The rhetoric about the takeover of Greenland by the United States has ramped up at the same time that a military operation in Venezuela leaves the U.S. “running” the socialist nation. And now, a top aide to President Donald Trump has said that “obviously Greenland should be part of the U.S.”

Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, has reiterated that Greenland “should” belong to the U.S., calling it Washington’s “formal position.”

Trump Renews Calls To Take Over Greenland In Aftermath Of Venezuela Attack

Asked to comment, Miller confirmed Washington’s ambitions. “The president has been clear for months that the US should have Greenland as part of the overall security apparatus. That has been the formal position of the US government since the beginning of this administration,” he told CNN on Monday.

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller said. “These are the iron laws of the world.”

When pressed on whether the U.S. would use military force to control Greenland, Miller deflected, accoridng to a report by RT. He said, “Nobody is going to fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland.” He questioned Denmark’s claim to the territory, arguing, “Obviously, Greenland should be part of the US” if America, as NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) leading power, is to secure the Arctic.

Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen condemned Trump’s rhetoric as “insulting” and “unacceptable.” “When the US president says, ‘we need Greenland’ and links us to Venezuela and military intervention, it is not just wrong – it is disrespectful,” he wrote on Facebook on Monday. “Our country is not an object of superpower rhetoric… No more fantasies of annexation.”