Trump’s revival of Greenland takeover dismays Denmark
President Trump is drawing a backlash from Greenland and Denmark with the revival of his effort to acquire the world’s largest island.
Trump, who has repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring Greenland for the U.S., angered officials by tapping Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) as his envoy to Greenland.
He says Greenland is paramount to U.S. national security and that Landry’s goal will be to make the autonomous Danish territory “part of the U.S.”
This goal seems unlikely to be reached, given the irritated joint statement from Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen that Greenland “belongs” to Greenlandic people and that the U.S. “shall not take” the mineral-rich island that has a population of about 57,000 people.
But that’s unlikely to end Trump’s efforts, leaving analysts wondering if he’d be satisfied with some other alternative.
They also warn that the further the president pushes, the more blowback it would prompt from Europe and the international community.
“I think that this would be viewed, if it did go that direction, it would be viewed worldwide as the beginning of a new era, an era in which the United States was not just not supporting existing norms about sovereign territory, but also actively attempting to overturn those norms,” said Christopher Chivvis, a senior fellow and director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP).
Denmark was angry enough with Trump’s appointment of Landry, who took office as governor in January 2024, that the country’s foreign minister summoned the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery, to elaborate on the president’s remarks.
Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, said that Greenlandic officials recently met with Howery, but the administration’s plans to appoint Landry as envoy were not brought up.
“In Greenland nothing has changed. The future of our country is decided by the people of Greenland. We are not Danes. We are not Americans – and we do not wish to become so. We are Inuiaat Kalaallit, we are the people of Greenland,” the foreign minister said on Tuesday. “Our country belongs to us and it is not going to be controlled or owned by others.”
Trump has floated buying Greenland, which is just more than three times the size of Texas, with 80 percent of it covered in snow.
It’s also possible the U.S. could seek to gain influence through strategic investments, or by convincing Greenland’s government that Denmark is a bad partner.
Marc Jacobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College and an Arctic security expert, told The Hill this week that Landry’s appointment as envoy and appointment of venture capitalist Thomas Dans as head of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission “should be seen as new elements in this strategy.”
“In Greenland, however, these efforts are counterproductive as Greenlanders are seeing the U.S. as more and more antagonistic and a less desirable partner on the road to independence,” Jacobsen said.
Although some Greenlandic people are in favor of gaining full independence from Denmark, which has a say in the island’s foreign and defense policy posture, the large majority of residents are against joining the U.S.
The island, which is a part of Denmark and covered under NATO’s security guarantees, is loaded with mineral deposits, including zinc, lithium, graphite, nickel and copper — all critical minerals necessary in technology manufacturing. The president said on Monday that his interest in Greenland does not lie in the island’s mineral abundance, but rather in its strategic qualities.
“We need [Greenland’s] financial security, not for minerals. We have so many sites for minerals and oil and everything,” the president said while at Mar-a-Lago. “We have more oil than any other country in the world. We need Greenland for national security.”
“If you take a look at Greenland, you look up and down the coast, you have Russian and Chinese ships all over the place,” Trump told reporters. “We need it for national security. We have to have it.”
Chivvis, of CEIP, questioned what Trump’s endgame is and the potential benefits Washington would gain beyond what it already reaps from its relationship with Denmark, with whom it has a bilateral defense partnership, including patrols around the island.
“It’s not clear exactly what the president believes he’s going to get, maybe a slightly better deal on some of those fronts, but it would be paying an extraordinary cost for a very small benefit,” Chivvis told The Hill.
Denmark has looked to refurbish ties with Greenland in 2025 as its relationship has cooled in recent years over revelations about the past mistreatment of Inuit people by the Danes. At the same time, Denmark has looked to normalize relations with Washington, spending more on Arctic defense after criticism it had not done enough.
Vice President Vance visited the island in late March, stopping by the Pituffik Space Base, a U.S. Space Force Base located on the northwest coast of Greenland, and hammered Denmark for not prioritizing the island’s security. A week later, Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, went to Greenland, saying the U.S. cannot annex earth’s largest island and that both Denmark and Greenland want to “strengthen security” in the Arctic.
Landry, who previously advocated for Greenland to be a part of the U.S., said Monday the new role would not affect his governorship and claimed that Trump called him to help out Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On Tuesday, he billed the administration’s push as a chance for Greenland to experience economic benefits under Washington’s guidance and retain more strategic security.
“This is an opportunity for Greenland to be invited to [the] economic table with the United States, the strongest most advanced economy in the world. And we care. We care about them, with the fastest security route to give them the security and the protection,” the governor said during an appearance on Fox News.
Some European countries, including France and Sweden, reaffirmed Greenland’s territorial sovereignty, while top congressional Democrats on foreign policy-focused committees said the president is destroying U.S. relationships with allies and that he should direct his attention to Russia.
Analysts argued that if the situation intensifies, Europe might ramp up their pushback on Washington, including by possibly deploying European Union security services to closely monitor what the U.S. is doing in Greenland and raising the frequency of military exercises and investments in the region.
Although Chivvis, a former U.S. national intelligence officer in Europe, noted that Europe’s pushback against the U.S. would come with a “high cost for Europe itself.”
“So you could also see a point at which the solidarity that we’ve seen within Europe itself, within Europe for Denmark, begins to fall apart as the cost for individual countries like … Spain or Italy rises,” he said.
Jacobsen, of the Royal Danish Defence College, said there are enough people in the “right positions” to “pull the handbrake” on Trump’s idea of taking over Greenland and, ultimately, the administration’s push might yield a new defense agreement between the U.S., Greenland and Denmark, one that the president could count as a win.
“It might not be significantly different from the one already in place, but it could provide Trump with a visible outcome, which he could present as a victory,” Jacobsen said.
Now, whose job is it to tell him that it would have been impossible for us to have been there with boats three hundred years ago like Denmark since we were not a country three hundred years ago?
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
