Almost three decades ago, the United States joined seven other countries with territory surrounding the North Pole in a new alliance — the Arctic Council — pledging to make mankind’s northernmost communities a zone of peace.
Now, U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening those Arctic allies with economic sabotage or military action in a strongarm attempt to seize Greenland and plunder its rich deposits of oil, gas, precious metals and rare-earth elements.
In a menacing ultimatum more befitting a mafioso than a newly empowered world leader, Trump has declared that Greenland will become an American property one way or another, claiming the resource-rich island is “an absolute necessity” for U.S. national security.
“I think we’re going to have it,” he boasted to journalists covering his visits to disaster zones in North Carolina and California last week. That was his wishful-thinking takeaway from phone calls with Danish officials who’d told him in no uncertain terms that Greenland is not for sale.
Trump expressed covetous designs on the semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark during his first term in the White House. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen then dismissed his call to buy the world’s largest island as “absurd.” The demand was brushed off as the whimsical musings of a geopolitical novice throwing out a trial balloon that floated away when his attention drifted elsewhere.
The newly reinstated president is taking a more aggressive approach this time. Five days before his Jan. 20 inauguration to a second term, he called Frederiksen to reassert his intention of acquiring Greenland.
The 45-minute conversation has been described by European media as “horrendous” and “a cold shower” for NATO allies who failed to take Trump at his word the first time.
“Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But I do think it is serious, and potentially very dangerous,” a senior European Union official told Britain’s Financial Times after Trump’s contentious call with Frederiksen.
“We have never in my lifetime found ourselves in such a difficult time as now,” Danish media quoted Frederiksen saying in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the return of Trump to the helm of NATO’s most powerful member state.
Frederiksen launched into action after the disturbing call. She made lightning visits to European capitals to consult with the leaders of France, Germany and NATO.
“There is only one way through this, and that is ever closer and stronger European cooperation,” Frederiksen said of her NATO allies’ steadfast support of Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, a Danish colony since 1721 that was granted semi-autonomous status within the kingdom in 1953.
The United States for decades has had a military base and missile defense early warning system in Greenland. The Defense Department’s northernmost outpost formerly known as Thule Air Base was renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2023 in what the Pentagon described as recognition of its Greenlandic cultural heritage. The U.S.-Danish agreement opening the island to allied military defenses dates back to a 1941 pact that was in power before the post-World War II formation of NATO, the 32-nation alliance in which Denmark is a founding member.
Trump’s bullying tactics with the Danish government are not just a danger to NATO cohesion. Russia is the dominant force in the Arctic Council by virtue of its territory spanning more than half of the littoral shores around the Arctic Sea. Russia’s Northern Fleet base in the Murmansk region of the Arctic is home to most of the country’s naval forces, of increasing significance to Russian national security with as much as 40% of the southern Black Sea Fleet destroyed in three years of war with Ukraine.
Polar ice melting due to global warming has opened up new sea lanes through the Arctic for commercial shipping, which Russia controls and services as it passes along territorial waters between the Pacific Ocean and northern European seas thousands of miles west. The shipping route drastically cuts the time and expense of moving cargo from Asia to the Americas around the southern hemisphere capes or the violence-plagued region around the Suez Canal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to take fondly to Trump’s attempt to wrest control of Arctic navigation and resource extraction. Any U.S. move to supplant Danish stewardship of the world’s biggest island would provoke a hostile response from the Kremlin, confronting a divided NATO with a war against a well-armed and determined adversary. That is, if Trump hasn’t already made good on his long-standing threat to scuttle the Western alliance he accuses of freeloading on U.S. defenses.
Trump’s threat to impose punitive tariffs on Denmark or use military force if necessary to acquire Greenland has rattled NATO allies.
Frederiksen embarked on a lightning tour of European capitals on Tuesday, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to marshal concerted action against the aggressive moves coming from the White House.
“I am safeguarding Denmark’s interests, and I am doing so very firmly right now,” she stated during the one-day blitz. “There must be respect for territory and the sovereignty of states. This is an absolutely crucial cornerstone of the international world order we have built since World War II.”
Scholz reiterated that message after their meeting, pointedly aiming it at Trump: “Borders may not be moved by force: To whom it may concern.”
Any use of force by the United States against Denmark would be the death knell of NATO.
“If they (the United States) invade Greenland, they invade NATO,” Elisabet Svane, chief political correspondent for Denmark’s Politiken newspaper, told the BBC. “If a NATO country invades NATO then there’s no NATO.”
Trump’s resurrected campaign to acquire Greenland is bolstered by hard-core supporters of his coercive tactics. On Jan. 13, two days before Trump’s infamous call with Frederiksen, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-TN, introduced a bill with 12 co-sponsors to ‘Make Greenland Great Again.”
“The United States’ ownership of the Danish territory would allow for the advancement of American economic interests and national security priorities,” Ogles’ announcement posited.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s elder son, flew to Greenland’s capital Nuuk on Jan. 8 on a plane emblazoned with the Trump logo.
“We’re going to treat you well” Trump’s son told a small group of Greenlanders in a video posted on the Internet by the president.
“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland,” Trump wrote. “The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
But Trump also faces pushback at home. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski joined fellow members of an Arctic Parliamentarians forum in reminding Trump that Greenland is “open for business, but not for sale.”
Trump may be counting on the government of Greenland to call a referendum on independence from Denmark, a notion that has been under consideration for years. But the mostly indigenous population of 56,000 has been loath to sever the financial umbilical cord with Copenhagen, which provides an annual subsidy of $600 million — about 20% of the territorial budget — to underwrite vital social services like healthcare and education.
The leaders of Denmark and Greenland’s territorial government have stated unequivocally that the island is not for sale, nor are its precious metals and rare earth minerals open to exploitation by the highest bidder or extortionate aggressor.
Greenland’s Arctic coastline is third-longest of the Arctic Council states behind Russia and Canada. All three countries circling the polar ice cap are signatories to the 1996 Arctic Council forum created to protect the environment and manage a transnational asset.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters amid the revived Trump quest that Greenlanders were not inclined to give him “something that he should not have.”
Rasmussen spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio after his appointment as the U.S. top diplomat the day after Trump’s inauguration. The two ministers “reaffirmed the strength of the relationship” between the United States and Denmark, the State Department reported. The statement said Rubio and Rasmussen agreed to discuss Arctic security at a later date — after Rubio’s Central American tour to, in part, iron out new wrinkles in relations with Panama after Trump announced his intention to take back U.S. ownership of the Panama Canal.
