Why does Trump want Greenland?

Since the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, President Trump has ramped up threats to seize control of Greenland, which he has long argued should come under US control.

Trump has refused to rule out using military force to occupy the island, which the prime ministers of both Denmark and Greenland insist is not for sale.

The day after the operation in Caracas, Trump told reporters: “We need Greenland from a national security situation. It’s so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”

Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, has also questioned the right of Denmark to control the territory, and said that “nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland”.

Stephen Miller: Nobody will fight US over Greenland

The recent comments are a significant escalation, but it is not the first time that Trump has made claims towards the self-governing territory.

In last year’s state of the union address, Trump said he supported the island’s inhabitants to determine their own future. But he added: “We need it really for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”

Trump initially became interested during his first term in the White House after it was suggested by his friend Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics brand.

Trump said he saw it as a “large real estate deal” and became more convinced when he learnt more about the island’s strategic importance and the Arctic’s wealth of natural resources. He assigned a small team to prepare options including a long-term lease deal not dissimilar to a New York property agreement.

At a press conference in Mar-a-Lago two weeks before his second inauguration, Trump set out the underlying geopolitical reasons as a desire to secure Greenland “for protecting the free world”, suggesting that it was under threat from China and Russia.

Trump addresses the media in January 2025

Greenland, the world’s largest island, is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark that has its own language, flag and political institutions. Monetary, defence and foreign affairs fall under Danish control.

Norway ruled Greenland under an agreement with Norse settlers in 1261, coming under the union of Denmark, Sweden and Norway from 1397 to 1523 until Sweden departed, and finally falling under sole Danish sovereignty by the Treaty of Kiel of 1814.

Nuuk, the capital ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Greenland’s colonial status ended with the Danish constitution of 1953, remaining within the realm of Denmark. The Home Rule Act of 1979 gave Greenland’s legislature more autonomy and in 1985 it left the European Economic Community, forerunner of the EU. Greenland gained self-rule in 2009 but continues to receive an annual grant from Denmark. Its citizens retain EU as well as Danish citizenship as an overseas territory of the EU.

Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has insisted that the US cannot “simply conquer Greenland”.

“We are not in a situation where we think that there might be a takeover of the country overnight, and that is why we are insisting that we want good co-operation,” he said.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen with Mette Frederiksen, the Danish PM MADS CLAUS RASMUSSEN/AP

Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, warned that a move by the US to take over Greenland would result in the end of the Nato alliance.

“If the United States chooses to attack another Nato country militarily, then everything stops,” Frederiksen said. “That is, including our Nato and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War.”

Russia has previously issued a warning to the US over the territory. “The Arctic is a zone of our national interests, our strategic interests,” a Kremlin spokesman said after Trump’s press conference last year. “We are interested in preserving the atmosphere of peace and stability in the Arctic zone. We are watching the rather dramatic development of the situation very closely, but so far, thank God, at the level of statements.”

Greenland’s main export is fish but it is rich in largely untapped mineral and hydrocarbon resources. Fish and shrimp make up more than 95 per cent of exports and its biggest markets are Denmark (49 per cent in 2022) followed by China (24 per cent), Britain (6 per cent) and Japan (5 per cent).

Almost no minerals or hydrocarbons are produced for export after a ban on all new oil and gas exploration in 2021. Officials said the environmental price of oil extraction was too high despite estimates of billions of barrels worth of oil along the west coast and under the seabed of the east coast.

At the time the Greenland government said the ban was imposed “for the sake of our nature, for the sake of our fisheries, for the sake of our tourism industry and to focus our business on sustainable potentials”. The territory switched its energy development to hydropower because of concerns about climate change.

In 2021 Greenland’s parliament also passed a ban on uranium mining and on development of the Kuannersuit mine near the southern town of Narsaq, one of the biggest deposits of rare earth elements in the world.

Greenland’s position in the Arctic is gaining strategic significance as ice caps melt, potentially opening up new shipping routes. The Arctic also has trillions of dollars worth of minerals buried under the ice, as well as 30 per cent of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13 per cent of undiscovered oil.

What is the historic interest of the US?

Greenland is geographically part of the continent of North America, leading the US to make several previous attempts to purchase it. William Seward, the US secretary of state who negotiated the Alaska Purchase from Russia in 1867, formulated in the same year multiple bids to pay in gold for Greenland and Iceland. In the end, the bids were not made.

US interest was furthered by several American explorers who probed new areas of Greenland, leading to a discussion by the US ambassador to Denmark about acquiring the territory in 1910.

In January last year Donald Trump Jr arrived in Greenland in his father’s plane for a visit he insisted was purely as a tourist EMIL STACH/RITZAU SCANPIX/REUTERS

During the Second World War the US used the island to monitor Nazi submarines in the North Atlantic. In 1946 President Truman proposed buying it for $100 million in gold after the joint chiefs of staff said the island was “completely worthless to Denmark” but vital to America. A formal offer was transmitted by James Byrnes, the secretary of state, to Gustav Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, on a visit to Washington.

Although Denmark rejected this, it signed a treaty formalising the American military presence, which allowed the US to establish its Thule air base on the northeast coast in 1953. Now known as Pituffik space base, the strategically vital facility 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle has the most northerly deep water port in the world as well as a 10,000ft runway and extensive missile warning and space surveillance sensors. About 150 American troops live there permanently.

Pituffik space base, formerly Thule air base THOMAS TRAASDAHL/RITZAU SCANPIX/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

During a controversial visit to the base in March last year, JD Vance, the US vice-president, told troops: “The president is really interested in Arctic security, as you all know, and it’s only going to get bigger over the coming decades.”

DJ Vance and his wife at the base in March last year JIM WATSON/AP

The prime minister of Greenland at the time, Mute Egede, denounced the trip as “highly aggressive”, adding that the threat posed to the island was “so serious that the level cannot be raised any further”.