Trump edition: Annexing Greenland, Signal-gate and inside the battle for America’s foreign policy
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You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's joinmidi.com. We need Greenland for national security and international security. So I think we'll go as far as we have to go. Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who's actually watching Europe today?

at the moment. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. At this point, I spent a lot of time with the president, and not once have I seen him do something that was mean or cruel. Dear President Trump, listen very carefully. Greenland has been part of the Danish kingdom for 800 years. We're not going to be defeated. We're not going to be humiliated.

We're only going to win, win, win. We're going to win, win, win. I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Battlelines Trump Edition. It's Friday the 28th of March 2025. Two weeks ago we reported on American airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. This week we learned that Donald Trump's cabinet planned those strikes on the unsecured signal messaging app and inadvertently invited a journalist to the group chat.

And by the time this podcast goes out, J.D. Vance, the vice president, will be landing at America's air base in northern Greenland. As Donald Trump says he will go as far as he has to to take control of the island, we ask what an American annexation means not only for Denmark and Greenland, but the wider Arctic.

But first, back to Signalgate. If you haven't read the full exchange posted on The Atlantic, now is a good time to do so. There are two stories here. One is the simple fact of the security breach. How serious is it that top officials were using their personal smartphones to plan sensitive operations? But the second part of the story is what was said in that chat.

It was a rare fly-on-the-wall moment, an opportunity to eavesdrop on America's top national security officials as they made extremely sensitive decisions. What does the leaked conversation say about what they really think, their way of working and the team dynamics between some of the most powerful individuals in the world? Well, to answer the first question, I turn to David Blair, our Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator, who spent eight years in the British Foreign Office and 10 Downing Street.

I asked him what his reaction was to the news that an imminent military operation had been organised on Signal. I was astonished, gobsmacked, struck dumb with surprise. It's awful, it's horrifying and it's astonishing that they could have discussed this kind of matter on a commercially available instant messaging service. It's just astonishing. There are certain facilities that all governments have

sensitive conversations and our government has them as many others do and in general terms there are special rooms you go to one of these rooms the room looks rather like a studio rather like this one actually it's soundproof it's often although not always below ground level it probably has no windows and the iron rule which everyone must obey is that you drop your phones off outside the door before you go in

to eliminate any risk of exactly what you've just been describing and I just find it astonishing.

that they would have talked about or discussed anything like this using their smartphones at all. It's incredible. Well, that's David Blair's fairly unequivocal reaction to the use of a smartphone in planning military operations. But what about the actual content of the chat? What does that tell us about the participants in this conversation? A few things leap out. J.D. Vance, the vice president, appeared to be the only naysayer opposed to bombing Yemen. But

his objection seemed to be largely that Europe might benefit. That's caused consternation on this side of the Atlantic. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz talked him round, but only by promising to make Europe and Egypt pay later. And what should we make of Mr Waltz's direct rejection of Mr Vance's claim that the Suez Canal handles more European than American trade? Does that indicate a fissure at the heart of the Trump administration?

Joining me to discuss all this is Kurt Mills, executive editor at the magazine American Conservative. Kurt, welcome to Battlelines. Could you begin by telling us a bit about yourself and about American Conservative?

We're a magazine that was founded here in Washington, D.C. in 2002, principally by conservatives and friends against the Iraq war. Those ideas were very peripheral to the Republican discussion back in the 2000s. And as Trump has transmogrified discussion of foreign policy on the right,

much more in vogue. I've done a lot of foreign policy and campaign coverage in my years as a journalist, definitely a bull market for both with the Trump show back in full force, especially

This week with everything that's going on with the NSA and France. I really wanted to ask you a little bit more about what you just said. So on the American Conservative X feed, founded on foreign policy restraint, trade realism and migration sanity in 2002. I mean, it says in your Wikipedia page that, as you said, this is peripheral for a long time. But do you feel like the ideas that the American Conservative magazine has explored or promoted have changed?

Do you take a certain amount of credit for reshaping the Republican Party's views as it is today? Yeah, I mean, I think certainly it's very arguable that Vice President J.D. Vance basically launched his political career in our pages. His Hillbilly Alligator book was positively reviewed and then it kind of went viral from there back in 16. I don't want to overstate the importance of

our magazine, but I don't want to understate the importance of magazines writ large within the United States still. Media is a weird thing. It's precarious business, as you're aware. But I think especially if you go back 25 years, I'm not sure stuff like the Bush administration, the Iraq war, etc. really happens without the weekly standard of the National Review. In a lot of ways, I'm not sure what is changing on the right right now happens without the American conservative. Which puts you in a really interesting position. And I'm really hoping you're going to be able to explain

The dynamics inside this administration in that case. And let's move on to the real meat of the week. So I think last week we did a piece about America bombing Yemen and what that meant and the messages there. We spoke to a very interesting Yemeni academic. This week, we find out that Donald Trump's cabinet were basically planning those strikes on an unsecured commercial messaging app that they'd invited people.

a journalist to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. It's a remarkable exchange. What were your first thoughts when you saw this story and you read those messages? Yeah, I mean, I guess I was pretty anchored on the identity of the journalist himself. First of all, there's the operations. The fact that this could even occur is pretty astonishing and I think speaks poorly of the

The person who invited him, which apparently is either the National Security Advisor Michael Waltz or a principal attache for Mr. Waltz. But secondly, Jeffrey Goldberg is an avatar of neoconservative foreign policy and seemingly anathema to this administration. The line from Waltz and the administration is just random. Waltz doesn't know Goldberg. It doesn't make any sense. Of all the numbers that pop up, it was the editor of The Atlantic.

implies direct contact, perhaps quite recently between either the NSA or somebody who works for the NSA that's quite high up. And it's a mess for them. And the president, I really should say, is faced with two real choices, which is number one,

We're going to lump it and we're going to stand by our team. We want to make a statement that this is not a redux of Trump one. We're not going to be lopping heads off every day. And I think there's a certain moral political logic to that. But number two, I think it's pretty clear that the locus and fault here lies with the NSA. And so it seems pretty clean to replace him, especially because his position is not Senate confirmed. It's not exactly like Trump hasn't gotten rid of NSA before. He's got rid of three.

And I think the flip side to not having a personnel carousel, so to speak, is that Trump's reputation

early in this administration as reformed and far more competent than the first administration. I mean, the flavor is just very different, is now an open question because of the scandal. I suppose the other person who's really got a lot to answer for is Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, because we can see from the messages that have, you know, now the Atlantic have published the full chat, we can see that he was putting in very sensitive comments

clearly classified military attack plans before they were carried out into this open source chat. Do you think he's going to survive this? My instinct is that he will. I think he's in less. He didn't assemble the chat, right? And he didn't invite the journalist. So those strike me as two major differences. You know, I don't believe the Trump administration is alone using this app. I believe there had been Biden administration officials who also had

engaged in similar practices, I don't know, but they certainly didn't invite the editor of an ideologically opposed magazine to the chat. So I think it's just focused around that. Yes, the Pentagon is who oversees the strikes. The NSC speaks with the president.

And it was the president's decision to strike the Houthis and Waltz's president's man. And this is how he chose to coordinate it. If the NSA has the informator to get those people into a chat room and discuss it, it is assumed that he speaks for the administration. I think Heggen

Hegseth sharing it in that manner, in that context, while probably not ideal, he's less the origin of the problem than the National Security Council's office. We've talked a lot about the security breach. That's one issue. The other issue, which I thought was really illuminating, is what this discussion that they thought was private, kind of being able to eavesdrop on them, what it tells us about them and the dynamics between them.

And I was wondering if we could start really with JD Vance, because this is something that's really jumped out to people on this side of the Atlantic, which is this kind of animus towards you. He seems to be the guy, and correct me if I'm wrong, he seems to be the sole voice pushing back against this idea. Everyone else in the chat seems to be assuming that the strikes are going to happen. Suddenly JD pops up and says, I think we're making a mistake.

3% of US trade runs through the Suez, 40% of European trade does. There's a real risk the public doesn't understand this or why it's necessary. The strongest reason to do this, as Pote said, is to send a message. I'm not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message in Europe right now. There's a further risk, he's adding on another risk here, that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices.

I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself, but there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is. What does that say to you about JD Vance? And am I right in thinking that he is, in a way, an outlier?

Sure. I don't know if it's established that he's an outlier in comparison to Trump. Trump has said negative things about striking Yemen in the past. So Trump is somewhat occupying two places at once. But it's very clear that Vance perhaps doesn't believe in the course the administration took, nor do I, for what it's worth. And I think it's like any negotiation. If you walk into a room, anyone who's ever worked in any organization, and they know they're incredibly algorithmic,

outgunned. It's not like you're going to fully articulate your position, but seeking delay is a pretty savvy approach. And that's obviously what he tried to do there, in my opinion. You say you shared his view of it not being a good idea. Can you just lay out why? I generally think that presidents only can do a few things. Anytime that you're taking life and intervening in foreign conflicts, you know, it winds up

being all you're really talking about, right? I think Bush learned this with Iraq. Did he run for president in 2000 to invade Iraq? Well, some people think he did, but I think there's the evidence that he didn't, but it's all his presidency was defined by. Obama, you know, I think he thought healthcare reform would be one facet, not the whole thing. Second term Iran deal, I think he really believed in that, but it became a major use of political capital.

And so there was always a risk. I think people kind of glaze over drone strikes on the Middle East at this point. Like, who cares? Nothing will ever happen. But occasionally stuff happens. And the Houthis have shown themselves actually to be a pretty resilient fighting force. They've been bombed into resilience and defiance for the last 10 years. And I think Vance sort of gets at that, is that these airstrikes weren't really about open sea lanes.

They weren't about open sea lanes for the United States. The amount of trade that goes in there that affects the Americans is very limited. It affects the Chinese and the Europeans far more. The cause's belly for the Houthis ramping it up again was not to slow down trade. It was to repudiate what they saw as the breaking of the ceasefire at that point by the Israelis.

What struck me about this conversation is we had an extremely good Yemeni academic on last week to talk about this. And his feeling was that the real point here was to send a message to Iran. Waltz says that. He's like, Americans don't understand why we're doing this. And so, like, we just need to blame Biden and we need to blame Iran. You know, Waltz is a Republican hardliner. And for a lot of old guard neocon Republican hardliners, owning the Democrats and taking it to the Iranians is kind of the whole enchilada.

This is what's being picked up in London, is that his objection to dropping bombs on a foreign country and killing people is not about whether it will work or not else. It seems to be that the Europeans might benefit. That seems to be his main objection. Do you think he has a problem with Europe? Why isn't he saying something like the Chinese might benefit because their trade goes through this, they should be doing this? I think they are trying to get a major ceasefire in Russia-Ukraine.

And Vance himself has used either a lot of political capital or assumed the portfolio as bad cop on the Russia-Ukraine issue and European issues writ large. And so I think he has put his neck out saying a lot of things about how the Europeans aren't pulling their weight, which I think is imminently fair. And then meanwhile, the U.S. military-industrial complex again gears up to do another campaign

airstrike series that arguably economically benefits the Europeans far more than the Americans. I think that's kind of what he was getting at. As to his generalized opinion about Europe,

What you see is what you get. He has shown a consistent concern about civilizations that he views as not vibrant, not growing, not spiritual, not believing in themselves. And so, yeah, like a U.S. defense protectorate with a low birth rate is probably not J.D. Vance's favorite place on the planet. But I don't think J.D. Vance gets up in the morning thinking about, oh, how can I screw over the Germans? I think that's a little bit infantile.

Can we talk about the other side of this argument? We talked about J.D. Vance, about his message, about why you think he's under money. The other thing, there is pushback in the conversation. He seems to know that he's in the minority here. The pushback, it comes mostly from Pete Hegseth and from Michael Waltz. One of the arguments they both make is, look, the Europeans are freeloading, so on and so forth. But the fact of the matter is, it's only the United States that can do this job.

We're going to have to do it, whether it's now or in a month. It's only the United States with the firepower and the capability on the planet that can do this job. So they seem quite coordinated in that. And the second thing, and this is from Michael Walsh, and I'd be interested in your response, given what you've just said about him. He then pushes back on a trade thing. He says, look, the figures we have are 15% of global and 30% of container trade.

going through the Suez. It's difficult to break that down to US specific because much of the container either going through the Red Sea still or around the Cape of Good Hope is components going to Europe that turns into manufactured goods for translated trade to the US. So he seems to be pushing back on this idea of you can distinguish between

you know, what's good for Europe and what's good for America. And he seems to be cleaving to this idea that, look, what's good for them is good for all of us. Does this point to a difference between the Mike Waltz and the Vancean worldviews inside the administration? Obviously, yeah, obviously. I mean, Waltz is a near unreconstructed neoconservative.

I think he had shown a little more nuance in public, bit his tongue, it seems, on Russia-Ukraine. This is the closest we have to a Bolton figure, a McMaster figure, somebody who is a hawkish outlier and driver of policies that might not be happening if you weren't there. It is there for the world to read, unfortunately. What do you mean by neocons? And what's the opposite of that? Is the opposite of that a restrainer?

Sure. Okay. He comes out of a wing of the party that doesn't really have a problem with the George W. Bush administration. A person who is flagged in that chat as speaking for Waltz is somebody who works with

not only vice president cheney as michael waltz did in the bush administration worked with paul bremer who was remember the viceroy who ruled over iraq for the americans from 03 to 04. if these guys aren't neocons i'm not sure who is it is the

most expeditionary expansionist view of what they'd be doing on the world station I can basically imagine and I do not think it is the stuff of crank conspiracies to think that these guys given the opportunity the neoconservative wing wanted to take out Iran

Now, they'll say that they want to do targeted airstrikes. They'll say that it won't be like Iraq. They'll say that's a canard. But fundamentally, this is a set of people that don't think the Iraq war was that big of a deal. And I just disagree. I really want to come to this point, actually, because I've been doing a lot of reporting about Iran. Over the weekend, Steve Witkoff, who was also on the chat...

who is the special envoy to the Middle East. He was speaking to Tucker Carlson in a very long interview over the weekend. Tucker asked him about talking to Iran. And he said something, you might call it utopian or a bit naive. He talked about, look, we can bring Iran in from the cold. We can have a wonderful, peaceful Middle East. All we want to do is talk to them about, and of course I'm paraphrasing. So my understanding of the message was like,

We want to talk to them. We want to do a deal. And it sounded almost like he would consider a version of the Obama era JCPOA. That's what he said. Give us the reassurances that we don't have to worry about weaponization. The implication was we can get back to a normalization of relations. But then Mike Waltz, I'm not sure which... He spoke about complete dismantlement of the program on one of the Sunday shows. I believe it was Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. Exactly. Which side do you think has the upper hand?

in that debate, in that case, because it seems like there really is an ideological split in the administration. And the question, I suppose, is which side of that has President Trump's ear? I think it's a close-held thing. I think that basically it looks like this. I would suspect someone like Vance,

It's clear to someone like Wyckoff, I think it's clear that other people who are interlocutors with the administration, like Tucker Carlson, frankly, I mean, there's two powerful people with Trump that are having that conversation, view Iran as not a country that the United States should attempt to install regime change upon. And that's their view. I think Trump's own instincts over the years have shown that he had personal animosity towards Obama.

that he didn't trust maybe any president other than himself to negotiate a deal. Now, you could say that destroys U.S. credibility between presidents.

It's not registering for Mr. Trump, it seems. He didn't like the way Obama negotiated it and also doesn't like historically Mr. Obama. And so he wants to negotiate his own deal. I think the hawk position is basically what I am maligning, which is an attempt to do regime change either through targeted airstrikes or pressuring on the government with U.S. resources or outright invasion. And I think the argument that they are trying to slip in there is,

Well, Mr. Trump, you can't do what you do with Iran. That's what Obama did. And so Obama bad. You can't do this. Ergo, you need to do what we want. Of course, fill in the blank. That's, of course, what George W. Bush probably would have done if he had had his druthers in 04-05. But the argument often doesn't get that far. And it's, you know, I think it's a sort of blitzkrieg carpet bomb rhetorical approach.

I think it's worth mentioning at this point in the conversation that we've seen reports from open source intelligence groups, credible ones, that America is currently deploying B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia. These are the bombers that would have to carry the enormous six meter bomb that has been built specifically to hit Iranian underground nuclear facilities.

Do you think we're close to a strike on Iran? I think the Israelis are pushing for it. I think the Israelis will explore doing it themselves if we don't. But I think the approach of the Netanyahu government is to push for the U.S. to do it.

themselves or in coordination with Jerusalem over the next three to six months. Can I get a broader picture of what you think this American administration's outlook on the world is if it's turning away from neoconism? No, I mean, I think it's a nationalistic administration. And I think Trump's own impulses are pretty clear. He wants dominion in the Americas, a sort of return to where the country might have been in the 19th century, and is less concerned about the sort of colonial neoconservative projects that we've been involved with

at least the last few decades. I think that's where he's at. But, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. And, you know, he's inheriting a party with a lot of baggage and tendencies for all his talents. He hasn't spent a life immersed in politics. And, you know, he's sort of navigating as he goes.

Do you think he's serious about Panama and annexing Greenland and Canada? The Greenland thing is pretty serious. I think the Panama thing will be negotiated. And Canada? I think the Canada thing seems far from occurring. But, I mean, again, people act like this is insane, but Thomas Jefferson wanted to annex Canada, so it's just sort of a revival of a centuries-old conversation. And what would your advice then be as someone who, you know these guys, you know the philosophies they work by,

What would your advice be to American allies, people sitting in London or allies in Rome or Germany or Japan, Israel, kind of looking at what's happening, feeling a bit alarmed? What would you say to them? I think it's case by case. I'm not sure the Japanese are that disquieted by what they're seeing. I mean, I think you see an administration that has continued a hawkish line on China, not necessarily one that wants to go to war.

I think the British, I think Starmer is actually handling the relationship with Trump remarkably well. I think it's very clear that even if we go back to the Democrats in '28, which of course is no fait accompli, you now have a political party in the United States that is not committed to ideological projects that are far from US borders. And I think that's what Ukraine is. And I think the Middle East stuff is fast emerging, but I think you're seeing a new consensus on the right against doing that as well. Okay, Milos, thank you very much.

After the break, why Donald Trump's plans to annex Greenland have sent shockwaves not only through Denmark, but all of Scandinavia. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment.

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Welcome back. Signalgate is not going to be the last we hear of J.D. Vance this week. When this podcast goes out, the vice president will be arriving at the Pitufik Space Base in northern Greenland, an American base on the self-ruling Danish Kingdom Arctic Island that Donald Trump has vowed to annex to the United States.

It's a visit widely seen as reinforcing America's intention to seize control of the island and Donald Trump said on Thursday that he will go as far as he has to to achieve that aim. Back in January Anders Vistason, an MEP from the right-wing populist Danish People's Party, had this message for Mr Trump: Dear President Trump, listen very carefully.

Mr. Vistason's reaction was notable partly because he is a self-described national conservative. In other words, a natural political ally of Donald Trump and Mr. Vance and the MAGA movement.

Well, Mr. Vistersen is joining me now. So I asked him first what he felt of J.D. Vance's visit and also whether he thinks Greenland could split the international populist right-wing movement. Of course it's an offence to Denmark and to Greenland that it's being carried out, but it's also a humiliation for American diplomacy. We saw that J.D. Vance's wife had to scale back her visit. Nobody wanted to receive her, neither a noob at the dog's late race in the end. So...

I think it's a little bit of a public humiliation for the Americans that they wanted to go there sending up the Hercules planes with armored vehicles, security guards and so on and had to cancel all the public events in the end.

So now it ended up being just a visit at a US military installation in Greenland and no public exposure whatsoever to the Greenlandic people. And I think it also showed quite clearly that they are not really welcoming Greenland from the political or the public point of view. You're obviously, I mean, you don't represent the government. You're from a fairly small right-wing party, I think it's fair to say.

But nonetheless, I'm quite interested in your take on how this is going down generally in Denmark amongst Danish people. I think generally most Danes are very upset by this, both by the sort of attacks on the Kingdom of Denmark. When we talk about the Kingdom of Denmark, we talk about the three parts, Denmark, the Ferry Islands and Greenland. So it's this configuration of nations within one realm. So there is a lot of anger, a lot of sentiment, but we don't understand why the Americans are doing this. They're official citizens.

Explanation doesn't make any sense. They have had military presence in Greenland since the German occupation in 1940. They have been able to do the mineral deals that they wanted to do. Greenland is open for business, but nobody wants to mine up there because it's so far not a viable venture economically.

But also we are seeing now for the first time since the Second World War that Danes are turning against the idea that the U.S. is the largest security guarantor of Denmark. You know, we are one of the founding members of NATO. We have been a very strong ally when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan. We have had higher casualties per quarter.

capital than even the US had itself in those wars so there is a lot of resentment from Danes generally that the events have said that Denmark have been a poor ally and a bad ally to the Americans that's certainly not where we are seeing it The bottom line is it sounds like Danes

think the Americans are serious about this? Yeah, I think there's a realization that has come to a different degree to different people. But nowadays, most of the political establishment thinks that the Americans are very serious about this. We're also seeing that Trump is now threatening. He did his customs penalties to the EU now on cars.

He's threatening the pharmaceutical industry next. And pharmaceutical is one of the major industries in Denmark and one of the major Danish exports to the US. So we're seeing that in that context. I want to start getting into the implications for right-wing politics. I mean, your party, the Danish People's Party, is called populist right, right-wing, conservative. Some people would call it far. What would you call yourselves? We define it normally as national conservative, social conservative. National conservative, social conservative.

But you are part of the Patriots of Europe group in the European Parliament. You're the chief whip of that group. That includes people like National Rally, like Victor Orban's Fidesz, who are really big fans of Donald Trump, of MAGA, of the whole movement.

I'm just interested in what this does to you. Were you a fan of Donald Trump up to this point? Does this grab for Greenland change your feelings about what's going on in America? Traditionally, we've always been a transatlantic party in the Danish People's Party. We have been great and vocal supporters of NATO. But traditionally, we have always felt a bigger kinship with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party in the U.S. party system.

I would say I think I always felt more conflicted on Donald Trump for several reasons. One is free trade. We are a free trade party. So we don't really like the idea of closing down economies with tariffs. But of course, there are elements on Trump's agenda where we think it's relevant to have a correction of society. So the way I used to put it in Denmark is I think that Trump sometimes diagnosed the right disease, but have the wrong treatment.

So when it comes to issues like vocism and illegal migration, we agree it's a problem, also a problem in Denmark and Europe. But we don't always think that Trump is doing it in the right way. I think he's making more pushback towards common sense solution and support for them.

And I actually think the same when it comes to not only Greenland, but also this trade war with Europe. I see China as the primary threat, if we look on this decade, for Western Europe, for Europe in general, for the US. And what is happening now is that the American behavior is pushing Europe towards China. And I think that's going to be one of the major strategic areas of this time we are living in.

I'm wondering if you think Greenland might become another issue that kind of splits the European, the populist right, the national conservative, this kind of grouping of which you're a part because, you know, it's already been split by Ukraine in a sense. On the one hand, you have the likes of...

Giorgio Maloney in Italy and the Polish Peace and Justice Party, very pro-Ukraine, very much in favor of military support and so on. Your allies in the European Parliament, Viktor Orban, Fido, is obviously much more lukewarm on that. Could Greenland become another issue like that? I think to a certain degree that is an analysis that has been worn out a bit. I think the problem in Europe when it comes to foreign affairs is more a geographical than left and right issue.

When we look at the European continent and look and for instance, the defining question right now, of course, is Russia and Ukraine, where I see a real will to defend Ukraine and ramp up spending for military purposes. It's in Northern Europe. It's defined by the Nordic countries, by Poland, to a certain extent now by Germany and the Netherlands and the UK.

And when we look further down, we have a central and Eastern European bloc who is a lot more lukewarm with Orbán being the most vocal voice. But if we look at the elections in Romania, who sits in the ECR group, in the group with the Polish PIS, it's a different story. And when we look to the more Latin Europe, when we look to France, when we look to Spain, when we look to Italy, I think it's more rhetoric than action when it comes to Ukraine.

One fact that is astonishing if you're Danish is that the six million Danish people have contributed more to Ukraine's defense than France, Italy and Spain combined. Up to a few months ago, we actually had to contribute twice as much in military aid as the second, third and fourth largest economy in Europe.

And I think it maybe goes to show a little bit that much of the sentiment coming out of the palace should maybe be backed with action, not just high-steam rhetoric. This is really interesting. You sit with Fidesz in the European Parliament, but you seem to have a completely different view of the Ukraine issue from them. No, I think what we have in the Patriot is a very strong belief that foreign affairs is a domestic issue, is a national issue, national competence. And I realize maybe more than...

federalist forces in the European Union, that there are huge gaps in the foreign affairs outlook. I don't share Viktor Bens view on Russia, but I understand where it comes from. And I can see that it's shared not only by my colleagues in the Patriots from that area of the world, but also from other parties in government from Slovakia. We probably see it in the Czech Republic also after the election in Romania.

Romania after the election in Bulgaria and so on. So I think we have a more realistic prospects of what I'll be able to unite when it comes to foreign affairs in Europe. Some people have characterized, and certainly some Americans I've been speaking to recently on that part of the political spectrum, have kind of characterized

Donald Trump's victory as not only a sign of a shift in American politics, but a sign of a general shift globally towards that kind of conservatism. And I suppose people would put in people like you, people like Nigel Farage and the reform in Britain, all of these people together as a broad movement, a broad alliance. And yet Greenland seems to show that that's going to be

pretty difficult that there are big contradictions and the other thing I've noticed here I don't know what you make of this that some of the people on our very you know real brexity right wing people like Daniel Hannan and Douglas Murray I'm not sure if those names mean anything to you I was a colleague of Hannan's for some years in the European Parliament when we were in the ECR group so yeah I know him so I'm suddenly seeing him saying you know

reacting to what's coming out of America with a kind of shock and horror, and he's sounding more European than he has in years. First of all, because I think there are several layers to what you're asking. One is, I think the sort of populist right in the US is very busy saying, we invented this. The most stupefying thing I was asked once by a Danish journalist was, is Jet Wilders, is he following in Donald Trump's footstep?

You know, Geert Wilders founded the Freedom Party while Donald Trump was still a Democratic donor and entrepreneur in New York.

So I think in the European right in general, we resent this idea that the Americans had to come and teach us how to do this. I think many of us believe these things before Donald Trump even knew what migration was. You know, certainly my own party is celebrating its 30th birthday this year. But this has sort of been the sentiment from the people around the MAGA movement in the U.S. I think in the broad strokes, of course, there are similarities in what's driving the public interest.

discontent with what we can call mainstream parties or the parties have been in government since maybe, let's say, since the Second World War. Social democratic on the one side, conservatives on the other side. And that has been what we would say lack of concern in these political elites of questions like mass migration, illegal migration, this idea that you can, to a very large extent, disfranchise the working class, what we're seeing also as a common denominator in all these countries.

are that more and more blue-collar jobs are going to the popular right, especially from social democratic parties, and traditionally value-oriented right-wing voters are voting for parties to the right. So I think you can see commonalities in that, but being a patriot, being a national-oriented politician also means that your nation comes first. So in that sense, there is a stopping clause on how long you can draw these comparisons.

The other hand is the idea that the Social Democrats of Europe, Labour parties, whatever you want to call them, are very united, I think is a little bit oversold. The same with the Christian Democrats. I can find people in the EPP group in the European Parliament who is more to the right than I am. I can also find people in the EPP party who is more to the left than the Danish Social Democrats.

So I think that there is a tendency, journalistic tendency, to oversell the disagreements within this movement. I think it's just as coherent as you would find within the EPP or liberal socialists. Do you view Donald Trump and J.D. Vance as allies or adversaries? For us, the third country, I think that they're taking America in the wrong direction. So I don't see them as a natural ally, but I don't really need to because we don't have any format where we have to sit with them.

We do, unfortunately, in the European Parliament, where I'm forced to be situated as long as Denmark is part of that configuration. I don't have the need to go to the US to be a poster boy for the mega movement. I try to put it in the way where I say that I don't think the European right should turn into a mouthpiece of the mega movement in the US. I think we should defend European interests as we see them. And that is also what I see as a chief whip when I do the voting list, that on most issues, we find a united common line. Anders Vistisian, thank you very much for joining us.

Well, the question of Greenland is sending shockwaves well beyond Denmark and Greenland itself. It has implications for all of the Nordic states and indeed the rest of the Arctic Circle. Donald Trump says that he needs the island for American security. So ask Charlie Solonius Pasternak, the CEO of the Helsinki-based think tank Nordic West Office, just what security reasons Mr Trump is talking about.

If I were being very cynical, I'd probably say his own or his friend's financial security.

There is a general argument that NATO as a whole benefits from U.S. presence, now as Space Force, but during the Cold War, early warning, radar systems, things like that from Greenland because of just geography and where Soviet-era missiles and bombers would come. So there's an old argument for this from a collective security point of view. That, just because of changes in technology, etc.,

There is no other reason. If Denmark were threatening to kick the Americans out from Greenland, then maybe there could be an argument that this has a marginal impact on space and other security issues. But as it stands, I might be tempted to say that President Trump is speaking some bunk here. You're in Finland. You work in Finland. You're Finnish.

Finland is one of the eight Arctic states. The others are Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and the United States, all on this thing called the Arctic Council. Where does this sudden American interest in Greenland fit in the broader Arctic context? And does it have anything to do with the melting ice cap, the Russian northern sea route, and things like that?

It is certainly all connected. So the Arctic Council was originally founded to discuss environmental, indigenous rights, lots of things, but non-security. Security was explicitly left out of it. And there was this concept, which some may still cling to, maybe up to the past few months, of Arctic exceptionalism, where kind of geopolitical tensions or crises would

be left out of the Arctic, as if it was a completely separate part of the planet. That's obviously not the case. It hasn't been the case for some time. Certainly, Greenland is viewed by most to have a number of resources below the melting ice bed that lays on top of it.

and the whole Arctic region just because of expectations regarding transit times from Asia through to Europe. There's a whole new set of economic interests. And quite frequently, as we know from history, as soon as you start having economic interests, it's easy for great powers to argue this is now a national security interest.

And this is the path we're seeing, among others, China probably travel, saying we're a near Arctic state. We have economic, first scientific research, then economic and then security interests. Russia clearly has some. It has a lot of Arctic territory. It is prepared for these sea transit routes to open up.

So one might say the great Arctic game is genuinely heating up in concert with the heating up of the planet. How significant is J.D. Vance's visit to Greenland? I would say, I mean, today, since we are speaking on Thursday, this podcast will go out on Friday. It started off...

He was going to be seeing a dog sled race and going around Newark and talking to people. It seems to have been scaled back a bit. What do you make of that? Well, quite clearly, as has been reported, really no one wanted to meet with the Vances or have anything to do with U.S. officials.

Which is quite unusual. I think in most places previously, you know, when he was vice president, Joe Biden came to Finland. People tend to be welcoming and seeing we should probably be welcoming to a global superpower, especially if we're allies in this case. It just speaks volumes about how the Trump administration is treating specifically Greenland and Denmark, but more broadly allies,

I understand very well locals as well as Danish politicians saying this is a provocation. There's no need for J.D. Vance as the vice president to make a trip to visit U.S. troops in Greenland right now and get a briefing other than to try to both before the trip, which he did on a video yesterday, and then probably I would expect after the trip, try to

emphasize this, you know, the US must have needs Greenland really doesn't. But his visit seems to simply be an effort at public diplomacy arm twisting. As I mentioned earlier, Donald Trump said today, we'll go as far as we have to go to get Greenland. If America decided to just take it, is there anything Denmark, the Nordic states, the rest of NATO could do to resist it?

In effect, no. The U.S. has, again, a base there. It could, in a way, take a page from the playbook Russia used in 2014 regarding Crimea, that is, first expand the presence at the base referring to some security or other concerns, and then just

fly a bunch, you know, airborne or other forces there. No, there's really nothing that could be done at that point. It would seem kind of counterproductive. Although I would imagine there are some locals who might take out their hunting rifles simply to make a point.

What would happen thereafter? I think we're already in unprecedented territory. It would seem that negotiations would obviously be the only way. It seems to me impossible to see some sort of a European or other coalition of the willing expeditionary force to go there, as some have suggested. So, in effect, the U.S. could do as it wanted, but

Those actions, however, would have catastrophic global security repercussions. Clearly, a significant impact on transatlantic security in NATO. But I'm also certain that it would be seen as a green light to China to think about Taiwan. It would, in effect, make it perfectly acceptable what Russia is doing from an American administration point of view. And finally, it would clearly make the

Asian allies of the United States think twice about what they should or should not do and what kind of weapon systems they might need to consider. So it would have unforeseen but great consequences if the US were to do that. One of the big stories this week is obviously the signal gate. Setting aside the security breach, which is one issue, one of the things that certainly caught the eyes of us in this newsroom in London, and I think probably across the rest of Europe, was that

JD Vance was the one voice who seemed to be urging caution about bombing Yemen, but his reason for urging caution was

was really because the Europeans might benefit. And it's been taken in some quarters as a sign of a kind of an antipathy towards Europe. Has that been noticed in Finland or in the Nordics in general? And what do you make of it? Certainly, Vance's comments were in line with and reflected what we've heard before, Munich Security Conference. Some listeners may remember that particular speech. How has it been reflected in

There have been slightly different perspectives depending on which Nordic country one is talking about. But if I think about Finland, the senior security policy leadership, president, defense minister, foreign minister, prime minister,

have all clearly adopted a keep calm and just continue doing stuff. The president the other day said, you know, there's no need to be concerned or react to every sentence that comes out of the White House, which I get is a concerted effort to stay below the radar screen.

Obviously, no one really wants to have Donald Trump's kind of eye of mortar now focus on them. So it's easier simply to say relations are functional. The militaries, Finland and Sweden, continue to cooperate bilaterally and within NATO. You know, all is good. Hoping this all goes away. I am one of the security policy researchers, analyst community, who've said that, of course, there's always a gap between what

the security policy leadership must do and say to maintain diplomatic and other relations, and what reality is observed. But that gap cannot kind of expand to be too wide. So there are increasing voices saying, we can see...

Exceptional historic things are being said and suggested by the U.S. leadership, such as maybe thinking about military force against Denmark or Greenland. At some point, you can't just say we're doing well bilaterally. It's kind of like saying our house is OK. It's not on fire, but the rest of the village is.

Let's say that the war in Ukraine ends on Russian terms, so on and so forth, and Russia remains genuinely is serious in testing, flexing its muscles in the Baltic, in the Nordic area, in the Arctic. If you were a Finnish general, setting aside the scenario of a full scale conventional invasion, like we saw in Ukraine in 2022,

Where would Finland expect to be tested? Where might that come? If we're specifically thinking about Finland, if your purpose is truly to test Article 5, but initially make it deniable or kind of small, yeah, taking even one or two islands kind of in the Bay of Finland close by and seeing is anyone going to do about it.

That is viewed as the most likely. So taking an island or some, you know, territory, a little village and seeing, is anyone going to start a war because of it? Not the across-the-board invasion, which of course would be much easier to detect. What the Finns are going to do about it is quite clear. Whether or not, and I suspect the Swedes and the Norwegians...

What would the Finns do about it? The short version is a partial mobilization to kick them out immediately. We've seen in Bucha and elsewhere what happens if you leave your civilians in Russian hands. I'm interested in whether there's a Finnish assessment of

how long we've got, you say the war ends, say it ends with a pro-Russian settlement, which looks like what the Americans are pushing for. How long have we got after that before we're at this point where the Russians are ready to try a stunt like that in Finland or elsewhere? I would look at it less from a Western, when is the force ready assessment perspective. If we look at Ukraine, that doesn't seem to have been Russia's

kind of mode of approaching things. They have been perfectly happy doing things with units that are in no readiness at all, in fact. What I think is a better lens is to say, if you're sitting in the Kremlin and you quite clearly have a U.S. administration that has, through their own actions and words, put into question alliance commitments...

quite willing to directly or indirectly do things that benefit and increase the likelihood that Russia achieves its European security goals, why would you wait?

for another administration. Would you not then rather say, well, the military might not be quite as reconstituted as we wanted, but it has a lot of fighting experience, we have a wartime economy, the people are behind us, and we have a person in the White House, an administration that clearly is doing everything to avoid a conflict and war with us. Why not do it right now? Does Greenland fit into that jigsaw?

From a geopolitical perspective, it could, but in a potentially unexpected way. Donald Trump seems to want Canada, Greenland for kind of other historical purposes. But if he, as he has just recently said, effectively is ready to use military force to gain it, it then legitimizes not only Russia's actions in Ukraine,

but de facto would legitimize Russia's actions elsewhere, while at the same time having a catastrophic impact on NATO, alliance cohesion, transatlantic security relations. So in that perspective, Trump is, if he keeps on going in the path he has suggested regarding Greenland, would make it considerably easier for Russia just to say,

We have been talking about effectively reintegrating territories of the former Soviet Union, but more importantly, from a Finnish perspective, Tsarist Russia into Russia again. Now is our opportunity because effectively Donald Trump has given us this opportunity. In that way, Greenland certainly fits into this geopolitical puzzle. Charlie, thank you very much for joining us. That's all for Battle Lions this week. We'll be back on Monday. Until then, goodbye.

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