Philosopher Žižek calls for EU troops in Greenland

The European Union should send troops under its own command to Greenland to protect it from a US takeover, the left-wing Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has written in a letter to European Council President António Costa.

The letter, orchestrated by an umbrella group of European federalist movements called the Jean Monnet Action Committee, was sent to Costa ahead of an emergency meeting of the European Council on Thursday night in Brussels.

“We propose the organisation of the current deployment of European troops under EU command, to ensure that our territory is not subject to illegal annexation campaigns or foreign real estate transactions, if requested by Denmark and Greenland,” wrote Slavoj Žižek, and around 40 other signatories.

Other signatories include the former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, centre-left MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, Austrian novelist Robert Menasse and former liberal Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.

“We believe that the strategy of appeasement followed thus far has failed to safeguard European interests,” they wrote.

The EU has very limited military capacity, and the eight European countries that sent a small number of troops to Greenland, including Germany and Denmark, did so under their own national auspices last weekend.

If the EU were to deploy its so-called Rapid Deployment Capacity of up to 5000 troops, it would need a unanimous approval by the 27 EU national governments.

Trump said in his Davos speech on Wednesday that he wanted “immediate negotiations” so he could own Greenland, but ruled out military force.

The committee’s other demands include indefinitely postponing the implementation of last summer’s EU-US trade agreement, slapping €93 billion in retaliatory tariffs on the US, and immediately activating the anti-coercion instrument – a never-before-used tool that would enable the EU to hit back with a range of economic sanctions.

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