Transcription
Uh, let's go to my first guest this morning, Sir Peter Westmacott. He was a former UK ambassador, as I said earlier, to the US, as well as, uh, to fellow NATO members France and Turkey. Peter, it's good to have you on the program. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year, Matt, and good morning or good night, or whatever it is for you.
It is. Yeah, I, I get confused sometimes myself. So if you were still ambassador in Washington and you had to, you know, cable your prime minister at the end of this week, how would you sum it up in one paragraph?
That's a tall order. I did sometimes send, um, what I thought were pithy and not always welcome, uh, cables of advice, letters of advice back to London. Um, not always in one paragraph, but I think where we are now is in a period of unconstrained, uh, probably authoritarian American government. It's not what we've been used to before, but I think after the success of the Venezuela operation, and we don't yet know the full details, but it sounds like militarily it was a remarkable achievement. Regardless of what you think of the politics and the foreign policy and the morality of it, you've got an unleashed president who thinks that he can do pretty much anything. He says he thinks he needs to have Greenland for psychological reasons, whatever that means. Um, not sure why he needs Greenland. I suspect it's about oil and minerals. I don't think it's about Russia and China being neighbors. He's already got Russia as a neighbor, after all. So, we're not sure, you know, where that goes from. He says somewhat, you know, at whim what he's thinking at that particular moment. He spent three hours with our friends from the New York Times. Um, sometimes rambling, sometimes speaking quite precisely about this. And as you rightly pointed out, you know, I'm not constrained by any international law or rules, just by my own morality. That is not reassuring for a lot of people who are watching the way Trump has been behaving. So, we're in, we're in very different territory. But I think my advice would be in your one paragraph, Matt, that it is sensible to continue to engage with him privately rather than to get into a kind of shouting match saying, "This is not acceptable behavior. This is illegal. This is wrong. This is improper." That doesn't get you anywhere with this president. I think we've done a pretty good job as a government, uh, as a country, in engaging with him privately. The evidence on things that we really care about, like Ukraine, I'm afraid, is not yet there. We want him to be behaving in a more robust and a more consistent way on European security, but I think the tactical approach is still the right one.
Right. I want to get onto the approach a little bit later, but just on, um, you know, the kind of veil of American power being lifted. You could argue that something similar happened when, uh, Ronald Reagan, who was very close friends with Margaret Thatcher, invaded the island of Grenada. Uh, Maggie Thatcher was very upset by that. But again, words were said in private and not in public. But this is different, isn't it? Because this is the stated kind of reversioning of the Monroe Doctrine, you know, America bossing it in the Western Hemisphere by the president in black and white in the National Security Strategy document, which ruffled quite a few feathers at the end of last year, and also by the actions that he's taken this week. So it is different this time.
It is different this time. I, I seem to recall that back in the days of the invasion of, of Grenada, um, Ronald Reagan didn't actually realize that the Queen was head of state for that island and therefore there wasn't a need to consult Mrs. Thatcher or the British government. But it was a small island in the Caribbean. It was not the largest island in the world, which is what Greenland is. And so following on Venezuela, uh, what's being said about Greenland and what has been said about Canada, which is after all also a realm there, is our King is the King of Canada. These are, these are very different circumstances. A very different president. And you've got Stephen Miller there whispering in his ear and indeed talking to the rest of the world saying, "Might is right. We don't give a damn about anybody else. Laws are irrelevant to the United States of America. We're top dog." And the Monroe Doctrine means we do what we like in the Western Hemisphere.
And to hear that spelled out like that, and Stephen Miller said it on CNN in a slightly shriller tone than the president said it to the New York Times. Again, that was one of those moments where one has to swallow very hard.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it was, it was worrying that that kind of language, that kind of personality, if you like, is such an important member of the deputy chief of staff in the White House. Um, how does one, how does one turn that around? How do we manage it? That is a problem. I mean, one of the things we have to do, and you haven't asked me about how to respond really, but one of the things the Europeans will have to do is to show that they are credible and that we can bring something to the party. The UK actually does produce a great deal of importance to America's security, and sometimes we're not as good as we should be at reminding them of that.
I mean, President Macron, I think, summed it up this week when he said that America is trying to liberate itself from international law, you know, and they more or less spelled out that that's what they were doing. It does strike me as odd, though, that Europe, which is after all, you know, you know, and I'm talking about the EU plus UK, we're talking about a continent of what is it, 560 million people. There's a lot of money there. There is potentially an awful lot of clout. But the way we're behaving towards America is more like supplicants, like potential vassal states, whispering ever so quietly, uh, you know, to people who are prepared to listen, and often they don't listen in Washington, what, what we feel. I mean, is that the only way we can behave?
Well, we've got ourselves in a bit of a bind, Matt. I, I wouldn't, I don't think, use the phrase that Peter Mandelson used in his Spectator piece this week that we're piggybacking on America, but I know what he meant. That is to say, we may have 560 million people in Europe, but in terms of looking after our own security and dealing with people like Vladimir Putin next door, we have relied on the United States of America and the nuclear umbrella and the American defensive facilities in Europe to look after ourselves. And we have spent less and less. We thought we had a peace dividend that we could spend on other things, and we are therefore weak in terms of physical security, and we are divided, I would say, Europeans in terms of foreign policy as well. We've come back together a bit, and the reality of Brexit doesn't mean that the UK and the Brits and the French and the Germans are on different pages in terms of the language we're using, but we are not a strong player when it comes to, um, uh, struggle for influence between the great powers. We are dealing with a president who thinks the world is divided up between Russia, big power, China, big power, and himself, big power. And that the little Europeans are largely irrelevant. He can be nice to them if they're friendly to him and, and award him a few prizes and state visits, but otherwise, we do not really matter. So, we've got to do something about that if we want our voice to matter in Washington. The other thing to remember is he won't necessarily be like this forever, Matt. You know, Matt, this is a president who is very different. And I suspect that whatever comes after Donald Trump, even if it is a kind of wannabe Donald Trump like, like JD Vance, it won't be the same thing. That's not to say America will go back to the, the cozy, cuddly, cuddly old days, but it could be worse. But we will not have somebody in the future who is the head of a cult in the way that Donald Trump is.
Yes. But I mean, but that's not entirely reassuring when you've got another three years of this presidency. I mean, there's a long way to go, and, you know, and the last year has felt rather exhausting, but it's only been 12 months, and he's already rearranged the global furniture.
Yeah, he's done a tremendous amount in one year, and he may do a lot more in the time to come. So we're dealing with what's going on now. Um, it may or may not have a long-term effect, but we have got to manage that very, very clearly. The British government, for example, did make a stand with the other Europeans on Greenland. We have not decided whether we think Venezuela was okay or not, legal or not. Um, and we are, you know, sitting on the fence there, but we really do need the Americans on the Ukraine issue and managing the relationship with Vladimir Putin. So, we can't afford to alienate this president. And we have got a number of, of cards that we can play in the United Kingdom to try to influence him in a different direction. But you're right, he's done a huge amount that was unpredicted, unpredictable over the first year. And who knows what's going to happen in the next two or three years. We're going to have to be ready for a very, a very bumpy ride.
I mean, you know, in the past, I mentioned Margaret Thatcher, um, and Ronald Reagan. Of course, there was Tony Blair and George Bush, and you could argue that that relationship was too close. It became a sort of fatal attraction, almost, to, you know, as opposed to love actually, to borrow some movie titles here. But, I mean, is the problem here that actually, although he quite likes Macron, Trump doesn't really respect Macron, or indeed Macron? In fact, no one really. I mean, he was mocking Macron's French accent the other day, you know, at a public event. I mean, this is, this is unusual stuff. And at the end of the day, the only voice that Trump respects is his own. And again, that is a massive problem for us.
Yes. Uh, I, I think that is a problem. It's partly his own sense of kind of slightly cruel humor, if you like. He doesn't mind humiliating people. Look how he treated Marco Rubio in the past compared to how he defers to him almost now. So things can change. I think with the Prime Minister, there is a reasonable relationship, uh, possibly because we have a Prime Minister who doesn't have quite the same ego that the President of the United States has. And we've also got the fact that this is a president who is very, very keen on the Royal Family and the King. And that is not necessarily an instrument of British policy, but it is an asset that we can use. And we do need to remind them, uh, that America cannot just do everything that it wants, if you bear in what we do for American security, in terms of bases in Scotland and submarine links in Northern North Atlantic, on Ascension Island, in Cyprus. You know, there's a lot of stuff we do for America's security, Diego Garcia, which is nothing to do with Europe. Everything to do with what Europe, what America really needs. And we need to, we need to play our cards more skillfully sometimes.
Yes. But I mean, you know, reminding Americans of what we do for them. I mean, the Danes have tried to do the same thing. It doesn't seem to be working. Well, Greenland may be in a, in a particular category. Uh, they are doing that. Um, you've got to use what leverage you have got. Uh, we're not, of course, in the business of withdrawing Diego Garcia. That would, that would of course have a real impact. That's not what the British government is thinking of doing. But I think the idea that America does everything for everybody else and we're all a bunch of piggybacking freeloaders, we do need to counter that because I think it isn't true. But it also means that we've got to show that we are serious about the famous 5% of GDP NATO commitment. Trump says that the Europeans are not paying their bills. They are paying their bills, but they're not spending as much of their GDP on defense as we have committed and as we should be doing. That, that will help. And if the European parts of the NATO alliance can show that they are serious, he says NATO will not be there for us if we got into trouble. Well, the only time that NATO's Article 5 has ever been deployed was on behalf of America after 9/11. You know, Europeans are there for America when it really needs them, and we've, we've got to, we've got to stand up for ourselves.
Okay. So, Peter Westmacott, thank you very much indeed for coming on the program. Let's speak to Rasmus Yalof. He's a member of the Danish Parliament who chairs its Defense, Resilience and Preparedness Committee. What an apt title. Good morning, Rasmus.
Yeah, it's a long title. Good morning.
It's a long title, and, and you need all those things, don't you? Resilience, preparedness, and possibly even defense. So tell me, um, there will be this meeting next week. Marco Rubio is coming over to talk to the Danish government. What are you expecting the Americans to put on the table as a pitch?
I think we're hoping that the Americans will be concrete about what it is they think they need in Greenland that they don't already have, because one of our challenges is that they already have full military access, and the opportunity to extract, um, minerals if they need that is also just completely possible. The Greenlanders just have never been able to find international investors that have been willing to do any mining because the conditions are very, very difficult, and it's expensive to do the mining. But they talk a lot about mining, so maybe they're interested in that. And for defense, um, they left all their military bases up there. The bases, the bases are still there. We have kept the runways and the buildings so they can move right back in if they want to. But they have decided to downgrade their presence by 99% from 15,000 to today only 150 American troops in Greenland. So the talk about needing Greenland for national security, if they think that's the case, uh, they are more than welcome. But it's not us that have pushed them out. They've always had the option. The door has always been open for an American military presence, as large as they have, they have wanted it.
Sure. And remind me, Rasmus, when they scaled down from their 15,000 men to a mere 200?
Um, well, gradually, um, but it was 15,000 at the height of the Cold War in the 50s and 60s, and they had military bases all over Greenland. Today they only have that one space base in the high north of Greenland, uh, that protects the United States from missiles flying over the North Pole from Russia towards the United States. So, and that's, they don't protect Greenland. That's important to stress, because sometimes that's being said that the Americans are protecting Greenland. They don't have any military presence in Greenland that protects Greenland. They only have a military presence that protects the United States from Greenland, and, and that's different. Um, but if they feel like they need to do more, they're so welcome. Um, we've never objected to it, and that's why this is so unnecessary, because they will achieve nothing by annexing Greenland that they don't already have access to.
And that's very well put, and it also alarms me because they must know this. They must know that they could just move back into those bases. They could ramp up their military presence. You know, they could extract minerals, and you wouldn't mind. You would, you would encourage them to do so. But the fact that they're still talking, that Trump is still talking about ownership, that he's still putting on his real estate hat, more or less saying, "I prefer a freehold to a leasehold or a rental agreement." That would give me cause for concern because in his own mind, that is an edict. It is something that he is obsessed with. And as we know, when Trump is obsessed with something, it's very difficult for this incredibly loyal cabinet around him to tell him otherwise.
Yeah, exactly. It's, it's very difficult, um, and, and very, very concerning. Um, I mean, the, we see a lot of voices in Congress that are against this, and we see polls that show that the American public is completely against it, um, as well. Um, so we're still hoping that the Americans will look at this rationally and see that the arrangement we have today is actually much better for them, because they don't have any any expenses in Greenland. Uh, Denmark basically pays the bills, helps the Greenlanders who are in control of the country and who run it the way that they want, but the Americans don't have any expenses. The, they're allowed to be in Greenland as much as they want, completely free of charge, without any expenses, without any obligations. Um, so it would be more expensive for them if they annex the place. Much more expensive. What they have today is, is very good for them. It's good for the Greenlanders, and, um, yeah, I don't know if it's really good for Denmark or not, because we're not really getting anything out of it. But, um, we, we like to keep it the way it is. Um, so, uh, would be more rational of the Americans to just accept that the arrangement today works really well. And, and tell us why you would like to keep it the way it is if, if you're not getting that much out of it.
Um, well, you know, um, Greenland has belonged to Denmark for six and a half centuries, since, uh, 1380. Predates Columbus, um, by more than 100 years, and, um, it has been integrated into Denmark. So it's not just owned by Denmark, but it's a part of Denmark. Since, um, the UN plenary assembly, the entire world, um, voted for it in 1954. So we have an obligation, we have a duty, uh, to help the Greenlanders. Um, and there's absolutely no way that we can just sell 57,000 Danish citizens, uh, to become Americans because they don't want to. And we're not doing that. I think everyone can understand that that's something you just don't do to people. They are not slaves that we can just sell. It's not a product. It's not a commodity. These are real people. Uh, it's an almost independent country. They have their own identity, their own language. Um, but they also have very strong and very, very long-standing ties to Denmark.
But if they decide independently that, okay, they don't want to be sold, but they might want to be bought, as it were, with lots of money. If the Americans wave a ton of money at 57,000 people, you know, who feel perhaps that they've been neglected by Copenhagen, I've heard that quite a few times from Greenlanders. What's to stop them from saying, "Thank you very much, Uncle Sam"?
Well, we could stop that legally, but, um, that of course would be a.
What about the Greenlanders?
Yeah, I mean, the Greenlanders. We have an independence law. So the Greenlanders have for 17 years had the right to leave Denmark if they wanted to. They have not started that process. They have not requested independence. So they are part of Denmark because they want to be. Um, although they have this very clear vision, dream of becoming an independent country, one day, but they are not dreaming about becoming Americans. They are not dreaming of replacing Denmark with the United States. So there was a poll last year, asking, "Would you like to leave Denmark to become part of the United States?" And only 6% of the Greenlanders said that they found that attractive. So there's a huge opposition to the idea of the Americans taking the place of, uh, Denmark. Um, but of course, you know, the bribery scenario where the Americans will offer the Greenlanders a lot of money to leave Denmark to become part of the United States is being discussed a lot. I don't think the Greenlanders will accept that. Um, they have said it so clearly so many times. "We are not for sale, and no means no." So, I don't think it matters how much money the Americans would offer the Greenlanders.
Um, of course, there's some, that would be a difficult situation, and Denmark would have to decide whether we, we would accept that, because we can block the referendum. We can block them from leaving if we wanted to do that. But we don't really want to, like, you know, do something to the Greenlanders that they don't want. But of course, you know, if we get into a situation where one country can have a targeting campaign to try to bribe a region of another country to leave, I don't see that, say, the Spanish being very happy about France going to the Basque country to try to bribe people there to leave to become closer attached to France. I wouldn't see Britain being being very pleased with, I don't know, Argentina going to the Falkland Islands and trying to bribe people there to leave the UK part of Argentina, or say the Americans if China went to Hawaii tried to bribe people there to leave to become part of China. It's not an acceptable approach. Uh, if the Greenlanders, uh, want to become independent, um, they, they have had the option for a long time, and we have supported that for a very long time. But it should happen not because of a result of a targeted American campaign to dismantle the King of Denmark. I mean, I, to be honest, I think that any military action is incredibly unlikely because it would, you know, as you said earlier, would face a lot of opposition from Republicans on Capitol Hill, and there might be people in the cabinet, including Marco Rubio, who are telling Trump that, you know, military force to acquire Greenland is a really bad idea. But even if you use it, do it through bribery and persuasion, and, you know, maybe the Americans will hold out some kind of path towards, uh, Greenland independence at the end of the day, you know, whether they mean it or not. This is tricky, isn't it? And I wonder whether you think, like your Prime Minister, that whatever the option here is, NATO, which has kept the West together for, you know, for all these years since the Second World War, is going to be fundamentally undermined, if not killed off, if the Greenland thing goes ahead.
Yeah, I, I can't, I can't disagree with her analysis. I mean, we have an alliance to ensure that others don't take our territory, and if so-called allies start going after a territory, then the purpose of that alliance is completely gone. That's the actions of enemies, certainly not the actions of allies. So, we certainly wouldn't want to be in such an alliance. And, um.
I mean, why would anyone else want to be allied to the Americans if they go after allies' territory? Um, they're the only ones doing that. I mean, and for most of the countries in NATO, um, that's a very, very serious threat. Uh, it's for us, surely the most present, uh, threat to our country right now. Russia is not threatening to take any territory from Denmark. Neither is China. So it, we're in the situation where it's the Americans that are the most present and very serious threat against, uh, against our country. So it's, it's completely.
Which is quite a thing to say, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's quite a thing to say, isn't it? Uncle Sam has gone rogue on you.
Yeah, seems that way. I mean, so far it has only been words, but the words are very, very, very concerning.
And should they use military force, in one word, who will come to your defense?
I don't know, but, um, it would be a disastrous situation for the Western alliance. Denmark would, of course, invoke Article 5 of NATO. So people would have an obligation, countries would have an obligation to come and help us defend ourselves. M.
Americans would, of course, veto that, and then NATO would be finished.
Um.
Okay.
It's disaster.
We're going to leave it there. That's.
And we're not, we're not just going to hand over Greenland. If someone thinks that the Americans can just do this quietly and they can just send in a boat and and send us an a note that now Greenland is theirs, that's not going to happen. We're not going to just hand over 57,000 Danish citizens. And it would be, uh, um, it would be a war. Um, and I'm not saying this to stomp our chest because we are well aware of the size difference between us and the United States. We're well aware, uh, that, um, they could just, you know, kill all of us. But, uh, we're just hoping that's not the, the kind of country that they want to be.
Well, that's a sobering note to end on. Uh, Rasmus Yalof, member of the Danish Parliament, thank you very much indeed for coming on the.