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“We absolutely need Greenland,” Donald Trump said in a telephone interview with the American magazine The Atlantic. He went on to describe the island—part of Denmark, a NATO ally – as “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.”

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Trump has said he believes that the United States needs to maintain control over the Western Hemisphere, invoking his own version of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which rejected European colonialism in the hemisphere. He calls his approach the “Donroe Doctrine.” But in the interview, he said that the decision to kidnap the Venezuelan president was not made simply because of geography.

“It’s not hemisphere. It’s the country. It’s individual countries,” he said in the phone call.

I asked him whether the attack on Venezuela could indicate a willingness to take military action to seize control of Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, which has rejected American territorial claims. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday that the world should take notice after the Venezuela operation. “​​When he tells you that he’s going to do something, when he tells you he’s going to address a problem, he means it,” Rubio said. Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. “needs” to control Greenland.

Trump said it was up to others to decide what U.S.-military action in Venezuela means for Greenland. “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know. He was very generous to me, Marco, yesterday,” Trump said. “You know, I wasn’t referring to Greenland at that time. But we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.”