Why does the US President want it?

With temperatures plunging to minus 10C overnight and snow piled in drifts in the street, Daddy’s brewpub in downtown Nuuk offers a welcome respite from Greenland’s famously unpredictable winter climate. Think nachos and rib-eye steak on the bar menu, comfy booths, pool and darts, soccer blaring from the TV and tap beer supplied by a neighbouring microbrewery: try the Nittaalaq, a crisp pale ale named for the Greenlandic word for a single perfect snowflake.

In recent weeks, Daddy’s has also gained more than a little fame. It hosted Donald Trump Jr when he swung by in January for a meet and greet during his surprise visit to the world’s largest island, where he reportedly extolled the virtues of the American way of life. Then, when Donald Trump snr, after his inauguration on January 20, reiterated his desire to somehow take over Greenland, Daddy’s became a de facto HQ for the swarms of foreign journalists who descended on Nuuk, intent on button-holing bewildered Greenlanders to ask them if they want to become American.

Many outlets have reached out to Qupanuk Olsen, who wears many hats as a trained mining engineer, YouTube content creator and candidate in Greenland’s upcoming general election. “When Donald Trump Jr arrived in his plane, that was a mind-blowing moment,” Olsen tells us. “It’s no longer just words. At that moment when I saw the plane, it was like being hit in your stomach, like out of breath. Should I be excited? Should I be nervous? What kind of feeling should I have right now?” Greenlanders are no longer laughing at Trump, she says. Instead, they’re asking, what happens next?

Can the United States really take over Greenland from Denmark? How could that practically happen? What do Greenlanders want?

What’s going on with Greenland?

Giant icebergs. Insta-perfect multicoloured homes on bleak hillsides. Shaggy musk oxen, snow-white Arctic foxes, toothy narwhals and beluga whales. Glaciers and fjords. Sheer remoteness. For the visitor, Greenland inspires like little else.

But there are plenty of challenges in one of the world’s least accessible tourist destinations. Two-thirds of the place is buried under permanent ice. You get a little over four hours of daylight in midwinter. Wi-Fi is patchy. Food, much of it imported, can be expensive (although Greenland does, somewhat improbably, boast several Thai eateries). The local language can prove impenetrable: “best regards”, at the end of an email, translates as “inussuarnersumik inuulluaqqusillunga”. There are few roads: travel between settlements is by boat, helicopter, plane or dog sled. Even then, snowstorms and ice regularly strand travellers.

‘Don’t get us wrong, Greenland is a very special destination … but there’s also some things not always in our control.’

Until a few months ago, you couldn’t fly internationally into Nuuk, Greenland’s capital (population 19,000). You had to catch a plane to Kangerlussuaq, a tiny town 320 kilometres away and the site of a former US Air Force base and, from there, fly in a hair-raising turboprop. Even the official visitor website warns: “Don’t get us wrong, Greenland is a very special destination that will give you experiences hard to replicate elsewhere, but there’s also some things not always in our control.” Time, it says, is not the most important factor in planning daily life on Greenland: “The Arctic weather is.”

Politically and economically, Greenland has seen some patchy weather. It was governed by Denmark as a colony from the early 1800s and, until World War II, it was reachable only by boat. Many Greenlanders lived without electricity or running water. Some 90 per cent of the 59,000 residents are Inuit, descendants of the Thule people, who entered Northern Greenland across an ice bridge from Canada around the 12th century.

‘They may differ in terms of pace and in important questions on how to secure the economy but the aim is the same.’

Old enmities with the Danish colonisers linger. In 1951, with echoes of Australia’s stolen generations, 22 Inuit children known as the “experiment children” were resettled with Danish foster families in an attempt to re-educate them as “little Danes”. In the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD) in a Danish effort to control population growth. It remains unclear how many gave consent or were given a proper explanation. An investigation into the scandal remains ongoing.

“These were policies aiming at making Greenland an equal part of Denmark, but they were often taken on a very rash and even experimental basis without much sensitivity to cultural differences between Inuit and Danes and without much care for the individuals inflicted,” says Astrid Andersen, a specialist in historical justice at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen. “These discussions are very much still unfolding.”

Greenland is self-governed domestically – its parliament is the Inatsisartut – but Denmark remains responsible for its foreign relations and defence and provides funding (a “block grant”) equivalent to a quarter of Greenland’s gross domestic product, about $1.3 billion, a year. Many Greenlanders work in the largely Danish-funded public service and as Danish citizens (like their cousins in the Faroe Islands) have full rights to live, work and study in Denmark.

Since 2009, the island has had the right to hold a referendum on whether to cut ties with the mother country. Many Greenlanders see full independence as inevitable – and a general election on March 11 to fill the 31 positions in the Inatsisartut will probably centre on the issue – but they don’t necessarily agree on the timetable or how to support themselves in the aftermath. “They may differ in terms of pace and in important questions on how to secure the economy,” says Andersen, “but the aim is the same.”

Greenland’s main industries have been fishing, seal hunting and whaling; various mines have flourished at one time or another (gold, rubies, coal, cryolite) but contribute little to the economy today. Current tourist numbers, at 140,000 a year, are dwarfed by those to neighbouring Iceland, which hosts more than 2 million, although this may shift with Nuuk’s improved airport (direct flights to New York are set to start in June).

For now, tourists mostly come on cruises, day-trippers flooding picturesque historic settlements such as Ittoqqortoormiit (population 361) – an issue that’s especially noticeable in a land with the lowest population density in the world.

Otherwise, Greenland hasn’t been on many people’s radar. There are many family ties between Greenland and Denmark, says Andersen, and quite a large number of Greenlanders live in Denmark and some Danes in Greenland, but “given that it is an expensive four-hour flight between the two countries, there are also many in Denmark who have never been to Greenland and probably do not spend much time thinking about Greenland either. Until recently, at least, Greenlanders no doubt had a much higher general level of knowledge about Denmark and Danish politics than vice-versa. This may have changed slightly in the past weeks.”

When did Donald Trump come into the picture?

The US president first publicly raised the notion of the US somehow acquiring or controlling the island in 2019, during his first term in office, an idea that was generally treated as little more than a thought bubble. It’s been reported that a businessman friend of his had previously suggested it might be a good idea and that Trump had had his advisers look at how it might happen. He described it as “a large real estate deal” and was apparently miffed when Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen didn’t take him seriously, calling her “nasty”. “Denmark is a very special country with incredible people,” Trump tweeted, “but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time….”

He made comments about Greenland again in December last year, saying on social media that “for purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity”. Greenland’s Prime Minister, Mute Egede, responded: “We are not for sale, and we will not be for sale.”

Things got more serious when Trump Jr suddenly landed in his father’s “Trump Force One” plane on January 7, handing out “Make America Great Again” caps, two weeks ahead of his father’s inauguration. The timing seemed ominous, although he insisted he was there for a private visit, telling reporters: “We’re just here as tourists, seeing it – looks like an incredible place.”

Soon after, Trump snr phoned Frederiksen, reportedly to push negotiations forward, in a call that was later described by European officials as aggressive and confrontational. In late January, Trump told reporters: “I don’t really know what claim Denmark has to [Greenland], but it would be a very unfriendly act if they didn’t allow that to happen because it’s for the protection of the free world … I think Greenland we’ll get because it has to do with freedom of the world.”

Frederiksen had crisis talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Brussels. “Europe is in a serious situation,” she said, “with war on the continent and changes in geopolitical reality. In such a time, unity is crucial.” Republican Congressman Andy Ogles, meanwhile, had already introduced legislation to Congress that would authorise the US government to acquire Greenland on behalf of the United States. “This is not a joke,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio on January 30. “This is in our national interest, and it needs to be solved.”

‘If I had pitched this scenario as the opening for a new season of Borgen … I probably would have been laughed out of the writers’ room.’

For some, it feels too much like an episode from the popular Scandi political drama Borgen, centred on a fictional Danish prime minister and with plot lines in 2022 including oil-drilling shenanigans off the coast of Greenland and a bullying US ambassador. Its creator, Danish screenwriter Adam Price, recently observed in The Atlantic: “If I had pitched [the Trump] scenario as the opening for a new season of Borgen … I probably would have been laughed out of the writers’ room.”

Why does Trump want Greenland?

Trump, and those in his orbit, seem to view Greenland through a very broad lens: as both a strategic prize, positioned conveniently on the map between the US and Russia, and as a land of potentially untapped opportunity, rich with valuable rare-earth minerals and promises of vast oil and gas reserves off its coastlines. As Greenland’s ice sheet melts, more resources may become accessible to exploitation in the coming decades.

Across the Arctic, the shrinking polar ice cap is also opening up shipping routes and raising concern about which nations might seek to control them. “Chinese merchant shipping will increase passage along the Northern Route, as it’s shorter for them, but presumably Chinese warships will also use that route,” Ben Hodges, a former commander of US Army forces in Europe, told Radio Free Europe in January. The area of ocean between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, known as the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap, is an important naval choke point, heavily monitored during the Cold War for Soviet submarines making their way into the Atlantic and still a gateway for Russia’s Northern Fleet.

The US has kept a military presence on Greenland since World War II when it might otherwise have fallen into the hands of the Nazis after the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940. The US built radio stations, ports, search-and-rescue stations and other facilities to support the North Atlantic convoys supplying its allies. In the Cold War, Greenland remained a base for early-warning systems for nuclear missile attacks, with thousands of US personnel garrisoned there at its peak.

There were even plans to drill into the ice to house up to 600 nuclear missiles that could pepper Soviet cities in minutes. The scheme, Project Iceworm, was abandoned due to movement in the glaciers. Today, with continuing Danish consent since 1951, around 650 US military and support staff are based at Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), where they track satellites, conduct space and Arctic research and continue to watch for attack by nuclear missiles.

There has, at least publicly, been little threat to continuing US activities on the island. Nor would it make sense. Denmark and the US are partners in NATO with common strategic goals. Moreover, Denmark has tacitly admitted it has underinvested in its defence of Greenland – in part using traditional dog-sled patrols to cover 2.16 million square kilometres – and the US has been happy to pick up the slack. (Greenland is nowhere as large as it appears on a conventional map due to the Mercator map projection, which enlarges countries near the poles. In reality, Australia is about four times larger.)

‘If the Chinese begin to threaten Greenland, do we really trust that that is not a place where those deals are going to be made?’

Still, some in Trump’s camp have not been content with the status quo. Their concerns seem to be based largely on growing Chinese and Russian interest in the increasingly accessible Arctic and potential threats to America’s presence on Greenland should the islanders gain independence and seek new economic accords. US Vice Pres­id­ent J.D. Vance has said Green­land is “really import­ant” to US national secur­ity and has complained that Denmark was “not doing its job, and it’s not being a good ally”.

In January, Marco Rubio said the Arctic would become “critical for shipping lanes” and raised the prospect of Chinese dominance in the region. “So the question becomes, if the Chinese begin to threaten Greenland, do we really trust that that is not a place where those deals are going to be made?” Rubio said. “Do we really trust that that is not a place where they would not intervene, maybe by force?” Trump himself has talked about the necessity of controlling Greenland (and the Panama Canal) as essential for “economic security”.

Yet the case for more US military control still doesn’t stack up, Rasmus Jar­lov, a former Dan­ish min­is­ter and cur­rent Con­ser­vat­ive MP in the Danish parliament, told The Financial Times: “If it’s so import­ant to have mil­it­ary pres­ence in Green­land, why do they have only 150 troops? They used to have 15,000. It’s their choice. We didn’t ask them to leave. They them­selves have decided to scale it down.” He added: “Noth­ing would be achieved by invad­ing Green­land in a war between the West and Rus­sia. You would just freeze to death.“

‘There’s clearly a lot of min­er­als up there, but the logistic cost in a place where you don’t have roads … is enorm­ous.’

Also possibly overheated are US concerns about Greenland’s mineral reserves. A rare mineral called cryolite, needed in aluminium smelting, was mined there from the 1850s and was critical during World War II, and there was interest in uranium deposits until the mid-1980s, when Denmark passed a law prohibiting power production from nuclear energy. Today, there are only two active mines in Greenland, one producing gold, the other anorthos­ite, which is mostly used in fibre­glass. The recent would-be gold rush involves explorers attracted by geological surveys revealing the presence of rare-earth metals: among them niobium, platinum group metals, molybdenum, tantalum and titanium. A venture backed by billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg is prospecting for nickel, copper, platinum and cobalt in a region known as Disko-Nuussuaq.

Local regulations can prove prohibitive. A rare earths project operated by an Australian-based company, Energy Transition Minerals, has effectively been blocked because of the pres­ence of uranium in the area. A legal dispute is now ongoing. (Shares in the company rose 36 per cent after Trump’s recent Greenland comments.) Even if you dispensed with the red tape, experienced miners acknowledge that many hurdles remain. Snow, high winds, restricted access and lack of a large local labour force make production difficult and expensive. “We have been explor­ing it for 15 years. We have never been able to come up with a prof­it­able project,” Rio Tinto chief exec­ut­ive Jakob Stausholm told CNBC. “There’s clearly a lot of min­er­als up there, but the logistic cost in a place where you don’t have roads … is enorm­ous.”

Last year, Aus­tralian metals explorer Sky­lark Min­er­als decided to sell its asset in Green­land after 17 years. “Com­mer­cially, it was hard to make it work,” former Aus­tralian for­eign min­is­ter Alexander Downer, an adviser to the company, told The Financial Times earlier this month. “But if the Amer­ic­ans take con­trol, or their engage­ment and influ­ence ramp up, it might make it easier.”

In 2021, meanwhile, Greenland announced an end to 50 years of largely unsuccessful prospecting for petrochemical reserves both on- and offshore, concluding that the environmental risks were too great.

Is it even possible to buy Greenland?

Annexing Greenland is not a new idea: the US has shown interest since the early 1900s, when it wasn’t seen as quite so appalling to trade dominions and subject peoples like Monopoly pieces. Indeed, in 1917, after decades of negotiations, the US successfully bought what are now called the US Virgin Islands from a cash-strapped Denmark, paying what was then $US25 million in gold coins for the former Dutch West Indies colonies of St Thomas, St John and St Croix, Caribbean islands of strategic importance to the recently opened Panama Canal. In 1946, the US offered Denmark $US100 million (about $US1 billion today) in gold bullion for Greenland, which it considered vital for US interests and “completely worthless to Denmark”. Nothing came of it.

This time around, Trump made headlines when he was asked by reporters if he would rule out using military or economic force to take over Greenland or the Panama Canal; he responded: “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two.” And while land sales have occurred in the past, these days the right to trade territory would bump up against international law governing the right to self-determination of existing peoples. “It was always understood that Denmark would have certain obligations to ultimately allow the Greenlanders to exercise the right of self-determination,” says Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law at ANU.

‘If independence is the end-goal then one would need to find a replacement to that Danish block grant, and this is what I suspect Trump understands.’

Moreover, Adam Tooze, director of the European Institute at Columbia University, told Foreign Policy, “The right to self-determination of people who inhabit a land and a homeland trumps all other claims. I mean, already in the rhetoric of the Versailles peace treaty after World War I, you can see that this was no longer acceptable as a way of conducting policy. And so the territorial transfers that take place have to be legitimated either on the principle of ethnic geography and claims to creating homogenous nation states or the conduct of referenda of different types. And that, I think, would be the precondition for any of this to be even remotely serious.”

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There are more subtle avenues that the US could pursue. Were Greenland to vote for independence from Denmark, it could choose to associate itself with the US as either an “unincorporated organised territory” or “unincorporated unorganised territory”, depending on its degree of autonomy. Like Guam, Palau or the Marshall Islands, Greenland could remain kind-of independent but enjoy US military protection and economic support. “The reality is that Greenland, even independent, will need some kind of free association with a larger entity,” says Klaus Dodds, an Arc­tic expert and pro­fessor of geo­pol­it­ics at Royal Hol­lo­way, Uni­versity of Lon­don. “It is an expensive island to support because the population outside Nuuk is scattered and there is very limited infrastructure. If independence is the end-goal then one would need to find a replacement to that Danish block grant, and this is what I suspect Trump understands.”

What do Greenlanders think?

While some have joked about Making Greenland Great Again, “Trump’s statements have been met by dismay by most Greenlanders,” says Gustav Agneman, an associate professor of economics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who has studied public opinion in Greenland. “Yet, to many, foreign interest in their nation signals economic opportunities that may pave the way for independence. So in that way, his statements have actually put independence on top of the agenda.”

In a recent opinion poll, only 6 per cent of Greenlanders were interested in some form of political union with the United States while 85 per cent opposed it. “However,” says Agneman, “the question of independence from Denmark has become significantly more salient.”

Independence is certain to be a major issue in the upcoming elections. “We are in a serious time,” declared Mute Egede, “a time we have never experienced in our country. The time is not for internal division but for co-operation and unity for our country.” Greenland’s parliament has also passed a bill banning political parties from receiving contributions “from foreign or anonymous contributors”, a move that “must be seen in light of the geopolitical interests in Greenland and the current situation where representatives of an allied great power have expressed interest in taking over and controlling Greenland,” according to accompanying documents.

‘It’s also a good thing that we are being seen … We’re taking back our country.’

Qupanuk Olsen, whose YouTube videos about life in Greenland have attracted nearly half a million followers, is running as a candidate for the party Naleraq (or Point of Orientation), which prioritises independence as quickly as possible. She tells us Trump’s comments were her catalyst. “I’ve always said I’ll go into politics when I’m older, like later on in life [Olsen is 39], but now, because of all this attention, it’s like a big movement is happening. Anyone in Greenland now needs to have an opinion on whether we want to stay on, continue with Denmark, whether we want to become independent or whether we want to become a state under the United States.”

Of Trump’s disruption, she says, “I see it as a good thing, and it’s also a good thing that we are being seen, the way we’ve been treated from Denmark over the last 300 years. We’re taking back our country.”

Greenland’s second- and third-largest parties have also said they want to sever ties with Denmark as a matter of urgency. Siumut, a partner in Greenland’s two-party government coalition, plans to call a referendum. A spokesperson told Reuters: “Until our country achieves the status of an independent state, our opportunities to officially participate in negotiations will be limited.”

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There appears to be less of an appetite for an alliance with the US, with none of the five main parties interested in Trump’s plan. Instead, says Donald Rothwell: “There’s always the prospect that the Greenlanders might say, ‘Look, yes, we’re happy to exercise the right of self-determination, but that right of self-determination will see us retain our connections with Denmark. We’ll exercise a much more vigorous and developed form of self-government [but] we’re actually quite happy to fall under Denmark’s defence umbrella and its security and some contribution to foreign affairs.’” The bottom line, says Klaus Dodds: “Greenlanders want independence, for sure, but not at any price or Faustian pact.”

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