Greenland prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has said that the island’s 57,000 residents will not be bullied by the US into selling its sovereignty to its giant neighbour. In 1946, Denmark, of which the semi-autonomous island is part, refused the Truman administration’s offer of $100 million in gold for Greenland. The answer remains unchanged.
And yet, again this week, US president Donald Trump has revived his ambition to annex Greenland, by force if necessary – at least according to one senior official – or by purchase. “We need Greenland,” he said. “It’s so strategic.”
A third option mentioned by the White House is a new form of association between the two, its scope unclear. Under a 75-year-old defence agreement, the US already has the only military base in Greenland and the island authorities have been open to it expanding its presence and to encouraging US investment in extracting rare minerals.
Under the terms of this agreement, the US is supposed to consult Denmark and Greenland before making “any significant changes” in its military operations on the island and it explicitly recognises it as “an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark”. The latter, and the right of Greenlanders to determine their own future, were rightly underlined by European leaders this week.
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And yet, the relative ease, without conceding sovereignty, with which the island could meet Trump’s strategic need to counteract supposed Russian and Chinese Arctic threats, as well as his demand for easy access to rare earths, suggests that the US president is in reality primarily concerned with territorial aggrandisement.
Beyond his immediate territorial ambitions, Trump’s abandoning of US international treaty obligations, to Venezuela, Greenland, to the UN and to Nato, is deeply alarming. The fraying of the international rule of law at the whim of the world’s most powerful country is undermining the multilateral system that has evolved since the second World War. Trump is making the world a more dangerous place.
