Greenland for Christmastime

The Trump Administration has revived its imperialist fantasies about taking over Greenland from Denmark, which is an autonomous territory (province) of the nation of Denmark. (1)

If you’re wondering about the title of this post, no, I’m not spending Christmas in Greenland. Or in any other part of Denmark.

But the Trump 2.0 regime has revived its threats against Denmark to seize Greenland from it. Trump himself seems to become more unpredictable and less coherent by the day. But at this point, Denmark and its European allies have to assume that Trump will continue to pressure Denmark over Greenland. And they can’t ignore the repeated threats by the US to take military action to do so. Despite the fact that Greenland has had very close security cooperation with the US since the end of the Second World War.

Trump has appointed the Republican Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, as a “special envoy” to the Danish province of Greenland. Special envoys these days are often appointed as specialists for particular issues. Landry has initially been pretty explicit about his view of the goal is the seizure of Danish territory:

In response to a question from the BBC about the new role of Jeff Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana, Trump said the US needed Greenland for "national protection" and that "we have to have it".

Landry, he said, would "lead the charge" as special envoy to Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

The move has angered Copenhagen, which said it would call the US ambassador for "an explanation". Greenland's prime minister said the island must "decide our own future" and its "territorial integrity must be respected".

Gov Landry said in a post on X that it was an honour to serve in a "volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US". ...

He has refused to rule out using force to secure control of the island, a stance that has shocked Denmark, a Nato ally that has traditionally enjoyed close relations with Washington.

"We'll have to work that out," Trump added. "We need Greenland for national security, not minerals." [my emphasis] (2)

Polls in Greenland show that a majority of its 57 thousand citizens would prefer to be an independent nation. But if anyone imagines that Trump’s territorial ambitions there are have anything to do with anti-imperialist principles of international law, well, they’re wrong. The Kingdom of Denmark is a country but not a federation. Greenland would have the formal option to secede and become an independent country like Iceland did in 1944. But Denmark’s Act on Greenland Self-Government of 2009 requires that a majority of the Danish Parliament, the Folketing, would have to approve it. A voluntary secession of Greenland to become a territory of the United States is highly unlikely. Greenland has more political clout over issues like the use of Greenlandic resources than it would ever have as a US state with a much smaller population than Wyoming, much less as a formal US territory, or with a Commonwealth status like Puerto Rico.

Of course, as an independent nation of 57,000 would be taking a huge risk in dealing with a rogue US government without being part of Denmark.

Gov. Landry is not especially fond of this whole rule-of-law things even in his own American state. As Charlie Pierce noted in April, “The state of Louisiana is on something of a law-and-order binge these days. Governor Jeff Landry is hot to kill more people. And the state also seems to be bound and determined to keep prisoners in prison by any means necessary, including faceless algorithms.” (3)

Oh, about those “information operations” that countries conduct against each other: “Denmark summoned the US chargé d’affaires in August [2025] for an urgent meeting over an alleged influence campaign after at least three US men with ties to Trump and the White House were accused of trying to infiltrate Greenlandic society.” (4)

Geopolitics happen

Greenland is important to US security. This is not new. And the US has long had a record of working with NATO ally Denmark to secure those interests. This map gives a good illustration of Greenland’s geographical position in between Russia and the US, including the location of the key US Thule Airbase: (5)

There has been some not-implausible speculation that part of Trump’s obsession with annexing Greenland may have to do with looking at flat maps of the Western Hemisphere, which makes Greenland look more gigantic than it is. But it is the world’s biggest island, and Greenland is “[m]ore than three times the size of the U.S. Texas. (6)

The Pituffik Space Base, plays a “crucial role in defense against missiles coming in from anywhere between North Korea and the Kola Peninsula, where Russian nuclear weapons are. So …, the nuclear posture of those two incidentally involves the Arctic in security dynamics that are not about the Arctic as such.” (7)

The caption to the map above notes:

The fastest way between the population centers in the US and the Soviet Union was via the North Pole and Greenland was, thus, the outermost outpost of the West towards the East [during the Cold War]. This explains the great interest of the US to have airbases here. …

it was first and foremost the Danish empire and not Denmark proper that was a member of the Western defense alliance. In recent years, the melting of the ice at the North Pole as a consequence of increased global heating has enabled new ship lanes and made a number of natural resources (minerals, oil) in Greenland and in the waters off Greenland accessible and possible to exploit. This has opened up for a number of economic opportunities in the Arctic, not only for Greenland, but also for great powers such as the US, Russia and China.

As Marc Jacobsen observed, Trump’s first-term fantasies about Greenland have intensified under Trump 2.0: “The first time – in the summer of 2019 – his idea of buying [Greenland] quickly fizzled out, but this time his interest is much more persistent and deeper.” (8)

Jacobsen goes on to recount some of the recent very ways that Denmark has used Trump’s demands to negotiate benefits for itself:

Even though Trump’s idea [of buying Greenland] was decisively rejected, since then [2019] there have been various concrete initiatives with the goal of strengthening the presence of the USA in Greenland and the bilateral relationships. Most notable were the opening of a US Consulate in the year 2020 and an economic package in the amount of $12.1 million, which would be invested to provide American consultant services for developing Greenland’s mining industry, tourism and education. At the same time, the role of Greenland on the international stage was strengthened, in that it was recognized as partner to be taken as an equal. These were reinforced in the following years among other ways by official state visits in Washington, D.C., Copenhagen and Nuuk.

This kind of thing was actually a continuation of the ways that Denmark has used its strategic position to gain benefits and secure its own place in the international system.

Here the stunning incompetence of Trump 2.0’s diplomacy shows itself again. Denmark has been very cooperative with the US for decades in cooperating on strategic security concerns. Here it seems that the old saying “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” would seem to be good advice for the US. But Trump’s team seems more oriented to the TechBro version, “If it’s not broke, break it.” Which was a predecessor of the “move fast and break things” motto.

But in general, it’s not a promising way to conduct diplomacy. Or, as Jacobsen puts it:

[T]he US already exercises de facto military control over Greenland, which plays an important role in deterring global and regional threats. In case the US wants to increase its military presence, that is already possible within the scope of existing defense treaties, and the government in Nuuk [Greenland] and Copenhagen should want to keep a door open for such a wish – above all, when it benefits Greenland.

As the leading military power in the world, it would in fact be easy for the US to march into Greenland, where they already have a strong military presence at their disposal. Should it do that, it would nevertheless encounter rejection by large parts of the world community, which would react sharply to such an aggressive and imperialist undertaking.

The problem is, of course, is that we have a government led by people such as Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth who don’t seem to be able to evaluate alternatives on big policies all that well. If the Trump 2.0 regime is really serious about what they projected in their 2025 National Security Strategy – treating European allies as enemies and trying to replace their governments with pro-Putting ones – then blatant and illegal military aggression against a long-standing and important ally like Denmark might strike them as a dandy idea.

Notes:

(1) Trump's new Greenland envoy: "We have to have it". DW News YouTube channel 12/23/2025. <https://youtu.be/YkVIKN6_Uuk?si=loVx0IRmYMmMvTvK> (Accessed: 20258-+23-12).

(2) Landale, James & Hagan, Rachel (2025): Trump says US 'has to have' Greenland after naming special envoy. BBC News 12/22/2025. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgmd132ge4o> (Accessed: 20258-23-12).

(3) Pierce, Charales (2025): The State of Louisiana Seems Bound and Determined to Keep Prisoners Incarcerated by Any Means Necessary. Esquire Politics 04/11/2025. <https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a64459902/louisiana-jeff-landry-parole-algorithm/> (Accessed: 20258-23-12).

(4) Henley, Jon (2025): You cannot annex other countries, Danish and Greenlandic leaders tell Trump. The Guardian 12/22/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/22/denmark-summon-us-ambassador-trump-greenland-envoy-appointment> (Accessed: 20258-23-12).

(5) Bregnsbo, Michael & Jensen, Kurt Villads (2022): The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, 225. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

(6) Rasmussen, Rasmus Ole (2025): Greenland. Encyclopedia Britannica 12/22/2025. <https://www.britannica.com/place/Greenland> (Accessed: 20258-23-12).

(7) Gad Ulrik Pram & Wæver, Ole & Jacobsen, Marc (2024): In: Greenland in Arctic Security, Chapter 11. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

(8) Jacobsen, Marc (2025): Das Interesse der USA an Grönland. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 38:2025, 11-18. <https://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/groenland-2025/570717/das-interesse-der-usa-an-groenland/> My translation from German to English.