Buying Greenland: A Great Idea

This article was written by Judge (Ret.) John Wilson

Recently, President Donald Trump floated the idea of purchasing Greenland from Denmark. In response, the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, called the idea “absurd,” which in turn, prompted the President to cancel a planned visit to Denmark.

Immediately, the question arose – Does Denmark even own Greenland? According to a BBC profile, Greenland “is the world’s largest island and an autonomous Danish dependent territory with limited self-government and its own parliament.” With a population of approximately 57,000 spread across 840,000 square miles, two thirds of Greenland’s revenue comes from Denmark. The other one third derives from fishing.”

While many have made fun of the President’s ambitions, including the former Prime Minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who pointedly asked if this was a joke in a recent tweet, even the New York Times had to admit that purchasing Greenland was not such a bad idea. “The island sits atop a trove of rare-earth metals, a category whose mining and export is increasingly dominated by China. It also has national security importance to the United States, which maintains its northernmost missile-warning, space surveillance and deepwater seaport at the Thule Air Base on Greenland’s northwestern coast.”

In fact, Thule Air Base is situated in Greenland as a result of the last attempt by an American President to buy the island from Denmark.

In 1946, President Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million in gold for Greenland. As reported by the Washington Post, the proposal was also rejected out of hand by the Danes. “After floating the proposal at (a) December 1946 meeting in New York, Secretary of State James Byrnes wrote in a telegram that his overture ‘seemed to come as a shock’ to Danish Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen…(u)ltimately, Denmark’s refusal to sell Greenland to the United States wasn’t a major obstacle. In 1951, the two countries entered into a defense treaty that allowed the Pentagon to build Thule Air Base, its northernmost military installation.”

Though the Cold War has been over for years, making the Truman Administration’s rationale for seeking the purchase of Greenland no longer of primary importance, Greenland is still possessed of a wealth of mineral resources. In fact, besides gold, iron-ore, and rubies, Greenland is also a potential source of uranium, oil, natural gas, fluoride and thorium. Since most of the country sits under ice for most of the year, however, mining those precious elements has been one issue. Another has been the concerns of environmentalists who do not wish to have Greenland’s pristine environment disturbed by mining.

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When viewed in a larger context, President Trump’s proposal begins to make even more sense. According to the Washington Times, in 2017, the Prime Minster of Greenland flew to China to ask for financial assistance, after the Danish Government refused to provide any additional funding. The Chinese only withdrew after then-Defense Secretary James Mattis convinced the Danes to fund the infrastructure improvements Greenland had sought.

The populaton of Greenland, is mostly Inuit, an indigenous group spread across the arctic regions, including Alaska and Canada. But rather than engage in mining their own resources and enriching themselves, the Inuit live in poverty. The reason? The aforementioned concerns of environmentalists. According to James Pinkerton, “the Danes have chosen to treat the territory…like a giant nature preserve,” leaving the Intuit with nothing but fishing to support themselves and their families.

Clearly, if the Trump Administration were to purchase Greenland, and open the territory up for mining, the Inuit would find themselves employed, and enjoying a higher standard of living then they do under their Danish rulers.

This is not the first time the opposition has made light of a President’s aspirations. In the early 1800’s, the Federalist Party opposed Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory. The 1867 purchase of Alaska from Czarist Russia was ratified by only one vote, and was largely derided as “Seward’s Folly,” in honor of then-Secretary of State William Seward. However, all laughter ceased with the discovery of large deposits of gold in the Alaska territory in 1898.

If nothing else, the mere idea that the United States could purchase Greenland, and keep that territory’s valuable resources out of the hands of the Chinese shows that President Trump is thinking on a grand scale. Perhaps Make America Great Again is more than just a slogan to this President.

Picture: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.