Over the past year, Donald Trump and his administration have returned again and again to the issue of Greenland. The president has used heated and blustery rhetoric as he makes clear his view that the United States should take possession of the island away from Denmark. His take-no-prisoners approach flummoxed and inflamed the annual conference of economic and political pooh-bahs in the Swiss town of Davos and led leading figures in NATO to suggest Trump’s language was hastening the end of the West as we know it. The focus on Greenland has been a subject of satire, general merriment, and genuine concern that Trump’s fixation with something that has never been on the American public’s radar—ever—is nothing less than a sign of Trump’s madness.

Trump’s approach might be bizarre, but his interest in Greenland is in no way crazy. In fact, the goal of a larger, more permanent, more direct U.S. role in Greenland is in line with our history, security, and national interests.

Greenland has been a quiet and enduring presence in American life going back to the colonial era. Its territorial waters were a far-off but regular destination for northeastern whalers, whose pursuit of the precious oil to be leached from the sea leviathans helped build a core American industry a century before the discovery of petroleum. Official American interest in the Danish colony goes back over a century and a half to 1867, when Secretary of State William Seward, fresh off the Alaska Purchase (another excellent idea labeled a folly at the time), mooted the notion of buying both Greenland and Iceland from the Danes. At the time, the value of the island was primarily its fisheries and novel coal-deposit discoveries, but it also offered a platform for America as it sought to control transatlantic trade. No formal purchase offer was made, but the concept remained in the ether and resurfaced in 1910, when America’s ambassador to Copenhagen floated an exchange of Greenland and other Danish territory for parts of the then-U.S. colony of the Philippines. That idea never left internal diplomatic back channels, but we did buy the Danish West Indies in 1917 to keep it out of the hands of Imperial Germany. That agreement was the last annexation of territory to date. It gave us the U.S. Virgin Islands and helped convert the Caribbean Sea into an American lake.

Washington went back to the well in 1946, when Secretary of State James Byrnes made a confidential offer to the Danes of $100 million for the territory. This was in the immediate aftermath of World War II, during which the U.S. had essentially occupied Greenland, establishing more than a dozen military bases there and stationing thousands of active-duty troops. That experience proved to American military planners that, in the words of a contemporary State Department official, “Greenland is indispensable to the safety of the United States.” The Truman administration’s offer was politely rejected, but Greenland remained crucial to our security during the Cold War. Agreements were made with Denmark in the early 1950s that allowed certain military uses of the area with Danish consent; this allowed the U.S. to bolster its strength in the Arctic and track Soviet missile launches, and the American presence there acted as a trip wire for a potential invasion. After the fall of Communism, the era of the “peace dividend” took over, and Greenland became a deprioritized backwater. Now, we maintain only a single base on the island, Pituffik Space Base, and a paucity of troops.

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So why should we change all of that now? Is Greenland really still “indispensable” to American national security? Yes. Greenland has always been geographically positioned as a key spot along the northern transit path of the Atlantic Ocean. That route remains important, but global developments have begun to open a new, possibly even more significant, pathway through the planet’s waters. We are constantly told that climate change is breaking up sea ice, causing warming in polar regions, and pushing sea levels to rise; if these predictions are indeed accurate, even to a modest extent, the centuries-old dream of widespread Arctic shipping could become a reality.

Since the first days of European exploration in the New World, the quest for a northern sea route to the Pacific has been ongoing. A connection point of the two major oceans at the top of the earth to match Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom would shorten trade routes and make global commerce work far more smoothly. But the large-scale sea ice, complex navigation, and dramatic weather of the Arctic have forestalled that objective. That is why the potential new realities of warming oceans, GPS navigation, and improved shipbuilding offer the possibility of surmounting these once-insuperable challenges. Russia and China have been seriously interested in making use of this alternative route. Greenland could serve as both a check on adversarial domination of the waterways and a way station for American use.

Shipping is not the only potential economic benefit for us. Greenland has vast untapped natural resources. Coal was an early focus of American interest in the territory, and energy remains an important aspect of Greenland’s potential economic growth. The island’s territorial waters host large deposits of fossil fuels, but the Greenlandic government, joined by the Danes, has stopped all exploration and extraction. American control would remove that impediment. On top of the energy resources, Greenland has sizable deposits of rare earth minerals, the critical elements in most modern high technology, including military equipment. As of now, China dominates the field globally, giving the Xi regime a potential whip hand over America and our allies. Finding alternative sources of these minerals has been a priority for years, and Greenland is an excellent candidate. The United States is far better positioned to advance these industries and, in turn, provide greater economic prosperity and stability to the native Greenlanders.

Still, Greenland’s greatest value for America is not economic, but strategic. Just as the reduction of sea ice and the increased navigability of the Arctic are transforming it into a commercial superhighway, those same phenomena are contributing to its increased geopolitical salience. Russia is a natural polar power, so the fact that it is rapidly increasing its Arctic fleet and building new nuclear-powered icebreakers is unsurprising, even if concerning. Moscow’s militarization of its Arctic regions is a longstanding policy dating to the 1920s, but it has ramped up under Vladimir Putin. Like their Chinese counterparts in the South China Sea, Russian military vessels often harass civilian fishermen from nations such as Norway, seeking to enforce these broad claims. Over the past half decade, China has joined Russia in the militarization campaign. The two “no limits” partners have worked in tandem to test America’s boundaries, engaging in naval patrols and flying bombers just off the coast of Alaska in 2024. Our adversaries clearly believe that the future of the Arctic should be dictated by Moscow and Beijing, and they’re working assiduously to make that a reality. American policy must recognize this threat and act accordingly. Increasing our presence in Greenland is a step in the right direction.

Greenland has long been a locus for U.S. defense policy, with the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland–United Kingdom) Gap being of paramount importance to controlling the maritime approaches to the North Atlantic. That became much less of an issue after the collapse of Soviet Communism. But now that Russia has made clear its hostile intent, the GIUK Gap has grown in importance. Placing additional American assets on bases in Greenland would allow us to exert more control over that passage. Greenland has existing, albeit degraded, U.S. military infrastructure ripe for regeneration. The island’s deep-water ports present opportunities for maritime patrols in the Arctic that, in tandem with Alaska, would allow us to control these waterways more efficiently. Greenland could also host American air assets, operating as an unsinkable aircraft carrier and helping the Navy and Coast Guard monitor the Arctic to deter our foes.

Another important national security use of Greenland is in strategic defense, both on Earth and in orbit. Our remaining site on the island, Pituffik (formerly Thule), is a space base that hosts early-warning systems, radar, and space surveillance. As space grows in military prominence, American monitoring resources on Greenland would help in defending our assets against hostile forces. Greenland’s geographic position would allow us to monitor the northern approaches to the United States, tracking potential threats from our adversaries and providing information about their operations. These systems are especially crucial, as they sit astride the route that Russian or Iranian ballistic missiles would travel to reach targets on the Eastern Seaboard. Warnings of incoming attacks are important, but more vital would be our capacity to defeat those attacks. Today, all of our missile-interceptor forces—our means of shooting down enemy ballistic missiles—are stationed on the West Coast, split between California and Alaska. This positioning is useful but leaves us open to assault from the opposite direction. Greenlandic interceptors would rectify that weakness.

The current situation, in which both Denmark and Greenland have veto power over our military use of the island, is untenable given the realities of modern geopolitics. Denmark is a stalwart NATO ally that has sent troops to fight alongside us in Afghanistan and taken a leadership role when it comes to the war in Ukraine. The Danes are not the Atlantic alliance’s biggest laggards, by any means. They have ramped up their defense budget as a percentage of GDP and have announced that they will be increasing their spending on Arctic defense by $2 billion. These are positive signs, but they are not enough to ensure American dominance. Simply put, $2 billion is a drop in the bucket when it comes to America’s national defense; if additional spending is needed, the Danes plainly do not have the capacity that Washington does.

They also do not share our security challenges when it comes to Greenland or our adversaries. The historic homeland of the Danes is not threatened by developments in the Arctic—but the security of the continental United States would be deeply affected by changes in the status of Greenland. Denmark shares our historic skepticism of Moscow and opposition to its expansionist drive, but its relationship to China is different from ours. Europe writ large has much less to lose than we do if Chinese hegemony in the Pacific becomes a reality. Denmark in particular was one of the first Western nations to recognize Mao’s China, and it retains a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Beijing today, focusing on maritime, climate, energy, and economic issues. If China gains privileged access to Greenland, that will not affect Danish security. It will, however, seriously undermine ours. China has already shown interest in Greenland’s resources and has made several proposals for mining operations. So far, Denmark—at Washington’s behest—has rejected them. But this may not last forever.

A case in point in that regard is the recent deal that Britain’s Labour government struck with the government of Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. This obscure arrangement may not seem to be a major concern regarding America’s national security, but it has thrown into question much of our power-projection capability in the Indo-Pacific. Located within that remote island chain is one of our most important foreign military installations, the base at Diego Garcia. It hosts a deep-water port, airfields that can handle strategic bombers (like the B-2 stealth bombers that destroyed the Iranian nuclear program), and highly specialized intelligence-collection centers that are able to monitor our adversaries. Diego Garcia is one of our greatest platforms for global power projection outside of the continental United States. And now it is imperiled. The Mauritian government is closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party, both economically and militarily. It has a major say in not only the fate of our base, but also in the fate of the islands surrounding it, one of which has been proposed as the site of a Chinese version of Diego Garcia. The United Kingdom is perhaps our closest ally, yet poor decisions by its government have made us less safe. After unfortunately and inexplicably supporting the deal, as did its predecessor, the Trump administration has changed tack, forcing the Labour government to shelve the idea—for now. Still, this incident must color our policy going forward. If a territory is of extreme importance to our security, the only way to be sure our interests are protected is to secure greater control of it ourselves.

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Thus the case for a greater American presence in Greenland is a strong one. The administration’s strategy is sound, but its tactics are extraordinarily counterproductive. The White House, led by the president, is using belligerence and hostility toward Denmark as part of its gambit. And for a time, Trump refused to rule out a military option for taking Greenland, despite the patent absurdity of an invasion of an ally’s sovereign territory. This caused unnecessary consternation in Copenhagen and undermined the NATO alliance. Trump-aligned actors have even engaged in clandestine influence operations on the island. The White House seems dead set on either buying Greenland or taking it by force, ignoring other options that might be more favorable for the Danes and Greenlanders.

Trump’s naked aggression, sense of entitlement, and flippancy have caused a great deal of hostility to America where once there was little. This was exemplified by the tepid (at best) local reaction to Vice President Vance’s official visit last March. The administration believes that acquiring Greenland is a task that requires intimidation, but it is persuasion that is necessary. There are myriad benefits for all parties, not just America, in a change to the status quo. Greenlanders can achieve a much higher standard of living, increased security, and a future of growth. Danes can save several hundred million dollars annually on subsidies, remove the burden of defending a territory thousands of miles away, and allow Copenhagen to shift its defense spending to Europe, where it is more valuable and impactful.

These would be highly positive outcomes for both Greenlanders and Danes, and they could be persuaded with the right approach: friendly, diplomatic, mutually beneficial. America could also sweeten the pot considerably. In a more American Greenland, locals—all 57,000 of them—could receive annual disbursements of cash, either from a sovereign wealth fund taking profits from resource extraction or directly from the U.S. government. The Danish government, in the case of a sale, could reap significant monies, likely in the tens of billions of dollars. It could also be permanently allocated a revenue stream from any economic activity carried out on the island. Any deal would be an economic windfall for both Greenlanders and Danes. And that deal could take a number of different forms, not simply a fairly complex purchase and annexation, as the White House contends.

The U.S. could form a joint condominium with Denmark over the island, allowing Greenland to retain internal autonomy and Copenhagen to maintain a level of sovereignty over their historic territory. At the same time, it would increase our access to the island, reduce limitations on its military and economic use, and give us a veto over policy running counter to our interests. If Greenlanders chose to break off from Denmark (a very popular stance on the island), we could engage in a Compact of Free Association (COFA) with them. An independent Greenland with a COFA could control its own internal politics while outsourcing defense and foreign policy to the United States. That would achieve our objectives without necessitating an outright sale and all its attendant issues. Washington maintains such agreements with several Pacific island nations already, so adding Greenland to the ledger would be fairly uncomplicated.

A more American Greenland, no matter the legal form that takes, would be a boon to our national interests. In an era of multipolar great-power conflict, the likes of which we have not seen in decades, American security cannot be taken for granted. We have already begun to reinforce our southern approaches, removing Nicolás Maduro and pressuring the Venezuelan regime. It is time we start in the north as well. Greenland serves as a critical bulwark against adversarial penetration of our hemisphere, but it needs strengthening. Only America is situated to do that. Not only would it make us safer; it would be of great benefit to Greenland and Denmark alike. This is a win-win situation, if we choose to take it. The Trump administration should keep the strategy but change the tactics.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

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