Greenland does not need medical assistance from other countries, Denmark has said, after Donald Trump said he was sending a hospital ship to the autonomous Danish territory that he wants to acquire.
“The Greenlandic population receives the healthcare it needs. They receive it either in Greenland, or, if they require specialised treatment, they receive it in Denmark. So it’s not as if there’s a need for a special healthcare initiative in Greenland,” the country’s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, told the Danish broadcaster DR on Sunday.
In Greenland, as in Denmark, access to healthcare is free. There are five regional hospitals across the vast Arctic island, with the Nuuk hospital serving patients from all over the territory.
Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, defended Denmark’s healthcare system, writing on Facebook that she was “happy to live in a country where there is free and equal access to health for all. Where it’s not insurances and wealth that determine whether you get proper treatment.”
“You have the same approach in Greenland,” she said, before adding: “Happy Sunday to you all” in front of a blushing, smiling emoji.
The skeptic in me says its a trojan horse and is a covert military ship to posture more assets in the area.
Seriously. And if Denmark did anything to intercept it, he could use that as casus belli to start a war. Remember the USS Maine? Of To Hell with Spain, Remember the Maine? Seizing or sinking a hospital ship is still an attack against a US Navy vessel, and it would be played in the media as an act of utter barbarity.
On the other hand, the ship could be used as a tool for war even if Denmark lets it dock. How hard do you think it would be for the CIA to arrange some false-flag or instigated terrorist attack against the hospital ship? Imagine if the hospital ship is docked and stormed by a bunch of armed gunmen, dubbed in the media as “radical Danish nationalists.” The US could then use that as justification to start “anti-terrorism activities,” which gradually grow into an outright occupation of the island. No clean formal start to war that would serve as as source of international outrage and could fracture NATO like a gunshot. The US already has large military presence in Greenland, but this would represent a massive expansion of that. And, over time, an ever-increasing US military presence and control over civilian areas. Think less Spanish American War and more of how Russia slowly occupied vast areas of Eastern Ukraine in the years before the breakout of the major overt war.