The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said a US military seizure of Greenland is not going to happen, as he played down Donald Trump’s threats to seize the territory from Denmark.
“No Nato countries have gone to war [with each other] since the establishment of Nato, and I do not envisage that,” he said, adding: “It is not going to happen.”
Lammy’s remarks, in a round of broadcast interviews in advance of a setpiece speech on Thursday, formed part of an array of views that exposed subtle differences with the Trump administration covering defence spending targets, the scale of the threat posed to Europe by Vladimir Putin, the return of the Islamic State-linked detainee Shamima Begum to the UK and the possibility of convincing China not to throw in its lot with Russia.
The differences emerged despite Lammy insisting he was not in the business of condemning the UK’s closest ally, but they underline how taxing it may be for the Labour government to tread an independent course with a demanding Trump administration.
The foreign secretary tried to square off the differences by arguing that much of what Trump said should not be taken literally. He said: “We know from Donald Trump’s first term that the intensity of his rhetoric and the unpredictability of what he says can be destabilising.
“He did it with Nato but in practice he sent more troops to Europe, he sent more Javelins to Ukraine, under his administration.
In the case of Greenland, Lammy argued Trump was “targeting concerns about Russia and China in the Arctic and his concerns about US national economic security”. He said Trump “recognises that in the end Greenland is a kingdom of Denmark”. Asked if there was going to be a violation of Nato territory, he said: “Let us be serious, it is not going to happen.”
On Donald Trump’s call for defence spending to be set at 5% of GDP, he said: “He’s right to emphasise that we have to move, and certainly move beyond 2% now. I heard the 5%. The United States is at 3.38% of GDP, so I assume that he would set out a roadmap to get to that 5%.”
Insisting European security was on a knife-edge, he also challenged the assumptions of some around Trump by saying UK intelligence had not “seen any sense at all that Putin is ready seriously to negotiate”.
He added: “I am absolutely clear Donald Trump is an individual who wants a deal, but he is also an individual who sees himself as a winner and not a loser.”
He said: “There had been a slight pushback in Washington that a deal can be achieved on January 21. That is now unlikely and we have heard the timetable has moved to Easter.” He said the focus in the interim had to be on equipping Ukraine to survive the winter.
Lammy also opened up a difference with the Trump administration by saying the UK would challenge Beijing “not to throw in their lot with Putin”. Many Trump Conservatives see China as the senior partner in an anti-western axis of evil with Russia, Iran and North Korea, and judge there is no possibility of a fracture in that alliance.
Lammy disclosed that when he visited Beijing he handed over British evidence showing Chinese companies were supplying dual-use equipment for use by Russia in Ukraine.
He said: “It was very important for me, when I was in Beijing, making it absolutely clear to the Chinese that we see the dual-use technology that is making its way to Russia and is being used to kill troops in Ukraine …
“They said they weren’t aware of the information. They wanted the information. I provided them with the information, and then we’ve gone on to sanction the companies involved, and so we have a robust discussion with China. There are issues on which we disagree, on which we will challenge China, and which we will compete in China.”
Lammy also turned down the US administration’s call for Begum, who left the UK to join IS while at school, to be allowed to leave Syria and return to Britain.
Rejecting the call by the Trump team’s nominee for senior director for counter-terrorism, Sebastian Gorka, Lammy said: “Shamima Begum will not be coming back to the UK. It’s gone right through the courts. She’s not a UK national. We will act in our security interests. And many of those in those camps are dangerous, and radicals.”
