It was the summer of 2019 and President Trump was about to embark on a state visit to the tiny Nordic country of Denmark.
Both parties were readying themselves for bilateral talks, but that was before President Trump floated one of his famous spontaneous trial balloons.
Trump said that he had had a conversation with the Danish prime minister, stating that the U.S. might be interested in purchasing the island of Greenland. He said that the concept came up and he said that he would be interested in the purchase from a strategic point of view.
This did not sit well with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, who has been described by some as being a bit too assertive with her comments from time to time.
She reportedly told the president in a news broadcast that: “Greenland is not for sale. It is not Danish. Greenland belongs to Greenland. I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously.”
Then, she capped off her remarks with a trigger word. She called Trump’s suggestion “absurd.” And anyone who knows Trump knows that he doesn’t take kindly to public criticism of this kind, especially with words like “absurd.” Trump promptly canceled the visit and called the PM’s remark “nasty.”
Everybody jumped on Trump. This included the Danish media, the American media, the former U.S. ambassador to Denmark, and others who were super critical of his decision. But though no opinion polling was done in Denmark, it seemed clear that the Danish prime minister had “stepped in it.” (The Danish phrase is: stepped in the spinach). The Danish foreign ministry was quickly called to a cleanup on aisle three, as were the spin doctors in the Danish government, which led to a subsequent softened statement by the Danish PM, who said she didn’t want to get into a “war of words” with the president.
The New York Times reported in August 2019 that: “In Denmark, a small country with powerful neighbors, commitment to international alliances is bedrock policy, and polite, measured political debate is the norm. Ms. Frederiksen usually reflects that orthodoxy, but she has occasionally demonstrated a sharp tongue — by Danish standards — and skepticism about the United States; she made a splash early in her career by comparing American policy on women’s reproductive rights to Saudi Arabia’s.”
The mouse that roared had antagonized the cat and needed to seek shelter in the form of a few well-placed public statements designed to deflect any criticism of the PM’s assertiveness and perhaps her instinct to shoot from the hip in addressing the leader of the free world with a trigger word like ‘absurd.’
To her credit, and probably with the urging of her foreign minister, she did walk back her statement.
There are many ways to diplomatically answer a question of this nature, but we do not live in a hypothetical world. Leaders like Trump and the Danish PM did not get where they are by being nice. In Danish, the word “absurd” is only a nice way of saying “crazy,” and while Trump’s suggestion to buy Greenland might have sounded absurd (to them), they didn’t do themselves any favors with Trump by saying so publicly.
Now to the facts …
According to the Nordic Council of Ministers, “Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark but has wide-ranging autonomy, which was extended in 2009. However, this does not include foreign and security policy or currency policy. It has self-government within the kingdom of Denmark.”
The island has a population of 60,000 and is six times the size of Germany. Denmark supports Greenland with a block grant to the tune of $600 million annually.
While Greenland is technically owned by Denmark, it has been autonomously ruled since 1979.
Since 2009, it can, in fact, declare full independence if the Greenlanders wish to pursue it, but a referendum would need to be held before any such action could take place.
Recent polling indicates that as many as two-thirds of the Greenlandic people support an independent state.
Should a referendum be held and total autonomy becomes the Greenlanders’ choice, then they would be free to accept President Trump’s (or any other country’s) offer.
The history of how this came to be is instructive:
At the end of the first part of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe in 1814, the Treaty of Kiel gave full sovereignty of Greenland to the Danes. The island was a territory and not independent but directly controlled by the Danish government.
They held this control until 1953, when Denmark redrafted its Constitution and Greenland was incorporated under Danish rule. In 1979, the country was granted what they called home rule, but the Danes continued to be in charge of foreign relations, defense, currency matters, and the legal system.
In 1941, the Roosevelt administration signed an agreement with the Danes to build airstrips and establish a base of operations on the island as a strategic bulwark against the growing Nazi conquest of Europe (at the time, Denmark was under Nazi occupation, but the government was represented in Washington by an independent “free Denmark” embassy which was able to negotiate and sign the agreement for the Danes). This agreement is still in effect today.
Greenland is in a prime geostrategic location. Any country having a port there could shortcut the transportation of goods to the U.S. from Asia and operate a strategic military base of operations. Both the Russians and the Chinese are very interested in pursuing this ambition. For a geopolitical timeline for Greenland, please see the Clingendael Report from June 2020.
The U.S. interest in Greenland is not only geopolitical but economic and defense-related.
The island has vast reserves of natural resources like iron ore, lead, zinc, rare earth elements, uranium, and oil.
The U.S. already maintains a radar station there that is part of the U.S. ballistic missile early warning system. The base at Thule (pronounced ‘too lee’) is also used by the U.S. Air Force Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
From that same Clingendael Report:
In 2008, Greenlanders voted in favour of the Self-Government Act. This Act provided the Greenlandic authorities with increased autonomy, including the possibility ‘to negotiate and conclude international agreements with foreign states and international organisations, which exclusively concern Greenland and entirely relate to the fields of responsibility taken over by Greenland.’ Matters that directly affect defence and security policy are not covered by the Self-Government Act. Nevertheless, this Act leaves room for Greenland to conclude agreements with foreign states, including China.
Countries do buy one another from time to time, so why not Greenland?
In the U.S., much of our land was purchased from foreign powers. In 1803, there was the Louisiana Purchase from France. In 1819, there was the Florida Treaty with Spain, and in 1867, the U.S. purchased Alaska ($7.2 million) from Russia. We even bought the Danish West Indies Islands (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) from Denmark in 1917 for a cool $25 million.
For a list of territories purchased by countries over time, see Wikipedia’s list.
The bottom line is that Greenland is important and not some imaginary property on the Monopoly game board. If Trump is really interested in what could be the largest real estate purchase of his lifetime, I expect he will pursue it in much the same way that he has approached many other real estate deals by stressing the mutually beneficial aspects of such a purchase.
In the case of Greenland, the island would benefit from having a friendly owner country with the power and funds to “Make Greenland Great,” while the U.S. would secure a very critical geopolitical region of the world from either Russian or Chinese hegemonic pursuits. Now that Trump will become president again, the issue could come up again a second time.
Stephen Helgesen is a retired career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in 30 countries for 25 years during the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush Administrations. He is the author of fourteen books, seven of which are on American politics and has written over 1,400 articles on politics, economics and social trends. He can be reached at: stephenhelgesen@gmail.com
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