Sir Keir Starmer is considering sending British troops to Greenland as Donald Trump’s rhetoric over snatching the Danish territory continues to ratchet up.
It comes just days after the prime minister committed to sending troops into Ukraine as the core of the coalition of the willing to guarantee the peace, with former senior military top brass questioning whether the UK has enough personnel.
The revelation comes after former Obama assistant secretary of state Frank Rose told The Independent that Mr Trump’s actions threaten to undermine US defence in the region and lead to allies turning on him.
President Trump has insisted he wants control over Greenland and has not ruled out the prospect of using military force to seize the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander insisted that discussions about securing the High North against Russia and China were part of Nato’s “business as usual” rather than a response to the US military threat.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch lambasted the discussions, warning that there is a danger the Nato alliance could collapse and arguing that Greenland is a “second-order issue”.
She told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “Right now, what I am really concerned about is if there is going to be a Nato. We need to keep America on side.”
Meanwhile, former UK ambassador to the US Lord Peter Mandelson insisted that he does not believe Mr Trump will send US troops to take control of Greenland, accusing critics of the US president of “wanting to clutch at their pearls” rather than face reality. However, the Labour peer was also critical of the prime minister, who sacked him as ambassador, for not producing the promised spending increase on defence.
The Telegraph reported that military chiefs are drawing up plans for a possible Nato mission to Greenland, which could involve British soldiers, warships and planes being deployed to the island.
Ms Alexander downplayed the suggestion, telling Ms Kuenssberg the report “possibly reads something more into business as usual discussions amongst Nato allies than there actually are”.
She said the UK agreed with President Trump that the Arctic Circle “is becoming an increasingly contested part of the world with the ambitions of [Vladimir] Putin and China”.
“Whilst we haven’t seen the appalling consequences in that part of the world that we’ve seen in Ukraine, it is really important that we do everything that we can with all of our Nato allies to ensure that we have an effective deterrent in that part of the globe against Putin.”
Mr Trump has said he wants to get control over Greenland, which has a strategic location and natural resources, and “if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way”.
But Lord Mandelson said he did not believe Mr Trump would use the military against a Nato ally.
“President Trump is not going to land on Greenland, take Greenland by force,” he said. “He’s not a fool. What’s going to happen is there’s going to be a lot of discussion, a lot of consultation, a lot of negotiation and at the end of the day, we are all going to have to wake up to the reality that the Arctic needs securing against China and Russia.
“And if you ask me who is going to lead in that effort to secure, we all know, don’t we, that it’s going to be the United States.”
He argued that Mr Trump “believes we live in a world of conflicts and hard power… and sometimes nettles need to be grasped. We have to understand that.”
He was also critical of Sir Keir over not matching his commitment with promised increases in defence spending.
“I’m sorry, but the money’s got to follow,” he said. “I think the principle [of extra defence spending] is accepted. I think that the funding is embraced, but I haven’t seen the financial plans. Not for the future, not in the way that they need to build up and unfold in the years to come.”
Downing Street sources noted that the prime minister shares President Trump’s view that Russia’s growing aggression in the High North must be deterred, and Euro-Atlantic security strengthened, and the UK takes the threats from Russia and China in the region “extremely seriously”.
They confirmed that “Nato discussions on reinforcing security in the region continue and we would never get ahead of those, but the UK is working with Nato allies to drive efforts to bolster Arctic deterrence and defence”.
Just last year, UK commandos took part in Exercise Joint Viking in Norway – one of Nato’s biggest High North drills in sub-zero temperatures– alongside 7,000 allied troops, Royal Navy patrol boats and RFA Lyme Bay.
This year, 1,500 Royal Marines will deploy for Exercise Cold Response across Norway, Finland and Sweden, training with allies to defend key terrain and demonstrate Nato unity.
But in the last week, senior retired military top brass have warned that the UK is overstretched even with Sir Keir’s commitment to Ukraine.
In a report for Policy Exchange, retired air marshal Edward Stringer warned that increased defence spending in the UK is being “eaten up by the Ministry of Defence [MoD]’s overdraft” with the UK’s military footprint shrinking at a critical moment.
His report, entitled “The Say-Do Gaps in Defence”, notes that the British army now has just 14 howitzers in total; the Royal Navy has been unable to put more than one attack submarine to sea for a while; and the RAF had to send training unit pilots to sea to guarantee certification of the F35 Force on the carrier.
Meanwhile, another Policy Exchange report earlier in the week from another retired air marshal, Lord Stirrup, outlined how the UK had become too reliant on possessing nuclear weapons for deterrence, which he warned was not scaring Vladimir Putin.
It came as Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as Nato’s deputy supreme allied commander in Europe between 2011 and 2014, said allied forces would need at least 50,000 troops in Ukraine to deter an attack from Russia, while the army currently has less than 75,000 personnel.
