Washington: US President Donald Trump has long said he wants to take control of Greenland, a self-ruling territory of Denmark. He’s now demanding that the Danish government agree to a US takeover of the island and threatening European allies with a new round of punishing trade tariffs if they push back.
The seizure of Venezuela’s president by US special forces on Jan. 3 already showed Trump’s readiness to intervene directly in another nation’s affairs. His increasingly threatening rhetoric over Greenland has caused alarm in the territory’s capital Nuuk.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said the US has no right to annex any part of Danish territory. Responding to Trump’s latest tariffs threat, German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil urged Europe to prepare its strongest trade countermeasure in response, saying: “We Europeans must make it clear that the limit has been reached.”
Could Trump really take over Greenland?
Denmark’s government once saw Trump’s designs on Greenland as a fantasy. But his escalating rhetoric has forced the Danes to take the matter more seriously. Danish officials have summoned the US ambassador repeatedly to complain. In December, a Danish intelligence agency for the first time described the US as a potential security risk.
The Trump administration has framed its intervention in Venezuela as a modern reinterpretation of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, under which the US declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to colonization by other nations. The implication is that Greenland is fair game, too.
Most of Greenland lies within the Arctic Circle and is covered by a vast sheet of ice. Its 57,000 inhabitants live predominantly along the southwestern coast, around the territory’s capital, Nuuk. If Trump decided to take control, he could declare Greenland to be US soil as a fait accompli. It would violate international law, but there’s little Denmark could do to stop it.
Such a move would have more serious implications than the US intervention in Venezuela. The US has long seen the government in Caracas as an adversary and didn’t recognize President Nicolas Maduro as its legitimate leader. Washington has blamed Venezuela’s government for stoking regional instability and fueling drug trafficking.
Denmark is a staunch US ally and a fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Neither Denmark nor Greenland present a threat to US security. Any use of force against Greenland would pit NATO allies against one another and spark an existential crisis for the military alliance.
What if Trump sent troops to claim Greenland?
The US already has military personnel in Greenland, stationed at the Pituffik Space Base, with a radar station that’s used for detecting missile threats and monitoring space. The US once maintained a far larger footprint on the island. During the Cold War, it operated more than a dozen military installations there, before scaling back its presence over the decades.
Trump is free to send more troops to Greenland if he wants. Under an existing 1951 treaty, the US and Denmark cooperate on the territory’s defense. The treaty, updated in 2004, allows the US to establish military bases, station troops and move freely across the Arctic island so long as it consults and informs both Denmark and Greenland. Danish premier Frederiksen has said she would welcome the US doing so in future.
While the Danish armed forces are required under national law to resist any attack on national territory, they have only a small presence in Greenland, with just 150 personnel maintaining a handful of stations and sovereignty patrols. European nations dispatched a contingent of military personnel to the island in mid-January in an attempt to show Trump they were taking security matters seriously. But the numbers were tiny, and it’s not clear how Denmark would counter an influx of uninvited US troops, even if it wanted to.
How else might Trump take control of Greenland?
Buying Greenland appears to be Trump’s preferred approach for now, with his Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying a transaction with Denmark was the administration’s goal, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It’s unlikely that Trump could do that, at least not without the consent of Greenland’s people. Adjunct Professor Rasmus Leander Nielsen of Greenland University has said Denmark can’t sell the island because its home-rule law of 2009 “clearly states that Greenlanders are their own people.”
Trump might alternatively offer Greenlanders a sum of money to split from Denmark in a fast-tracked independence vote and join the US. However, any final settlement must be approved by the Danish Parliament, so Denmark could potentially slow it down.
Even if Trump dangled the idea of making every Greenlander a millionaire, his aggressive rhetoric has caused unease, even fear, among the island’s people over what would happen should they break away from Denmark too soon. That concern was underscored in elections in March last year, in which three out of four Greenlandic voters opted for parties that back only a slow move to independence.
For now, no details of any US purchase plans have been divulged. Trump’s team is “currently talking about what a potential purchase would look like,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Jan. 7.
How would Greenlanders feel about becoming part of the US?
Separation from Denmark has long been discussed in Greenland, but opinion polls have suggested Greenlanders are overwhelmingly against the idea of joining the US.
Following a March 2025 election, leaders of Greenland’s political parties came together to condemn the US president’s approach, calling his behavior “unacceptable.” The island’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has been clear that “Greenland is not a house you can buy” and that Greenlanders need to get tougher when dealing with Trump. That said, most lawmakers in Greenland are open to doing more business with the US.
Is it normal to buy someone else’s country?
Until a century ago, it wasn’t that unusual for a country’s government to buy a new territory: The US bought Louisiana from France for $15 million in 1803 and the US acquired Alaska from Russia in 1867.
There’s even a precedent involving Denmark and the US. The government in Copenhagen sold what are now known as the US Virgin Islands in 1917. More recently, other islands have come up for sale, but they tend to be smaller and located in warmer climates. Joseph Blocher of the Duke University School of Law wrote in 2014 that the “market for sovereign territory seems to have dried up.”
Why does Trump want Greenland?
As Trump surely knows, other US leaders have made their mark in history for such grand ideas, with Andrew Johnson remembered as the president who oversaw the acquisition of Alaska.
When Trump first suggested a potential Greenland purchase back in 2019, he presented it as “a large real estate deal” that could ease Denmark’s state finances. His argument this time around is that US control of the island is vital for national security.
The US president has said Denmark isn’t spending enough to protect the island. In response, Copenhagen has been diverting growing sums of money to the territory, including billions of dollars for defenses and infrastructure.
Asked by the New York Times in an interview why the US needed to own Greenland, Trump said: “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do with, you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”
Why is Greenland important?
The island has long been a nexus of tensions among global powers.
Bigger than Mexico and Saudi Arabia, Greenland sits at a strategic location straddling the North Atlantic and the Arctic, a region whose vast stores of critical minerals and fossil fuels are coveted by the US and its strategic rivals China and Russia. The accelerated melting of Greenland’s ice sheet due to climate change potentially makes those deposits more accessible, while also opening up shorter shipping routes for trade between North America, Europe and Asia.
What’s Denmark’s claim to Greenland?
Greenland was a Danish colony for more than two centuries until 1953. The island was originally populated by Inuit groups and Norsemen — known colloquially as Vikings — and visited by European whalers. Danish-Norwegian priest Hans Egede brought Christianity to the territory and founded its capital.
Greenland now has home rule that covers all aspects of life bar foreign, security and monetary policy and a few other areas such as policing. While its parliament has historically been dominated by socialist and left-leaning parties, current premier Nielsen, 34, is from the socially liberal Demokraatit party. Greenland sends two representatives to the Danish parliament.
Relations between the island and its former ruler are strained by past abuses. Many Greenlanders want their own state and bristle at Denmark’s rule.
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.