US President Donald Trump has ordered his special forces commanders to draw up a plan to invade Greenland, but is facing pushback, a report said.
The move follows days of threats to invade the Arctic country, as well as ideas of diplomatic proposals and a business transaction to 'buy' Greenland from Denmark.
According to a Daily Mail report, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) have been tasked with drafting an invasion plan.
However, they have been resisting the move for two major reasons—that it was illegal and that it would not get congressional approval.
They even reportedly tried to distract Trump by bringing up other, less controversial issues at hand, such as intercepting Russian dark fleet ships and launching a strike on Iran, where over 100 people have been killed in anti-regime protests.
Officials claimed that the Trump administration was looking to build on the successful capture of Venezuela by invading Greenland as well, and was also limited by time—before the mid-term elections later this year, after which Congress control might go to the Democrats.
The report also cites analysts, who predict that the worst-case scenario of the Greenland invasion would be the breakdown of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) itself.
The move to acquire Nuuk using military or political force could also lead to a 'compromise scenario', in which Denmark would be forced to legally give the US full military access to Greenland and simultaneously deny access to Russia and China.
Other ideas to acquire Greenland
Apart from diplomatic agreements, the Trump administration has also considered paying between $10,000 and $100,000 per person in Greenland, in a bid to convince them to secede from Denmark and join the US.
Should this business transaction go through, it would reportedly cost approximately $5-6 billion, as Greenland's population is about 57,000.
However, both Nuuk and Copenhagen have repeatedly stated that Greenland would not become a part of the US.
"We don't want to be Americans," said the leaders of Greenland's five political parties said on Friday (local time), as per an AFP report.
"No more pressure. No more hints. No more fantasies about annexation," Nielsen wrote in a Facebook post on January 3 after Trump had told reporters that the US needed to acquire Greenland for national security purposes.