US President Donald Trump wants to own Greenland. He has repeatedly said that the United States should control Strategic location and rich in minerals The island, a semi-autonomous region that is part of Denmark is a NATO ally.
Officials from Denmark, Greenland and the United States met on Thursday in Washington and will meet again next week to discuss reaching an agreement New batch from the White HouseWhich is considering a range of options, including the use of military force, to seize the island.
Trump said on Friday that he would do “something in Greenland, whether they like it or not.”
He added that if this is not done “the easy way, we will do it the hard way,” without explaining what that might entail. In an interview on Thursday, he told the New York Times that he wanted to own Greenland because “ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get just by signing a document.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that US control of Greenland would be a milestone The end of NATOGreenlanders say they do not want to become part of the United States
This is a look at some of the ways the United States could control Greenland and the potential challenges.
Trump and his officials have indicated they want to control Greenland to enhance American security and explore business and mining deals. But Omran Bayoumi, associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the sudden focus on Greenland is also a result of decades of neglect by many US presidents of Washington’s position in the Arctic.
The current focus is partly due to “the realization that we need to increase our presence in the Arctic, and we don’t yet have the right strategy or vision to do that,” he said.
If the United States takes Greenland by force, it will Plunging NATO into crisisAnd perhaps existential.
While Greenland is the largest island in the world, it has a population of about 57,000 and does not have its own army. Defense is provided by Denmark, whose army pales in comparison to that of the United States
It is unclear how the remaining members of NATO would react if the United States decided to take control of the island by force or if they would come to Denmark’s aid.
“If the United States chose to attack another NATO country militarily, everything would stop,” Frederiksen said.
Trump has said he needs to control the island to ensure American security, citing the threat posed by Russian and Chinese ships in the area, but “that’s not true,” said Lene Mortensgaard, an expert on international Arctic politics at the Danish Institute for International Studies, or DIIS.
Although there are likely Russian submarines, as is the case throughout the Arctic region, there are no surface submarines, Mortensgaard said. She added that China has research ships in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and while the Chinese and Russian armies conducted joint military exercises in the Arctic, they took place near Alaska.
Bayoumi, of the Atlantic Council, said he doubted Trump would take Greenland by force because it is unpopular with Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike and would likely “fundamentally change” US relations with its allies around the world.
The United States already has access to Greenland under the 1951 defense pact, and Denmark and Greenland would be “very happy” to accommodate the enhanced U.S. military presence, Mortensgaard said.
For this reason, “blasting NATO” over something Trump has already done makes no sense, said Ulrike Bram Gadd, a Greenland expert at DIIS.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a select group of US lawmakers this week that the Republican administration’s intention is to eventually buy Greenland, rather than using military force. Danish and Greenland officials had previously said the island was not for sale.
It is not clear how much it would cost to buy the island, or whether the United States would buy it from Denmark or Greenland.
Bayoumi said Washington could also strengthen its military presence in Greenland “through cooperation and diplomacy” without seizing it.
Judd said one option could be for the United States to have veto power over security decisions made by the Greenland government, as it did on islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands concluded a free association agreement with the United States
That would give Washington the right to operate military bases and make decisions about the islands’ security in exchange for U.S. security guarantees and about $7 billion in annual economic aid, according to the Congressional Research Service.
It is not clear to what extent this could improve Washington’s current security strategy. The United States already operates the remote Pitovik space base in northwest Greenland, and can bring in as many troops as it wants under existing agreements.
Greenlandic politician Aja Chemnitz told The Associated Press that Greenlanders want more rights, including independence, but do not want to become part of the United States.
Gadd suggested that influence operations to persuade Greenlanders to join the United States would likely fail. This is because the community on the island is small and the language is “inaccessible,” he said.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen He summoned a senior American official in Denmark in August to complain that “foreign actors” were seeking to influence the country’s future. Danish media reported that at least three people linked to Trump carried out secret influence operations in Greenland.
Judd said that even if the United States were able to control Greenland, it would likely come with a big price tag. This is because Greenlanders currently have Danish citizenship and have access to the Danish social welfare system, including free healthcare and education.
To match that, “Trump would have to build a welfare state for Greenlanders that he doesn’t want for his own citizens,” Judd said.
Since 1945, the U.S. military presence in Greenland has declined from thousands of soldiers at 17 bases and facilities to 200 at the remote Petovik Cosmodrome in the northwest of the island, Rasmussen said last year. The base supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the United States and NATO.
US Vice President J.D. Vance told Fox News on Thursday that Denmark had neglected its missile defense commitments in Greenland, but Mortensgaard said it “doesn’t make sense to criticize Denmark”, because the main reason the US operates the Petovik base in the north of the island is to provide early missile detection.
Judd said the best outcome for Denmark would be to update the defense agreement, which allows the United States to have a military presence on the island and for Trump to sign with a “gold-plated signature.”
But he noted that this was unlikely because Greenland was “easy to use” for the US president.
When Trump wants to change the news agenda — including distraction Internal political problems “He can just say the word ‘Greenland’ and start all over again,” Gadd said.