For months, the American president Donald Trump declared that he wanted to take control of Greenland.
That rhetoric returned following the U.S. military operation in Venezuela last weekend, which underscored Trump’s commitment. global vision of American domination of the Western Hemisphere.
Trump and the White House have since made clear that this approach also extends to Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally of the United States and Canada.
“The president has been very open and clear with all of you and the world that he believes it is in the best interests of the United States to deter Russian and Chinese aggression in the Arctic region,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.
Leavitt did not rule out possible U.S. military action to acquire Greenland, saying the administration was considering “all options” but that Trump’s “first option has always been diplomacy.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Wednesday that he will meet Danish officials next weekand that Trump “always” intended to buy Greenland, rather than acquire it by force.
“This is nothing new,” he said. “He talked about it in his first term, and he’s not the first U.S. president to look at how we might acquire Greenland.”
Greenland and Denmarkas well as Canada And European Alliesreaffirmed this week that the future of Greenland must be decided by its people alone.
Here’s why Trump might want to acquire Greenland and why it’s an important strategic security asset, no matter who’s in charge.
Location and military capabilities
Greenland is located off the northeast coast of Canada and is one of the largest land masses in the world.
About 80 percent of the island lies within the Arctic Circle, with a vast ice cap and protected land.
Most of the population of 56,000, 90 percent of whom are Inuit, live along the territory’s southwest coast, which includes the capital Nuuk.
The Norse first arrived in Greenland around 982 AD and remained there for centuries before disappearing for obscure reasons around 1500, according to the Visit Greenland tourism page.
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The colonial period is considered to have begun in 1721 when the Danish-Norwegian crown re-established contact and “in 1916, Danish rights to Greenland were confirmed by the United States, in an agreement which facilitated the American purchase of the Danish West Indies”. according to the Danish Institute for International Studies.
American forces first moved to Greenland during World War II to ensure the country did not fall into the hands of Nazi Germany and to preserve the North Atlantic shipping lanes.
Today, the island is home to several military and research bases. While most are Danish-owned and operated, the US military operates the remote Pituffik space base in northwest Greenland.
This base was built as part of the Greenland Defense Treaty signed by the United States and Denmark in 1951, which supports missile warning, missile defense, and space surveillance operations for the United States and NATO.
The United States also gained expanded access to Danish military and air bases under a military agreement signed in 2023. Danish lawmakers last June approved a bill allowing U.S. military bases on Danish soil, expanding that agreement.
“There is no benefit to be gained” for U.S. national security from the capture of Greenland, said Andrea Charron, director of the Center for Defense and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.
“In fact, significant damage may occur” to NATO and the Western alliance as a whole, she added, warning that the “rupture” could be permanent.
Denmark is already preparing to strengthen its military presence around Greenland and across the North Atlantic as part of an overall strengthening of its defense. The country is one of NATO’s biggest spenders with 3.22 percent of its GDP spent on defense this year – the equivalent of the United States
However, the United States has already begun to take action against Greenland. In June, the Pentagon announced that Trump had ordered Greenland to be transferred from the U.S. European Command’s area of responsibility to the U.S. Northern Command.
This was done without consulting European allies, Charron stressed.
There is a closer focus on Greenland’s security as new access points across the Arctic open up thanks to ice thinning fueled by climate change.
While Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark and other Arctic states claim exclusive economic zones in their respective parts of the Arctic, the world’s northernmost region is still not claimed by any power, particularly around the North Pole.
In 2018, China declared itself a “near Arctic state” in a bid to gain more influence in the region and announced plans to build a “Polar Silk Road” of economic ties with countries around the world.
Russia, meanwhile, has been restoring and expanding its military bases and airfields in the Arctic since 2014, while seeking to exert its own influence in the region.
Chinese and Russian military incursions into Arctic waters, particularly off the northern coast of Canada, have increased in recent years. NATO members have sought to strengthen their presence in the Arctic as a result, fueled by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Russia already owns more than 50 percent of the Arctic in terms of population and territory,” Charron said. “Both Russia and China have missiles capable of hitting targets in North America, so Denmark and Greenland are very important for this area knowledge and missile defense.”
Canada has prioritized security and sovereignty in the Arctic, both in rebuilding its military capabilities and in its foreign policy.
Foreign Minister Anita Anand is set to open a new Canadian consulate in Nuuk early this year as part of this strategy.
Greenland is also home to several critical mineral reserves that attract global powers rushing to secure them for semiconductors, batteries and magnets.
In particular, Greenland is a rich source of so-called rare earth minerals – a key component of smartphones, computers and other high-tech gadgets – with reserves of 1.5 million tonnes, according to the US Geological Survey.
That’s more than Canada’s total reserves, but well below world leader China.
China also dominates rare earth mining and production, while Greenland has no such capabilities.
In 2021, the Greenland government banned uranium mining on environmental protection grounds, effectively banning rare earth mining, of which uranium is a byproduct.
Trump has made clear he is willing to repeal similar laws in the United States, where he expanded mining and oil production onto protected lands.
Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, said Trump’s focus on Venezuela’s oil reserves following the U.S. capture of President Nicolas Maduro offers clues to his foreign policy strategy.
“Trump appears, in many ways, to be confusing the interests of American national security with those of American energy companies,” she said.
Ashford said Trump could use the successful military operation in Venezuela to try to force Denmark to relinquish at least some control over Greenland — and could even increase pressure on Canada.
“I think we will continue to see this trend where military force is used as a signal to try to increase pressure in countries like Canada or Denmark,” she said.
– with files from Reggie Cecchini of Global and The Associated Press
