US President Donald Trump says he will get a deal on Greenland the ‘easy way’ or the ‘hard way’

US President Donald Trump has ramped up his rhetoric over Greenland, saying he’s willing to secure the territory “the hard way” if authorities are unwilling to cut a deal for the US to take over the island.

“I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” Mr Trump told reporters Friday, US time, at the White House.

While Mr Trump has long mused about making Greenland a part of the US, claiming the Danish territory as a national security imperative, his focus on the island has intensified in recent days following an audacious US raid to capture the leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. That action has sparked new fears among allies over Trump’s willingness to deploy the US military to achieve his foreign policy goals.

Asked if he was considering making a financial offer to the people of the island to entice them to join the US, Mr Trump said he was “not talking about money for Greenland yet.”

“I might talk about that, but right now, we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” he said. Mr Trump said if the US did not act on the Danish territory, top geopolitical rivals Russia and China would do so.

“We’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbour,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Trump’s remarks about Greenland have roiled ties with Denmark, a NATO member, and other nations in the military alliance. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen this week said an attack by the US on Greenland would mean the end of the NATO alliance. European leaders have also urged Trump to respect the island’s territorial integrity and said it falls under the bloc’s collective security umbrella.

While Mr Trump has declined to rule out military force to seize Greenland, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday told lawmakers that the aim is to buy the island. Mr Rubio has said he will met with Danish officials about Greenland next week.

But two Greenlandic lawmakers in the Danish parliament said overnight there was no sum of money from Donald Trump that would persuade Greenlanders to join the US.

Any attempt by the US president to entice the Arctic island with cash is doomed to fail and only risks pushing Greenlanders further away, said Aaja Chemnitz, one of two Greenland representatives in the Danish legislature, where she chairs the committee focused on the territory’s affairs.

Trump administration officials have discussed sending direct payments to the island’s residents in an effort to lure them to break away from Denmark and join the US, according to reports. The amounts under discussion ranged from $10,000 to $100,000 per person, according to the report.

“No amount of money can buy our national soul,” Ms Chemnitz said in an interview in Copenhagen on Friday. “It’s disrespectful to think that you can buy a people. What use is a one-off payment when your entire foundation is being torn away?”

Ms Chemnitz said Greenland’s culture, identity, language and way of life would be “completely eroded over a very short period of time” if the US were to gain control of the island.

“Unlike the US, Greenland is not a capitalist society,” she said. “For us, it is about community, about our families and social ties. We live in harmony with nature and want to preserve that way of life.”

Aki-Matilda Hoegh-Dam, another Greenlandic lawmaker in Copenhagen, from the pro-independence Naleraq party, also ruled out entering any cash deal to become American.

“We are not a commodity to be traded as human beings,” she said in a separate interview. “No matter how much money one might offer, it would still be too cheap. It is just as much about dignity.”