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The U.S. president-elect’s threats could lead the autonomous Arctic island to negotiate new terms in its relationship with Denmark.
By Regin Winther Poulsen, a multimedia journalist from the Faroe Islands.
Few would have imagined that just over one month later, Trump Force One, the private family airplane of the soon-to-be most powerful man in the world, would take off from West Palm Beach, Florida, and head to Nuuk’s new 2,200-meter runway. On board was Donald Trump Jr., who was on what seemed to be a public relations trip following his father’s stated desire to gain “ownership and control of Greenland.”
This is not the first time U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has voiced his desire to own the biggest island in the world, but this time is different because he has refused to assure the world that military force won’t be used. “The fact that he can’t assure us that he won’t use military force creates uncertainty,” said Bibi Nathansen, a journalist at Greenlandic broadcaster KNR. “What is it that he wants? Does he want more military bases here? Is he going to take Greenland by force?”
Trump’s rekindled interest in Greenland is the latest instance of superpower interest in the island. As Foreign Policy has previously reported, Greenland’s mineral wealth, the opening of shorter polar shipping routes due to melting ice, and the area’s security importance as the last barrier before North America in the event of a Russian attack have all been mentioned as reasons for its geopolitical significance. Moreover, China has tried to use Greenland to gain a foothold in the Arctic on several occasions, both with investment in potential construction of airports and mining. U.S. interest in Greenland largely has been about keeping out China, which controls most of the world’s rare minerals.
Most political parties on the autonomous island want to work toward total independence from Denmark. The wish for independence has roots going back decades, but it has grown stronger in the last 15 years. In recent years, there has also been growing tension about Denmark still controlling Greenlandic foreign policy, with Greenlandic politicians wanting more power to influence how geopolitics play out on their island.
Now, Trump’s comments have thrown local politics into turmoil—a development that could strengthen the island’s independence movement in its upcoming election, which are set to be held before April 6. The recent turmoil has shed light on how important Greenland is in global geopolitics and could hand the independence movement a strong campaign issue—advocating for talks with Denmark about more autonomy.
Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B. Egede, has expressed a desire to gain more control over the island’s foreign policy, which would mean more independence without cutting ties to its former imperial ruler. “It could go both ways,” said Kuupik Kleist, who was prime minister of Greenland from 2009 to 2013. “Today, Greenlanders are aggrieved by Trump’s latest comments about military and economic power.”
“It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Egede announced in his New Year’s address. His speech could have been an opening move in the election campaign, although one analysis predicted that there could be a referendum on total independence within the next election period. However, that was before Trump mentioned military and economic might as potential leverage to gain “ownership” of Greenland.
Denmark colonized Greenland in 1721, when Hans Egede, a Danish Norwegian missionary, first stepped on the ice in Nuuk. The island remained under Danish control until World War II, when the United States occupied and defended it. When the Danes moved back in after the war, they incorporated the island further by making it a Danish county. What followed was a catastrophic period of so-called modernization. People were forced to abandon their lifestyles in small villages to take up jobs in the bigger cities. The scars of imperial times have not healed, and in recent years, a new focus has been put on Danish sins in Greenland.
In 2022, Denmark apologized and provided compensation to six Greenlanders, who were the last surviving among 22 kids taken away from their families and sent to Denmark for boarding school as part of a 1950s modernization experiment. Last December, Egede commented on yet another scandal from the 1960s and ’70s, in which Greenlandic girls as young as 13 years old had IUDs inserted without their consent, ostensibly to control population growth. He called it a “genocide.”
However, while the shadows of imperialism still dominate Greenlandic policy, the island is not a colony or county of Denmark anymore. In 1979, Greenland gained home rule, and in 2009 it signed the Self-Government Act. Today, Denmark still controls security and foreign policy, while most internal affairs, including policy about the mining rights for rare minerals, in which Trump (and perhaps Elon Musk) has an interest, is under full Greenlandic control.
Greenland’s economy still depends on an annual financial support grant from Denmark, which amounts to around $500 million annually (around 20 percent of the island’s GDP). Some see mining as a way to become more economically independent, with one of the companies that wants to mine optimistically claiming that Greenland would get 1.5 billion Danish kroner (around $206 million) a year. However, there is a catch: If Greenland earns more than 75 million Danish kroner (around $10 million), the grant will be reduced. “If there is anything I could change with the self-government agreement, it would be that,” said Kleist, who became a consultant for one of the big mining projects in the country after leaving politics. “All the income should go to Greenland without offset in the Danish financial support.”
The upcoming election “should be a wake-up call for the Danish government that if they want to preserve the union with the Faroe Islands and Greenland, they have to make a greater effort,” Kleist said. Maria Ackrén, professor at the University of Greenland, said that Trump’s comments could have sparked long-needed negotiations on Greenland’s relationship with the Danish Kingdom . “What has been discussed is … free association or some sort of commonwealth or looser union with Denmark,” she said, adding that any new relationship would have to be approved by Greenlanders in a referendum.
Trump’s comments could also create a new kind of unity between Denmark and Greenland, if the government manages to negotiate more independence, which seems likely. “Danish and Greenlandic politicians all agree that Greenland is not for sale. That they agree that Greenlanders are not a commodity that can be sold, but a people,” said Nathansen. .
One recurring theme in the reaction to Trump’s statements has been shock—particularly at the comments that he wanted control over the island’s security. Denmark is one of Washington’s closest allies, and while Denmark resumed governing the island after World War II, the United States kept a military base there that is still active today. “The United States can already do whatever they want in Greenland militarily,” Kleist said.
Rasmus G. Bertelsen, a professor of international relations in Tromso, Norway, agreed. “In the last 10-15 years, the United States has pressured Denmark to pressure Greenland to exclude Chinese investment,” he explained. “But then you can ask yourself: In order to make sure that there’s no Chinese investment, science, or technology in Greenland, does the United States need to take over Greenland?”
The answer is obvious. On several occasions, Chinese investors were ready to open up for business in Greenland, but Denmark prevented it. When Greenland decided to start construction on two airports, including the one in Nuuk, Americans and Danes voiced concern that a Chinese construction firm was preapproved for the work on the critical infrastructure. The result was that the Danish prime minister at the time, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, and Kim Kielsen, then prime minister of Greenland, decided to explore Danish funding. In the end, the Danish government provided part of the funding for the airport to prevent Chinese investment.
“We in Europe have created, in my view, a very misleading narrative that the United States has been altruistic and benevolent to Europe,” Bertelsen explained. Trump might be more honest about Washington’s motives. “Now it’s just going to go for a transactional version, where there is no pretense of benevolence, there’s no pretense of being altruistic, there’s no pretense of providing global public goods.”
When Trump Force One returned to Florida, Trump Jr. was equipped with PR videos of Greenlanders in MAGA caps, telling Americans they were ready to be bought. One of the other passengers, conservative policy influencer Charlie Kirk, produced a nine-minute video about why Greenland should become “state 51.”
He talked about how rich Greenland could be with all the “rubies the size of baseballs” in the northern part of the island and all the other minerals in the ground just waiting to be taken up. “America should want those resources for our country,” Kirk said in the video and explained how the “socialist Greta Thunberg environmentalists from Copenhagen” couldn’t make the mining happen. In addition to the ridiculous statement that Denmark, which was ranked as the second-simplest place in the world to do business in the Global Business Complexity Index in 2023, is socialist, Kirk missed one key point: Greenlanders alone decided not to mine for rare minerals because of the fear of radioactive waste. Greenland’s last national election effectively became a referendum on the mines in the southern part of the island, and Greenlanders voted for the party that promised to halt the mining projects for environmental reasons—and has done so.
Trump may be on people’s minds when they go to the polls in the coming months. Recently, one of Greenland’s two representatives in the Danish Parliament, Aki-Mathilda Hoegh-Dam, called for Greenland to become an independent state. And when the Danish and Greenlandic leaders met with the press on Jan. 10, the message from Egede was clear. “Greenlanders don’t want to be Danish, and they don’t want to be American. They want to be Greenlandic,” he said.
In the foreground are about half a dozen small buildings close to the shore of an ocean bay. Several of the buildings are painted blue or green, but most of the paint is weather-faded from the elements. Out beyond the bay, a pale white iceberg larger than all the buildings combined floats on the water.
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