As Norway has not given him a prize for stopping eight wars, he ‘no longer (feels) an obligation to think purely of Peace’
[LONDON] The US President Donald Trump linked his claims on Greenland to not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in a letter he sent to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store.
In the letter, Trump said: “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight Wars PLUS...
“I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
“The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland,” the US president noted.
The Nobel Peace Prize is not decided by the Norwegian government, but is awarded by an independent committee.
The requests for comment sent to Store’s press office and the White House were not immediately returned.
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Trump rattled Nato allies over the weekend, after threatening to impose tariffs on a group of European members of the alliance if he does not get control of Greenland.
The escalation prompted outrage among European Union leaders, and a call by French President Emmanuel Macron to activate the bloc’s most powerful retaliation tool.
The EU ambassadors met on Sunday (Jan 18) to discuss options if Trump follows through with his threats, including tariffs on some 93 billion euros (S$139 billion) in American goods. The bloc’s leaders are due to meet for an emergency summit on Thursday.
On Monday, on the social media platform Truth Social, Trump posted: “Nato has been telling Denmark, for 20 years, that ‘you have to get the Russian threat away from Greenland’. Unfortunately, Denmark has been unable to do anything about it. Now it is time, and it will be done!!!”
His message has been echoed by several senior US officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who told NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview on Sunday that Europe was too weak to ensure Greenland’s security.
Separately, Norway reacted with disbelief last week after Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado gave her medal to Trump, who has long coveted the award.
Trump, who claims to deserve the peace prize for having resolved numerous wars during his second term, accepted the medal from the Venezuelan opposition leader at a White House meeting.
“The Nobel Prize and the laureate are inseparable,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Friday. “Even if the medal or diploma later comes into someone else’s possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
In a separate post on social media on Sunday, the Nobel committee said: “A prize can therefore not, even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed.”
Trump’s letter to Norway’s prime minister, which was first reported by a PBS journalist on X, was shared by Trump’s National Security Council with several other European governments, said sources who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private correspondence.
The full text of the letter: “Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for Nato than any other person since its founding, and now, Nato should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT” BLOOMBERG
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