, and we’re going to make it part of Alaska.”

He didn’t seem to be joking.

I won’t pretend to know why Trump focused on U.S. ownership of Greenland — which is still not for sale — or how to resolve this strange concern. But three weeks before the Republican’s inauguration, it’s hardly reassuring to see his former White House national security adviser making veiled threats against a NATO ally on national television.