They Really Just Might Invade Greenland
It’s time to take Trump’s threats seriously.
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They’re all in on Greenland.
On Friday, the most senior American delegation ever to set foot on Greenland arrived at Pituffik Space Base, in the island’s north. Speaking to U.S. troops, JD Vance kept up the aggressive rhetoric of the administration: “Our message to Denmark is very simple,” he said. “You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.”
Donald Trump has been even more explicit. He first floated the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark during his first term in office. Since then, this seemingly fanciful notion has become a constant refrain. Announcing his pick as America’s next ambassador to Denmark just before Christmas, Trump wrote 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.”
He continued on the same theme in a fiery 45-minute phone call with Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s Prime Minister, briefly before taking office1 and in his address to a Joint Session of Congress in early March.2 This week, he was even more blunt. Speaking at the White House while Vance was visiting Greenland, Trump repeatedly insisted that “We need to have Greenland.”
The notion that America could annex the sovereign territory of Denmark, a longstanding ally and a founding member of NATO, is so absurd that most people have so far refused to take it seriously. And it is certainly true that Trump loves to troll his political opponents, beckoning them into the trap of denouncing his half-joking pronouncement in overly moraline terms.
But over the last days and weeks, the Trump administration has signaled in every way possible that it really does mean to expand American control over the Arctic island. And while a forcible American annexation of Greenland would have disastrous consequences—both for America and for the world—the prospect of such an action is now far less remote than has widely been assumed. It is time to take seriously the possibility of an American annexation of Greenland.
A detective evaluating potential suspects in a murder case is going to ask who had motive, means, and opportunity to commit such a heinous act. The same framework can be helpful for evaluating whether statesmen are about to take an extreme step, such as invading another country. And, however extraordinary it would be for the United States to annex the territory of a longstanding ally, the simple fact of the matter is that Trump has all three.
Some of the reasons why Trump wants America to play a greater role in Greenland are perfectly sensible. As ice caps are melting, the waters around Greenland are becoming more navigable. This potentially allows Russia, with its extensive ports in the Barents Sea, and China, whose shipbuilding capacity now dwarfs that of the West, to encroach on North America’s security in new ways. Indeed, both countries have projected strength in the waters around Greenland over the course of the last years in ways that really are concerning.
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NATO’s current military installations on Greenland do not sufficiently protect against these dangers. America’s presence on the island has over the years dwindled from seventeen bases that were home to thousands of soldiers to one base that hosts about 150 soldiers. Denmark’s presence, meanwhile, is limited to a handful of ships, a few dozen soldiers, and an elite dog sled patrol.
This problem has long been recognized by military analysts. And it has, despite his understandable complaints about the hostile tone from the Trump administration, also been acknowledged by Denmark’s foreign secretary. According to Løkke Rasmussen, “We respect that the United States needs a greater military presence in Greenland… We—Denmark and Greenland—are very much open to discussing this with you.”
Rasmussen is right that all of this could be done in close coordination between Denmark and the United States, either within the terms of an existing 1951 defense agreement or on the basis of a new treaty. The problem is that Trump’s motives for bullying Denmark go far further than these legitimate security concerns.
The second part of Trump’s motive has to do with natural resources. Estimates about their prevalence in Greenland vary greatly. But the administration appears convinced that enormous reservoirs of oil, gas, and rare earth materials will eventually be found. This makes Greenland an obvious place to put into action Trump’s emerging foreign policy doctrine: shrink the area over which America has hegemony but extract more value from the places where it does.
Trump’s view of foreign policy is, as I have argued in the past, shaped by two fundamental assumptions. He believes that the world is rightfully split into spheres of influence, with local hegemons free to act as they wish in their own regions. And he has a zero-sum view of the world, which posits that the only way for America to win is for somebody else to lose. Combined, these two assumptions make the effective acquisition of Greenland very tempting: America would finally be acting with the requisite ruthlessness to pursue the country’s material interests without regard to the sensibilities of its supposed allies.
The final, and probably the most important, motive is personal. Trump is clearly invested in securing a lasting legacy; there’s a reason why he takes evident delight in memes that portray his face added to the pantheon of great presidents carved into Mount Rushmore. And adding 836,000 square miles of territory would, for better or worse, be sure to earn Trump a lasting place in the history books. He could then boast of being the president who has brought about the biggest ever expansion of American territory, beating both Thomas Jefferson (who presided over the Louisiana Purchase) and Andrew Johnson (who presided over the purchase of Alaska).
It is clear that Trump has a strong motive to take over Greenland. It is also increasingly evident that he has the means, and the opportunity to do so.
As the White House weighs whether it should turn Trump’s rhetoric into reality, it likely is trying to assess two questions: Can the United States take and hold the territory without undue expense of blood and treasure? And how would a forcible acquisition of Greenland affect Trump’s popularity back home?
The first of these questions is easy to answer. The United States retains the biggest military in the world, with over 1,300,000 active duty personnel and a budget of about $968 billion. It already possesses a base in Greenland. Its troops have significant fighting experience. Denmark, by contrast, has a tiny army, with about 21,000 active duty personnel and a budget of $7 billion. Its military presence in Greenland is negligible. And most of its soldiers have little or no fighting experience. Any armed conflict would, as one Danish military analyst recently joked, be “the shortest war in the world.”
It is harder to predict what a military occupation would look like. Greenlanders have no love lost for Denmark; but it is equally clear that they don’t want to swap their historic European colonizer for a new star-spangled one from America. If the White House believes that Greenlanders would welcome American troops with open arms, they are engaging in the same fantasy that tempted the last Republican president into a disastrous war of choice in Iraq.
But despite this apparent parallel, the dissimilarities between Iraq and Greenland are ultimately more significant.3 It is unlikely that the island’s tiny population, which has few weapons and no recent history of civic conflict, would be able or willing to mount sustained resistance to an invader. However cruel and unpopular, an occupation of Greenland likely wouldn’t prove so costly in either lives or treasure as to prove unsustainable.
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This brings us to the question of how the American public is likely to view an attempt to bring Greenland under the control of the United States. For now, most Americans strongly oppose a takeover of Greenland. According to one recent poll, only about a quarter of Americans currently favor the idea. In his Second Inaugural, Trump asked Americans to measure him by “the wars we never get into”; perhaps his keen sense of how quickly Americans sour on unnecessary military adventures will ultimately dissuade him from invading the territory of an allied nation.
But it is hardly a foregone conclusion that an invasion of Greenland would prove to be punishingly unpopular. If Americans manage to get control of the island quickly and effectively subdue any attempts at resistance, some who now oppose the idea may credit Trump with pulling off a major coup that no other modern president would even have entertained. Democrats who rightly oppose such an operation could then find themselves on the back foot; it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see Trump denouncing them as unpatriotic cowards who wantonly stand in the way of his plan to Make America Great Again.
Make no mistake: A forcible invasion of Greenland would be a disaster for both America and the world.
Any such invasion would spell the effective end of NATO. It is hard to see how a military alliance premised on mutual defense can survive its most powerful member annexing the territory of another—especially since its original purpose was for America to protect Europe against outside aggression. The move would make Europe much less safe, further fueling Russia’s ambitions for territorial expansion, and ultimately weakening America.
An invasion of Greenland would also give China a permission slip to bring Taiwan under the control of the CCP. After all, Beijing’s historic claims over Taipei are hardly less plausible than Washington’s historic claims over Nuuk—and it is difficult to see how Trump could effectively impose sanctions on China for taking Taiwan right after he himself has annexed Greenland.
Finally, any such action would be the final nail in the coffin of the postwar order. Any pretense that the world is governed by international law would then be over. Many supposed norms of international law have long been honored more in the breach than in the observance. But it is hard to see how even basic norms that have historically had some success in restraining powerful states, like the prohibition on territorial aggression, could survive such a blatant breach of the UN Charter.
All of this helps to explain why a forcible annexation of Greenland would ultimately also harm U.S. interests. To trade in the most stable and powerful military alliance in modern history for control over a frigid and sparsely populated island—plus a place for Trump in the history books—is a bad deal for the American people. But that doesn’t mean that the Trump White House will see things the same way.
Trump has been consistently hostile to NATO. If he can “inadvertently” end NATO as a side effect of enlarging America’s territory rather than by unilaterally declaring his withdrawal from the alliance, that might seem to him like a feature rather than a bug. The same goes for America’s role in upholding the norms of international law: Given his penchant for a world order based on spheres of influence, he may not mind that regional hegemons would interpret his invasion of Greenland as an implicit permission slip to impose their will in their own parts of the world.
Trump has the motive, the means, and the opportunity to take over Greenland. Even so, the idea that America might really invade Greenland remains outlandish, and he does have a long history of desisting from his most outrageous demands. All in all, it probably remains more likely that America and Denmark will ultimately work out some kind of negotiated agreement about enhanced military cooperation.
Denmark has already signalled its willingness to cooperate on protecting the legitimate security interests of the United States—interests that European countries very much share. Perhaps Trump’s pressure campaign will also force Denmark to sweeten the pot, maybe by allowing American companies to explore the island’s natural resources or by leveraging the influence of Danish pharmaceutical giants. After all, why let the art of the deal stop at geopolitics? Instead of celebrating the annexation of Greenland at his next State of the Union, Trump might just be crowing over half-priced Ozempic.
And yet, the betting markets are right to take seriously the possibility that Trump might take over Greenland. My own best guess is that there is about a one in three chance of this happening by the end of his term. And given how catastrophic the consequences of such a misadventure would likely prove, those odds are far from reassuring.
As one person briefed on the call told the Financial Times, “He was very firm. It was a cold shower. Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But I do think it is serious and potentially very dangerous.”
“We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it. But we need it, really, for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”
Iraq has a population of 47 million; Greenland has a population of 57,000. Iraqi insurgents received money and weapons from powerful neighbors across porous borders; Greenland is a remote island that is unlikely to receive similar assistance. Iraqi fighters and suicide bombers were enticed by the promise of a martyr’s reward in heaven; Greenland is one of the most secular societies in the world.
A bad as the Iraq War was, I never bought the argument it was an example of US "imperialism," since the (wildly optimistic) postwar vision by the Bush Administration of Iraq resembled post-WW2 Germany and Japan rather than a typical 18th Imperial occupation. The Bush Administration also justified the invasion on the (exaggerated but real) threat Saddam Hussein posed to neighboring countries and, to a lesser extent, American interests.
However, it's hard to see Trump's designs on Greenland, or the Panama Canal, as anything but an expression of naked imperialism. Greenland poses no threat to the US whatsoever and any of the supposed benefits from annexation of Greenland could easily be had with Denmark and the Greenland government as they currently stand. Trump's desire to make territorial annexation part of his "legacy" is plainly an imperialist sentiment by design.
We are clearly moving into a world where any pretence of a rules based order is exposed as a sham. The three most powerful nations in the world all have territorial ambitions - two always had, and the US sounds like it has joined them. Is imperialism back in vogue?
The consequences of a US annexation of Greenland could be very far reaching. Such an act has the potential to trigger a sequence of events which will lead to the collapse of the supranational institutions dependent on the concept of 'international law', a global rush to rearm (much of which will be nuclear - ending any hope of nuclear non-proliferation), and the formation of new alliances and power blocs to replace those that are ended by the Greenland invasion.
It's hard to see where the instability caused by such an action will end. I don't think it will make any of us safer or more prosperous.