Shopping For Greenland
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” President-elect Donald Trump wrote on December 22, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
The sentence—tucked into a longer post announcing the appointment of venture capitalist Ken Howery as Trump’s ambassador to Denmark—reignited a firestorm in trans-Atlantic relations that had largely lain dormant since 2019. Six years ago, during his first term, Trump made an offhanded proposal to purchase the island from Denmark. After Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen strongly rejected the offer, he canceled a state visit to Copenhagen in anger. Mercifully, Danish-American ties survived the incident. Yet Trump never gave up on the idea of an American-owned Greenland, and he is likely to make further attempts to secure U.S. control over the island over the next four years.
Danish, Greenlandic, and European leaders are understandably concerned by Trump’s aggressive rhetoric. The president-elect did little to dissuade this alarm when, during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he conspicuously refused to rule out the possibility of taking possession of Greenland through military force. Following the press conference, German chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed “uneasiness regarding recent statements from the US,” adding: “Borders must not be moved by force. This principle applies to every country, whether in the East or the West.”
Trump is well-known for his unconventional, out-of-the-box thinking and for defying expectations. Yet, common sense seems to rule out a violent annexation of Greenland. Taking his own words into account, it would be self-defeating for him to try to secure “freedom throughout the world,” the expressed aim of the annexation, by depriving the Greenlandic people themselves of the right to self-determination. Moreover, an American invasion and occupation of Greenland would give other countries further political cover to adjust their own borders by force, damaging Washington’s ability to rally international support if China were to pursue the same aims in Taiwan or Venezuela in Essequibo. And the political blowback within the United States—Trump promising an end to foreign wars, then invading the territory of a European ally without provocation—would likely be immense.
To be clear, while Trump’s rhetoric surrounding Greenland has been needlessly provocative, the core ideas behind it are sound. The United States faces an acute strategic threat in the Arctic, an area it has long neglected and in which it must now play catch-up. Russia is increasingly attempting to dominate the region through military force: over the past half-decade, it has reopened dozens of airbases in the Arctic Circle, made strategic investments in nuclear-powered icebreakers, and conducted deniable “gray zone” attacks against Western infrastructure in the far north. Nor is Russia the only Arctic threat: apropos of nothing, and despite no geographic boundary on the region, China has labeled itself a “near-Arctic power” and invested in resources to compete there as well.
Against these challenges, American ownership of Greenland provides a certain measure of stability. It gives the United States greater control over the Northwest Passage and greater flexibility to challenge Moscow and Beijing from the world’s largest island. It helps to preempt the lurking danger of foreign encroachment—allowing Washington to easily bat away Russian or Chinese attempts to gain a foothold on the island. This is to say nothing of Greenland’s strategic and commercial importance due to its vast supply of critical minerals and rare-earth elements, much of which is now difficult to extract but will become more accessible due to climate change over the course of the twenty-first century.
In short, if Trump can secure American control over Greenland, it would likely become his most significant foreign policy accomplishment, far outstripping the importance of the Abraham Accords in 2020. Yet, how he tries to achieve this will make all the difference in the final result. If Trump is serious about acquiring Greenland—and is not merely using it as a Springfield-esque fantasy to whip up his domestic base—he must secure the trust and the buy-in of the Greenlandic people and the government of Denmark.
Greenland’s Uncertain Status
Greenland is presently an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. Though it has been self-governing since 1979, and a 2008 referendum devolved further powers from Copenhagen to the local government, it has so far declined to make an overt break with its European suzerain.
One reason for this is Greenland’s microscopic population. Although it is the world’s largest island, only around 60,000 people live there, making it one of the least densely populated places on the globe. If Greenland were to gain full independence, it would immediately become one of the world’s largest countries by area but one of its smallest by population, making social services and other basic state functions difficult to implement.
A perhaps more pertinent reason for Greenland’s reluctance to declare independence has been Denmark’s annual subsidy. Copenhagen spends roughly $500 million per year in grants to the island—which, though enormous for a population of 60,000 (amounting to more than $8,000 per capita), is a relatively small fraction of its total government budget. Through its subsidy, Denmark pays Greenlanders a variety of benefits, including welfare payments, free medical care, and free tuition at Danish universities. If Greenland were to gain full independence from Denmark, these benefits would be cut off, and the island’s economy—now overwhelmingly dependent on fishing exports, for which prices fluctuate wildly by year—would collapse. Even with the subsidy, roughly one in six Greenlanders falls below the poverty line; without it, this number could rise far higher.
Consequently, all else being equal, it seems certain that Greenland’s ambiguous status will remain unchanged in the near future. Greenland’s people want to govern their own affairs but also want the continued benefits of Danish largesse. Right now, they have both. In return, Denmark has nominal control over an Arctic landmass far larger than its own and, for better or worse, the 60,000 people living there.
It was into this complicated situation that Trump initially waded in 2019. It is not clear what triggered the former president’s offer to buy the island. But the effect of his demand was immediate: it transformed the island’s status from a contentious issue in Danish politics into a patriotic cause celebre and a way for the tiny kingdom to stand up to America’s bully-in-chief. Though it has been less than a month since Trump’s second Greenland initiative, it appears that this same process is taking place once more. After his Truth Social post in December, the Kingdom of Denmark changed the nation’s coat of arms for the first time since 1972—increasing the size of the heraldry’s Greenlandic polar bear, as though to reflect its importance to Denmark and the nation’s unwillingness to capitulate to an aggressive foreign power.
Much will happen in the next four years, of course. However, there is little evidence that Trump’s current campaign, which is waged mainly in the media and based on hostility and threats, will do much to change the minds of politicians in Copenhagen—or ordinary Greenlanders in Nuuk.
Hearts and Minds
If Trump is serious about gaining U.S. control over Greenland, he must realize that the key to doing so is through popular sovereignty—in effect, winning the “hearts and minds” of the Greenlandic people. Denmark has freely acknowledged on multiple occasions that those living in Greenland are responsible for their own fate and that if the island votes in favor of independence, Copenhagen will honor it. It stands to reason, then, that Denmark would also accept a vote in favor of association with the United States. But without popular support, no progress on the Greenland issue is possible. Trump’s ham-fisted offers to “buy” the island from Denmark, as one would buy a real-estate plot in New York, will come up short until he realizes this.
Trump should instead be willing to make a series of compelling guarantees. As a baseline, he must promise to maintain the island’s autonomy as a self-governing territory within the United States, akin to the status of Puerto Rico or American Samoa. Naturally, Washington would have some authority to override local authorities’ decisions on national security matters. However, in general, the core of Trump’s promise must be that life in Greenland will remain the same or improve under the American flag.
Second, Trump can and should promise to increase Greenland’s subsidy. Fortunately, doing so is well within his means; even quadrupling the Danish subsidy to $2 billion would still be a relatively modest cost to the annual U.S. government budget of approximately $6 trillion. It is important to note that the subsidy would include not only simple cash payments but guarantees of a Nordic-style welfare state, which could become a contentious issue. In particular, disconnecting Greenlanders from Denmark’s relatively efficient single-payer healthcare system and dropping them into America’s byzantine mess is certain to breed ill will. The Trump administration must work to solve this issue before any agreement can take effect.
Furthermore, Trump must vow, in concert with private stakeholders, to promote the Greenlandic economy through foreign direct investment, particularly in sectors that are of national security concern to the United States, such as mineral extraction. This would create good-paying jobs, broaden prosperity, and help diversify the Greenlandic economy.
Finally, Trump and his Congress must ensure a Greenlandic exemption to the Jones Act. The act requires goods shipped between American ports to be transported on American-built and American-crewed vessels. Very few ships meet these criteria, and if Greenland entered the United States and became subject to the act, the cost of its imports and exports to the United States would skyrocket. Solving this problem is an essential precondition for an American Greenland.
Stumbling Blocks
It is difficult to imagine the precise mechanism through which Greenland would pass from Danish to American control at present. A trilateral treaty between Denmark, Greenland, and the United States is one possibility, but it would require substantial buy-in from both Nuuk and Copenhagen. Another possibility would be for the Greenlandic people to vote for an association with the United States in a referendum, which Denmark would be obliged to support. As noted before, this would only be possible with substantial buy-in from the Greenlandic people.
Unfortunately, Trump’s threats toward Denmark—and blustering social media posts asserting rightful ownership over the island—have won him few friends in either place. All five of Greenland’s major political parties have come out against American annexation, as has Greenlandic prime minister Mute Egede. For America to make any progress towards this goal, it must develop a pro-American Greenlandic constituency—native Greenlanders who sincerely view integration into the United States as the best way to guarantee a secure, prosperous future and who can effectively advocate for these views to their countrymen.
Trump’s bombastic and combative brand of populism has succeeded in mobilizing a core population in America already angry at their government. Still, there is little evidence that this approach has significant appeal in Greenland. A few of the island’s residents do support Trump’s idea, and one recently hosted Donald Trump, Jr. and conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on a visit. But it is clear that, at present, such people are the exception, and the vast majority of the Greenlandic population opposes this idea.
What can change their perceptions? A good place to start would be through expansion of American investments in Greenland, greater American aid to Greenland—incidentally driving a wedge between Greenland and Denmark, as Copenhagen views such aid with suspicion and hostility—and an increased American cultural presence in Greenland, for instance through greater tourism. Through such measures, Trump could communicate that association with the United States is in the island’s best interest. Social media diatribes will communicate the opposite. It remains to be seen which path he will find more worthy of pursuing.
Trevor Filseth is a managing editor at The National Interest.
Image: Jan Tolar / Shutterstock.com.