Sen Coons leads bipartisan delegation to Denmark to show pro-democracy leaders visibly fighting for freedom [View all]

[Amaryllis]

https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/hours-before-leading-a-bipartisan?
more at link and interview with Simon Rosenberg

Senator Coons is an old friend, and it’s just great news that he’s been able to put together such an important delegation to head to Europe at this critical time (for more on the delegation and mission see the Coons press release, below). We often talk here about how the free countries of the world need to see pro-democracy leaders here in the US visibly fighting alongside them for freedom and democracy. This trip and the statements you will read below are a great example of the kind of pro-democracy global diplomacy we must see far more of in the months ahead. I am grateful to my old friend for dropping by and talking to us about the vital trip and the broader fight against Trump’s reckless foreign policy - particularly given all that is going on right now.

At the beginning of our conversation I asked the Senator why he put the trip together. Here is what he said:

A year ago… 10 months ago, at the Munich Security Conference, I sat down with the foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, and a senior Greenlandic representative, and I asked them three questions. Are there any current significant security threats from Iran, from China, from Russia, to Greenland security? No. If the United States respectfully came to you and said, we’d like to partner in sustainably developing the critical minerals and rare earth resources of Greenland, what would your response be? Open arms…. If we came to you respectfully and said, we’d like to exercise our rights under the treaty from 1951, and add American military assets on the east side of Greenland or the south of Greenland to monitor the movement of Chinese and Russian naval and air assets, what would your response be? Open arms….

So it’s been clear, for at least the year that I’ve been thinking about this, that it is simply a made up conflict for President Trump to keep pushing for Greenland to become American territory. I have two Republicans coming and two other Democrats coming from the Senate… senior members of Foreign Relations, Appropriations… and we’re going to have senior meetings with both Danish and Greenlandic representatives. This will be hugely reassuring, I hope, to the Danes and to the residents of Greenland, to have a bipartisan group from the House and the Senate come to them and do interviews in the Danish press, meet with their business, civil society and elected and military leaders and say, we want no part of a military effort to seize control of Greenland.