Europe Wary as Greenland Deal and Trump ‘Peace’ Board Emerge (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, welcomed the agreement, but she said at its core the sovereignty of Greenland as part of the Kingdom of Denmark was unchanged and unwavering.

[00:00:13] Speaker 2: What my understanding is from the discussions we've had with the NATO General Secretary who has set out some of the points that he was talking about yesterday, is that this is now going to be a focus of work through NATO with different Arctic countries coming together and supported by other NATO countries on how we do that shared security. But let's be clear, throughout any of this, we maintain those principles of the sovereignty for Greenland and the sovereignty for Greenland as part of the Kingdom of Denmark. So that is unchanged and unwavering.

[00:00:47] Speaker 3: And final point on the specifics of what seems to have been agreed thus far, though of course things can change, has America been given greater access to the minerals under Greenland?

[00:00:59] Speaker 2: So I'm not aware of any discussions on that at all. And bear in mind, I think the other thing that will now take place is to be able to get back to or for Denmark and Greenland and the United States to be able to get back to some of the talks that Denmark proposed on working with the United States. You referred to the 1951 framework, for example, and to be able to make sure that they can have those discussions consistent with that fundamental principle of Greenland's sovereignty.

[00:01:34] Speaker 1: The British Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, speaking a short time ago. Also here, the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. He's been speaking in the main exhibition hall in the past hour, talking about how President Trump is fundamentally reshaping geopolitics. Have a listen.

[00:01:52] Speaker 4: We do not have to accept this new reality as fate. We are not at the mercy of this new world order. We do have a choice. We can shape the future. To succeed, we must face harsh realities and chart our course with clear eyed realism.

[00:02:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're going to hear a lot more of that this evening when the European leaders meet within the framework of the European Council. That emergency summit will continue, we're understood. Maybe tariffs, not so much a discussion now, given the Greenland deal is done. But certainly the shape of the relationship between the Europeans and the United States, very much a talking point. We are continuing to keep an eye at this hour on the events inside the conference hall because as I mentioned a little earlier, the US president is expected to officially inaugurate his Board of Peace for Gaza. There's a signing ceremony that's about to get underway momentarily. We'll bring you pictures of that as and when we get them. But we have heard from Yvette Cooper in that interview that Britain will not be taking part in the signing ceremony today despite their invitation to join the board. Ms Cooper told the BBC that the government was concerned about the possible involvement of President Putin. Let's get a view on that. Shashank Joshi, defence editor at The Economist, is with me. President Trump's telling us here in Davos that President Putin has already agreed to join this board. That is going to be problematic for the Europeans if it's normalising his position on the world stage. What happens if the Europeans don't join this board? How does it look and what sort of authority does it have?

[00:03:42] Speaker 5: Well I think the remarkable thing is when you look at who's joined, it is really a lot of autocrats, monarchies, ex-Soviet states. It is very, very few liberal democracies. I thought it was just remarkable that out of all the European Union countries just one has joined and that is of course Viktor Orban's Hungary which is a sort of illiberal democracy, very close to Putin, very close to Trump. And so this I think represents another bit of the hollowing out of the transatlantic alliance. And on the point about Putin of course, the Europeans worked very, very hard to isolate Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014, its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They kicked Russia out of the G8 for instance. We know that President Trump has been trying to get Russia back into the G8, Europeans have resisted that. And what this looks like is Trump saying I'm sort of fed up with all the existing structures, NATO, the United Nations, the G7, I'm going to make my own, I'll control it, perhaps I'll be president for life, perhaps I'll make some money out of it. And I think frankly a lot of European leaders look at this and although they can't say this, you just have the foreign secretary, they look at it and think this is completely grotesque.

[00:04:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, we're just looking to the side of you there, Shashankar, the hallway outside the room where he will begin this signing ceremony. So we might see some pictures of President Trump imminently. As you suggest, the detail on it is very vague. He appears to be sitting there as the chairman, which is an interesting dynamic on its own given the world leaders that will be joining him. But also it seems to now go beyond Gaza. It's not just about Gaza, it's about all areas of conflict around the world.

[00:05:27] Speaker 5: Well, as I say, I think this is genuinely resembling something that is intended to be a replacement, principally for the United Nations, and of course the United Nations has been an organisation that has struggled to act, principally because the way it was set up was to give big powers a veto. It was designed to give Russia, China, United States, Britain and France a veto on what could happen and they have used that veto and that deadlock has meant that at key moments countries have simply overridden the United Nations. That happened with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine back in 2022. And I think what Trump is doing here and his aides are doing is saying we're sweeping all this away. We know they don't like the UN. We know they've withdrawn funding for lots of UN agencies. They see the UN as sort of dangerous, globalist, liberal. That's not just Trumpies, that's also other Republicans, of course, going back many decades have seen the UN in that light. And this looks to me like an effort to create an alternative structure. But I'm really sceptical as to whether structured as it is now, empowering Trump the person to such a high degree and with the potential of serious corruption in it, that it really will have long institutional legs in this way.

[00:06:44] Speaker 1: It's an interesting point you make that all the main themes here in Davos this week are simultaneously colliding this morning. The European relationship with the United States, Zelensky incoming, the Board of Peace. It would be interesting to see, and he has certainly been invited to join the board, whether President Trump pressures Zelensky to sit alongside President Putin. Can you see that happening?

[00:07:07] Speaker 5: Absolutely. I mean, I was in Davos yesterday, I just got back. I was watching as President Trump was attacking President Macron, you know, as being a sort of... I think the phrase was, they've screwed us for 30 years. And he's very angry at Macron, who, of course, publicly said he wouldn't be joining the Board of Peace. And in response, Trump said, well, I'll consider 200% tariffs on French wine. And we know he doesn't always follow through on these tariff threats. In fact, he very often doesn't. But I think Zelensky knows he's very vulnerable. He needs American security guarantees. He's still, let's be very clear, dependent on American intelligence and American arms that are sold to Europe and then passed on to Ukraine. And so I think he will come under a great deal of pressure, not just to sign a minerals deal and economic deal, but also to sign up to this Board of Peace. But of course, for Zelensky to sign up to a board that has elevated and empowered Vladimir Putin, not just Vladimir Putin, but also Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus from which the invasion was launched four years ago, that would be a bitter pill to swallow. And I'm not sure that Zelensky can do it. I think he may well say, look, I'll look into this. We'll consider it. But I'm not signing up today.

[00:08:20] Speaker 1: Yes, certainly something to watch later this morning when the two finally come together. Just on the issue of Greenland, when he was asked last night after the announcement about whether there was ownership for the United States, he had to stop and pause for around four seconds to give an effective answer. I've sort of characterized it as a climb down today. But I've also tried to measure that with the way he negotiates. Does it look like a climb down to you? Or actually, has he delivered something that actually NATO wasn't doing up until this week?

[00:08:56] Speaker 5: Well, to answer that, we really must see the terms of the deal. And I heard your interview with the foreign secretary just a moment ago. There are suggestions that perhaps there has been a deal for a sovereign base area, pockets of sovereign American land where US bases are. If that's the case, it would be short of his ambition to acquire all of Greenland, this vast, lonely piece of ice, as he called it yesterday in Davos. But it would still be an infringement of Danish sovereignty. It would still be a land grab. It would still be a sort of semi-colonial model of sovereign privileges on another state's territory. I don't know if that's what's been agreed. I don't know if that's what the Danes will agree to. And I think with the sentiments we've heard out of Copenhagen are very cautious. And if the agreement is instead some kind of long, perhaps 99-year, Hong Kong-style lease on the bases, on the land the bases sit on, and that's what he meant by it'll last a long time, that could be a very different kind of compromise. And that would indeed be a climb down. But frankly, it will gain America absolutely nothing. It could not have had easily with an amicable discussion with Denmark last year. And we must keep that absolutely clear. Because this rupture to the alliance has really been for very, very little tangible, meaningful gain by the United States. And I'm afraid there's no way to sugarcoat that.

[00:10:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. You do wonder what it's all for. One Dane I spoke to yesterday said we could have stitched this up over a Carlsberg without all the trauma that was involved in it. Just on the issue of this Arctic sentry that Yvette Cooper talked about a short time ago, she's compared it to the Baltic sentry and the Eastern sentry. What is that? And what do the two sentries that already exist look like? And how does that change NATO's posturing in the East?

[00:11:00] Speaker 5: Essentially, to sum it up in two words, it's situational awareness, knowing what's going on. And in the Baltic sentry mission, that is in response to a sabotage of undersea cables or disruption to maritime infrastructure. And the idea was, if you have more ships, maritime patrol aircraft, drones in the water, you are more likely to spot potentially subversive Russian activity. And then you can deter it because you will expose it. In the Eastern model, it was more about air defense. It was about watching for Russian drones coming in, often drone strikes in Ukraine, veering into Europe and NATO airspace, and then having the means to respond to them. Arctic sentry would be fundamentally different because we don't really have ongoing sabotage in the same way we've had in the Baltic. We don't have violations of NATO airspace in the Arctic that we do in the East. This would be about trying to placate Donald Trump and saying, you say we haven't done enough in the Arctic. Let's put more assets into the Arctic to see what the Chinese and Russians are doing. I have to say, this again is an area which America itself had neglected for years. And if the aim was simply to have more planes, radars, sensors, drones operating across that Arctic territory, this could have been done a year ago. And the main crux of problems hasn't really been Greenland. It's been closer to Alaska, the American side, where they have something called an air defense identification zone, where you've had Russian planes coming into that zone. That is where some of the real problems have been. And so an Arctic sentry mission around Greenland may assuage Donald Trump's obsession with the island. It isn't actually necessarily exactly what Arctic security needs right at this very minute.

[00:12:41] Speaker 1: That's really fascinating. Shashank, stay with us, if you will, because we're bouncing around the live shots here in Davos. There's an awful lot going on this morning. President Zelensky incoming. Would you have some shots of helicopters moving around the Swiss Alps at the moment? There you go. A couple of helicopters that have just arrived on the airfield. Of course, most of the world leaders coming to Zurich, the airfield here is quite small, albeit the private jets do land here. But they tend to ferry people from Zurich here to Davos on helicopters. So I would presume that is President Zelensky that's just arrived. One of the things I've been keeping my eye on, Shashank, just quickly before we go to the break, is Gavin Newsom, Donald Trump's nemesis, who's been here all week as we do various interviews on U.S. media with Politico and what have you. He's just talked about the agreement. He says it's the 250th anniversary of America this year. The best of the Roman Republic, Greek democracy, co-equal branches of government, the rule of law, popular sovereignty. Tell me that it reflects the America you read about today. There is no rule of law. It is the rule of Don and it is dawning on the Europeans. And we've been discussing with Nick Beak in Brussels, that will be the discussion tonight when they get together in the European Council. Where did they take the relationship? How do they insulate themselves above the rule of the social media post?

[00:14:15] Speaker 5: I mean, you're absolutely right. And I think the key point here is this isn't just about Trump. This is about America writ large. European leaders will be discussing Greenland. They'll be discussing the Board of Peace. They'll be discussing Ukraine. But in the back of their minds will be the fact of agents on the streets of Minnesota snatching people off the streets. In the back of their minds will be Trump's battles with the Supreme Court. His claim again made at Davos, as you heard yesterday, that the election was rigged. And they'll be wondering, will he claim the next election is rigged? So as America changes and as Republican congressmen like Lindsey Graham encourage his pursuit of Greenland, the Europeans are saying, look, we have Trump for three more years. Perhaps it'll get better after that. But there are these deeper fissures taking place in American democracy, in American politics, in American society that mean even under a new president, even under President Vance, the President Rubio, Europe is in a different era. And that's why Mark Carney's speech at Davos articulating that sentiment, I think, resonated so much with so many of the Europeans there. And therefore, this goes beyond Trump. And European for Europeans, trust has really been shattered. And there is just no going back after this Greenland saga, whatever the deal on the table is agreed.