Why Is Trump So Intent on Acquiring Greenland?

President Donald Trump has had his sights set on Greenland for years.

He first offered to buy the island, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, in 2019 during his first term in what he described as “essentially a real estate deal.” Since his reelection he has redoubled the push to acquire the territory and repeatedly threatened to annex it, despite pushback from Greenland itself, Denmark, other European leaders, and even some prominent members of his own party within the U.S.

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“We do need Greenland, absolutely,” the President told The Atlantic on Sunday. Extending from the Atlantic Ocean up to the Arctic Ocean, the island holds rich troves of natural resources and is uniquely situated to monitor Russian and Chinese military activity, offering a strategic position for further U.S. control of the region. Trump has framed Greenland as essential for U.S. national security, saying in his interview with The Atlantic that it is “surrounded” by Chinese and Russian ships, which necessitates increased U.S. defense. Reiterating his desire for the territory last January, he also asserted that it was needed for “economic security.”

The President and Administration officials have gone so far as to suggest, more than once, that military force could be deployed to acquire Greenland if it can’t be purchased. Trump has declined to rule out the possibility on multiple occasions, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that “utilizing the U.S. military is always an option.” 

Read more: The Republicans Breaking Ranks With Trump Over Greenland Threats: ‘This Is Appalling’

Eight of Europe’s top leaders came to the defense of Greenland in a joint statement on Wednesday, saying that security in the Arctic must “be achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United States, by upholding the principles of the U.N. Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said earlier in the week that a U.S. attack on the territory would end NATO. Both Denmark and the U.S. are founding members of the military alliance, established after the Second World War.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that he intends to speak with Danish officials next week on U.S. involvement in the territory. Later the same day, Jesper Møller Sørensen and Jacob Isbosethsen, Denmark’s ambassador and Greenland’s envoy, respectively, met with officials on the White House National Security Council to urge the U.S. to step back from its proposed takeover of the island. The Administration is also considering the idea of offering cash payments to Greenlanders, ranging from $10,000 to $15,000, in exchange for joining the U.S., Reuters reported.

Read more: The Ways Trump Could Try to Take Greenland

But as the Administration’s efforts to acquire Greenland intensify, experts contend that the U.S. doesn’t need to do so to benefit from its strategic security position or natural resources.

“There’s a way for the Trump administration to get what it says it wants, and that’s mineral access and military bases, by doing something that should be normal,” Nick Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO and U.S. ambassador to China, tells TIME. “And that’s respecting Denmark, working with them diplomatically on the basis the Danes have suggested: we are sovereign, but we welcome American investment and military presence.”

Here’s what to know.

National security

The President has cast his interest in acquiring Greenland as being primarily motivated by national security concerns.

The island is situated along the GIUK Gap, a strategic chokepoint for surveillance in the Arctic region whose name references the first letters of Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom.

As a result of climate change and melting ice, which have allowed for further exploration, international shipping, and military presence in the area, it has become increasingly competitive. Russia, which stretches over half of the Arctic Ocean coastline, currently controls a majority of the region.

“Greenland is so strategic in a world where China and Russia have…major Arctic ambitions,” Burns says, noting that Russia “considers itself to be the Arctic power” and therefore it’s “very important that the United States up its game.” China, meanwhile, declared itself a “Near-Arctic State” in 2018 with the release of a strategy plan for arctic exploration and shipping.

Malte Humbert, an expert on Arctic geopolitics and founder of the Arctic Institute, says that Russian dominance in the region should concern the U.S., citing Russia’s Northern Fleet, “the largest ice-capable naval fleet in the world.”

Both Burns and Humbert emphasize to TIME that controlling all of Greenland isn’t necessary to accomplish Trump’s national security goals, however. Humbert points to the defense treaty from 1951 between the U.S. and Denmark, which already grants the U.S. the right to “construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases in Greenland. 

“If it’s purely a security aspect, there’s really no reason why the U.S. would like to claim or acquire Greenland because they already have access to Greenland in terms of military bases,” he says.

The U.S. currently has one military base in Greenland, Pituffik Space Base, which is situated on the northwest coast. During the Second World War, the country built many bases on the island, but then scaled back its presence following the Cold War.

Read more: The Greenland Crisis Could Break NATO

“I think it’s clear that we do not need to invade Greenland or even to buy it to get what President Trump says he wants,” Burns says. “Both the Danish government and the Greenland regional authorities have consistently said they welcome the U.S. to do that on the military side.”

And more important and a greater asset to U.S. national security than dominance in the Arctic, he stresses, is the country’s membership in NATO. He notes that it is “in the American national interest that we stay in NATO” and framed the coalition as “our vehicle” for international protection. 

“The stakes are so high here,” Burns says.

Vast, untapped resources

Greenland holds rich natural resources, including oil, rare earth minerals, and uranium, an important element for nuclear power. These offerings add to the island’s strategic importance, and its appeal for the U.S. 

The President has dismissed the idea that these resources have a significant role in his push to acquire the territory, saying, “We need Greenland for national security, not minerals.”

But Mike Waltz, the current U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and Trump’s former national security advisor, said that the Administration’s draw to Greenland was “about critical minerals” and “natural resources” in a 2024 interview with Fox. And experts familiar with the island’s landscape say those offerings would be of significant interest to the U.S.. 

Rare earth materials, a group of metallic elements that are abundant in Greenland, “are used in magnets, which are really important for a range of technologies, both for defense as well as for the renewable energy transition,” says Saleem Ali, a professor of energy and environment at the University of Delaware. He adds that products like wind turbines, sensors, and laptops require these elements to function. 

“They’re used in small amounts, but they’re very important, sort of the secret sauce, sometimes, to make it work,” he tells TIME.

Uranium is also present in Greenland: Kvanefjeld, in the island’s south, is home to one of the largest deposits for uranium in the worldAli says that the geology of Greenland makes it “very appropriate” for these uranium deposits. Tapping into them could stoke the U.S.’s nuclear production.

Read more: Trump’s Potential Next Targets After Venezuela

Access to the island and its resources will likely only expand in the years ahead. “So much of Greenland is unexplored … With climate change, you are going to get a retreat of the ice sheet, and that will allow for exploration to occur,” Ali explains. He notes that roughly 80% of Greenland is covered by an ice sheet that is retreating.

He adds, however, that the U.S. would not need control over the island to make use of its natural resources. 

“There has been no curtailment of U.S. investment going into there,” he says. Multiple billionaire American businessmen, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, are already exploring increasingly navigable regions of Greenland for metals like nickel and cobalt that are used for powering electric vehicles.  

Bob Loeffler, a professor of public policy at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, who has visited Greenland three times to advise the State Department on its mineral policy, warns that the U.S.’s investment in Greenland might not be worth its time, despite the potential for untapped resources. 

“People misunderstand how long it takes to develop a mine,” he tells TIME, noting that it can take up to 20 years to develop a viable mining site, given that the discovery of materials requires multiple exploratory expeditions. “We expect that Greenland has a lot of minerals, but without a lot more exploration, we don’t know what’s economically feasible.”

Loeffler believes that many of the resources on the island can be sourced elsewhere, and pushes back against the narrative that rare earth minerals, among other resources, can only be found in remote Arctic regions.

“Rare earths have that name, but they’re not particularly rare,” he says. “And we have a number of them in the U.S., so it’s not necessarily clear we need to go to Greenland.”