President Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken about his quest for the U.S. to take over Greenland—Newsweek has spoken to experts to break down what this could look like.
The president has said he wants the autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark to be under the control of the U.S.
“We need Greenland for national security and international security,” he recently told reporters in the Oval Office.
Some experts are skeptical this could happen and politicians in Greenland and Denmark have firmly rejected the idea, but the U.S. administration appears undeterred.
America will “go as far as we have to go” to gain control of Greenland, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office ahead of a visit to the island by Vice President JD Vance and his wife, a trip that Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen described as placing “unacceptable pressure” on Greenland and Denmark.
While there has even been some talk of a military invasion, there are other ways America could gain control of the Arctic territory, such as free association, which is the ability to maintain self-government along with a voluntary and mutual partnership with a sovereign state.
Any such move would have far-reaching consequences—on the governance of Greenland and the dynamics of U.S. defense, but also in changing geopolitics, with the U.S. and Greenland both part of NATO and the increasing importance of the Arctic in global security.
History of America’s Relationship with Greenland
America has had a military presence in Greenland since World War II, when the island was still a Danish colony and Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany.
In 1941, Washington made a deal with exiled Danish officials to establish military bases in Greenland to work against German influence. It built the Pituffik Space Base, called the Thule Air Base at the time, which became a key strategic site during the Cold War for monitoring Soviet missile launches.
Trump is not the first U.S. president to float the idea of taking control of Greenland, with examples reaching as far back as 1867, when the Andrew Johnson administration looked into buying the island after the Alaska deal, in which America bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million.
The most serious bid to incorporate Greenland was made in 1946, when former President Harry S. Truman made a post-World War II offer to buy the island from Denmark for $100 million in gold, which was refused.
Trump first mentioned his desire to acquire Greenland during his first term, in 2019, which Denmark rejected, and has made this quest a major focus of his current administration.
“The previous offers from the U.S. were at an earlier time in international law where these ‘deals’ were made between colonial states, without regard to the intentions of the people concerned,” said Rachael Lorna Johnstone, a professor of law at the University of Akureyri, Iceland, who specializes in polar law and policy.
“The Greenlanders have never been asked their opinion—until perhaps now,” she told Newsweek.
How Likely Is an American Takeover of Greenland?
Legal scholar William C. Banks, who specializes in national security law at New York’s Syracuse University, called the idea of Greenland becoming a U.S. state “almost surely a pipe dream of Trump.”
“Greenland would have to request statehood, itself a ridiculously remote prospect,” he told Newsweek. “Clashes with Denmark and the EU would be legion, and if the U.S. attempted to take Greenland by force it would be waging an unlawful war.”
Similarly, Dr. Romain Chuffart, the President and Managing Director of The Arctic Institute, told Newsweek: “The scenario of Greenland becoming the 51st state of the United States is highly unlikely.”
“Any decision regarding sovereignty, statehood, or territorial integration would thus fundamentally rest with Greenland’s own democratic processes and would require comprehensive negotiations and approval through established legal and democratic mechanisms within Greenland and Denmark,” he said.
A commonly cited opinion poll, carried out by Verian, commissioned by the Danish newspaper Berlingske and Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq, showed that 85 percent of Greenlanders do not want to become part of the U.S.
But most Greenlanders are also in favor of independence from Denmark, something Trump seems to be trying to leverage. He said in a speech on March 25: “We strongly support your right to determine your own future. And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America.”
Geography research scholar Barry Scott Zellen, Ph.D, of the University of Connecticut, who is a senior fellow in Arctic security at the Institute of the North, told Newsweek: “It is possible that Greenlanders may, once the conversation starts, find the benefits of statehood and being part of our constitutional fabric brings many advantages, and select this as the final sovereign form.”
Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, specializing in Arctic politics, disagreed.
He told Newsweek: “Greenlanders have almost unanimously—in the only credible polls conducted, in the recent election, in public statements from all the leaders of the political parties, and in the public response to the planned visit by the Vance couple—rejected the idea that they should in any shape or form be part of the USA.”
What Could an American Takeover of Greenland Look Like?
While Trump’s messaging has mainly focused on “acquiring” Greenland, he has not ruled out using military action.
Zellen said that a military takeover of Greenland would be “quick and largely bloodless,” arguing that “because Greenland is an ally with a long U.S. role as its defender, it may feel friendlier and be less opposed to an American takeover.”
In this scenario, “one can, in this case, envision the creation of some sort of ‘provisional authority,'” Zellen continued, citing Iraq in 2003, after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, and the Coalition Provisional Authority was put in power, “helmed by an American administrator who cultivated the formation of a new, friendly government.”
But others were less convinced, with Gad calling the idea of a military takeover “ridiculous.”
He told Newsweek: “Greenland is not a territory that lends itself to military takeover: It is a huge chunk of ice surrounded by a rocky strip of land interspersed with sharp mountains and deep, ice-filled forms. No two settlements connected by road, once landed, the invaders would go nowhere.”
He warned that “any invasion of the Arctic archipelago is bound to turn into a search and rescue operation,” asking what a forced takeover would even mean.
“A handful of U.S. Marines taking over police duties in each village of 20-200 citizens? U.S. gunboats keeping container ships from bringing in consumer goods from Denmark? A CIA operative forcing the prime minister to sign a declaration of allegiance to President Trump at gunpoint?”
Gad said: “Trump’s claims to the island can only be realized in a breach of international law as built not least by the USA since World War II. Hence, all discussion of hypothetical U.S. statehood for Greenland in effect provides credibility to a fake reality meant to intimidate Greenlanders into submission.”
Similarly, the Arctic Institute’s Chuffart said: “From an international legal standpoint, unilateral annexation or a forced acquisition of Greenland would constitute a clear violation of international law, notably territorial integrity and the right to self-determination.”
But most serious conversations about a Greenland takeover focus on some sort of deal.
“The Trump administration is consistent in its messaging in wanting to acquire Greenland, and in sending high-level (albeit uninvited) delegations there to start a conversation,” Connecticut scholar Zellen said. “So it is clear there is a desire in Washington for consent and for a negotiated solution that has thus far been met by much resistance among the ruling elites of Greenland and Denmark.”
He also said a strategy may be for America to “drive a wedge between two domestic stakeholders and switch our support from one to the other in the interest of long-term peace.”
“Denmark loses sovereignty and in its place an independent Greenland emerges under America’s direct protection,” he added.
Legal scholar Banks said that “hypothetically,” for Greenland to become a state, “Congress would have to enact a statute admitting Greenland (to the U.S.) and the president would then sign the bill, making it a law and adding Greenland.”
But he added: “If the people and government of Greenland/Denmark remain opposed it is hard to see how governance as a state could work.”
The Possible Fallout of an American Takeover of Greenland
Backlash has already begun with an anti-Trump protest taking place outside the U.S. consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, earlier this month. People were seen carrying signs saying “Yankee Go Home” and wearing MAGA-style “Make America Go Away” hats.
Zellen, of the University of Connecticut, said this was “reminiscent of anti-American protests around the world during the Cold War and the Global War on Terror.”
Also predicting protests, law professor Johnstone said: “The elected representatives are all more or less unified on the message that Greenlanders do not wish to be governed by a foreign power, be it Denmark, the U.S. or anyone else. They wish to be Greenlanders.”
But the fallout of any moves by Washington to force Greenland to acquiesce with its wishes would be felt far and wide.
Jim Townsend, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy at the Pentagon until 2017, told Newsweek that NATO “would never recover.”
“It would be just a horrendous catastrophe for the transatlantic relationship, or NATO or U.S. relations with Europe and the rest of the world,” he said. “It would hand a huge victory to Russia and to China.”
At an Arctic forum in Murmansk in northern Russia, President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. efforts to take over Greenland would have global impacts.
He called Trump’s plans “serious” and with “long-standing historical roots,” saying it is “deeply mistaken to believe that this is some kind of extravagant talk of the new American administration.”
“As for Greenland, this is a question that concerns two specific countries and has nothing to do with us,” he said. “But at the same time, of course, we are only concerned about the fact that NATO countries as a whole are increasingly designating the Far North as a staging area for possible conflicts.”
Putin added: “Russia has never threatened anyone in the Arctic. But we are closely monitoring the development of the situation, building an adequate response line, increasing the combat capabilities of the armed forces and modernizing military infrastructure facilities.”
He made these comments a day before Vance and his wife were set to arrive in Greenland, for a trip which has seen its itinerary stripped back to a one-day visit to Pituffik.
Read the full article here
