Name: The Real Reason Trump is Threatening to Seize Greenland
Uploaded: 2026-01-27T17:06:42.000Z
Duration: 39 min 42 s
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In early January, only weeks before Donald Trump assumed the American presidency, he held a press conference at his home in Mar?

A Lago, Florida, during which he explicitly laid out his goals towards American territorial expansion during his second term in office.

Trump claimed during this press conference without evidence that the Panama Canal was being operated by China, that it was a mistake to have ever given the canal to Panama in the first place, and

that America needed the canal for economic security.

Then he also said that the United States also needed the island of Greenland for national security purposes, questioned Denmark's legal right to the territory, urged Denmark to give it up, and

threatened to impose crushing high level tariffs on Denmark if they refused to cooperate.

And then, when responding to a question asked by a reporter at the conference, Trump very pointedly refused to rule out using the US Military to acquire either the Panama Canal from Panama or Greenland from Denmark through force if they refused to negotiate.

And since then, these comments have sent shockwaves around the world as everyone has attempted to answer just how serious Trump's comments were or weren't.

The president of Panama since insisted that every last square meter of the Panama Canal is Panamanian and that control over it by anyone else is completely non negotiable.

While similarly the prime ministers of both Denmark and Greenland have insisted that Greenland is not for sale to America.

And in a more subtle refute of Trump's comments at Mar a Lago, the recently crowned Danish king Frederick X ordered a new update to the country's royal coat of arms.

The more heavily emphasizes the position of the polar bear in the lower left, which represents Greenland status within the Danish kingdom.

So far, the battle being fought over who should control Greenland between Denmark, America or Greenland itself has been fully contained to chat rooms across the Internet.

But in order to understand the context behind Trump's comments toward Greenland and what could actually end up happening regarding the territory, it helps to start with some history and what makes Greenland so inherently valuable to the interests of the United States, regardless of who's actually in power by this point?

Trump himself has a long history of suggesting that America should acquire the world's largest island from Denmark, a territory that's roughly the same size as the whole of Western Europe.

He first suggested that America should make an offer to purchase Greenland during his first term in office in 2019, which was politely but firmly rejected by the Danish government at the time and only caused a light amount of tension between the two heavily allied governments.

But America's interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark goes back way further into the past than most Americans probably realize.

While Denmark's roots in Greenland go even further back, before the United States even existed as a country, the ancestors of today's Danes, the Vikings, discovered Greenland as an uninhabited island a very long time ago, sometime around the year 1000, and

But they eventually died out and abandoned Greenland around 450 years later, sometime around 1450, the ancestors of today's Inuit people in Greenland began to write to the island around the same time as the Vikings were abandoning it.

And then three centuries later, in 1721, Denmark began resettling Greenland again and incorporated the island as a colony of theirs.

Greenland then continually remained as a colonial possession of Denmark for centuries, except for a brief period during World War II, between 1941 and 1945, when Denmark itself in Europe was occupied by Nazi Germany and the United States took it upon itself to militarily occupy Greenland to keep it out of Germany's hands.

After the war ended, the United States turned Greenland's control back over to Denmark again, and

Denmark further incorporated Greenland into their country by making the entire island a county of Denmark itself.

By this point, the vast majority of Greenland's population were ethnically Inuit.

And at the tail end of the decolonization era, in 1979, Denmark finally granted Greenland its home rule and broad autonomy.

Greenland gained its own separate parliament in full control over its own domestic affairs, including setting policy concerning any mining on the island, while Denmark still retained full control over Greenland's foreign and security policies without the need to consult the Greenlanders much themselves.

Much later on, in 2009, after voters approved a referendum in Greenland, the island and Denmark agreed on a new Self Government act that provided a legal pathway for Greenland to eventually declare its independence from Denmark if they ever desired to do so.

From then on through to the present day, Greenland has been permitted to host a referendum on ultimate independence from Denmark.

The that, if passed by a majority of its voters, would then need to be approved by the Danish parliament.

Now, throughout the past 300 years of Denmark's evolving level of control over Greenland since 1721, the United States has also frequently expressed its own interest in acquiring the territory for themselves.

of course, has established a very long history of expanding its territory in the Americas and beyond through purchasing new lands from other countries at often highly opportunistic tides.

The country purchased the enormous Louisiana territory From France in 1803, at a time when Napoleon feared losing the territory to the British and needed money to fund his wars in Europe.

The US purchased Florida from Spain in 1819 after the territory had become a financial burden on the Spanish.

It forced Mexico into ceding over more than half of their country's territory in 1848 for a bargain bin price after subjugating them during the Mexican American War.

And then the US further purchased what's today southern New Mexico and Arizona from Mexico in 1854 as the country faced another potential American invasion in decided to sell the territory rather than fight again.

In 1867, just after the US Civil War, the US purchased the Alaska Territory from Russia at a time when the Russians feared losing the territory to the British coming from Canada during a potential war.

And it was around this same time that Greenland also first registered as an official acquisition interest in Washington.

The US Secretary of State at the time of the Alaska purchase, William H.

Seward, also commissioned a report on the benefits that could be had by an American purchase of Greenland from Denmark.

The report concluded that an American acquisition of both Alaska from Russia and Greenland from Denmark would be advantageous because it would apply pressure on the Canadians wedged in between them to eventually join the United States as well.

So the following year, in 1868, Seward entered into negotiations with Denmark to purchase both Greenland and even Iceland as well.

But in the end, Seward never ended up making an official offer to the Danes at the time because the US Congress had just rejected another treaty he had spotted sponsor to purchase the Danish West Indies in the Caribbean.

And after that he figured they would reject an acquisition of Greenland and Iceland as well.

After that, the US forced Spain into selling the Philippines to them in 1898 after defeating them in a war.

And they of course pressured Panama into selling them the Panama Canal Zone concession a few years later in 1903.

After that acquisition, the US interest in further acquiring the Danish West Indies in the Caribbean increased significantly because they feared that the islands could potentially come under the control of Imperial Germany instead of Denmark, who could use them as a naval base to threaten America's access to the Panama Canal during a wartime scenario.

And so in 1910, the then US ambassador to Denmark suggested a bizarre and complicated scheme to Danish officials in which the US would trade the major Philippine islands of Mindanao and Palawan to Denmark in exchange for both the Danish West Indies and Greenland.

Then Denmark would be able to trade the Philippine Islands to Germany in exchange for Northern Schleswig in Europe, which at the time was a Danish majority territory that was controlled by Germany.

The offer appears to have never been seriously considered by the Danish side though, and

it became a moot point Following World War I anyway, after Germany was forced into just ceding Northern Schleswig to Denmark.

Nonetheless, the United States continued to remain interested in acquiring the Danish West Indies and Greenland.

And in 1916, Denmark expressed that it would be willing to sell the Danish West Indies to America in exchange for the US Recognizing Denmark's claim to the entirety of Greenland.

The US Ultimately agreed with this position and purchased the Danish West Indies the following year, in 1917, which then became the US Virgin Islands.

And the US also extended their formal recognition of Greenland as a territory of Denmark.

During the Second world war, the US military stepped in to temporarily occupy Greenland between 1941 and 1945 to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazis.

But as the world began moving into the new era of the Cold War, America's interest in Greenland became much, much more intense than it had ever been.

Greenland sits about precisely in the geographical dead center between Washington, D.C.

so it sits directly along the shortest possible flight path between the United States and the former Soviet Union.

America now wanted control over Greenland for its security and military applications because it could enable US Bombers and missiles stationed there to most rapidly attack the Soviet Union, while it could also serve as America's front line of defense for detecting a Soviet aerial attack launched against the US Mainland.

Because of these applications, the US Considered Greenland to be of enormous geopolitical importance at the beginning of the Cold War.

And so in 1946, the US government secretly offered Denmark $100 million in gold bullion, or about $1 billion in today's money, for the purchase of Greenland.

The US argued to Danish authorities at the time, as they similarly do today, that a sale of the territory to the United States would actually benefit Denmark as well, because it would prevent any criticism of US Military bases being present on Danish soil, while saved Denmark from the costs of having to subsidize Greenland themselves.

But the Danish foreign minister at the time rejected the offer, saying that while his country owed the Americans a great deal for their assistance during the Second World War, he felt that they didn't owe them the entire island of Greenland.

But while Denmark didn't agree to sell Greenland to the Americans, they still recognized how important the territory was to them and essentially allowed the Americans to use Greenland for everything they actually wanted.

Denmark and the US both became founding members of the NATO alliance in 1949, and

in 1951, the two countries agreed on a treaty that allowed the US to build a massive new air force base in the far northwest of the island that became known as Thule Air Base.

Thule then became one of America's most important overseas military bases during the Cold War.

It enabled US reconnaissance aircraft a base to spy on the northern Soviet Union from.

It also became a base from which American nuclear armed strategic bombers could use to threaten the Soviet Union from and early warning radar systems set up there enabled America to detect any potential nuclear armed ICBMs that the Soviets fired over the Arctic Circle towards the US mainland.

Greenland also became a major strategic component in America's Cold War naval strategy as well.

The Soviet strategic nuclear submarine fleet based itself in the far northern port of Murmansk, meaning that if they sortied out from port towards the US east coast, they would have to pass through the bodies of water between the uk, Iceland and Greenland in order to do so, which became known as the Giuk Gap.

Ensuring that the Giuk Gap remained closed during a potential hot war with the Soviet Union became a top military priority for the US in the Cold War.

And it ensured America's continued interest in having at least some kind of military presence in Greenland.

After the Cold War ended In the early 1990s though, America's interest in Greenland dramatically plummeted for around 20 years as relations with Russia entered into a new, initially warmer phase, America's military presence and activity in Thule significantly decreased.

But then several compounding Factors in the 2000 and tens and the 2000 and twenties reignited America's long interest in Greenland.

Once again, a renewed confrontational relationship began emerging between America and Russia again.

After Russia seized control over Crimea in 2014 and especially after Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 that continues to this day.

Russia began heavily remilitarizing their dormant Soviet era naval bases in the Arctic to the point where they now significantly outnumber the number of NATO bases in the Arctic.

While the Russian North Sea fleet homeported in Murmansk remained the crown jewel and the nerve center of Russia's strategic nuclear submarine deterrent force.

America's long interest in Greenland from a defense perspective became reinforced, but

new interests and concerns developed as well.

America's interest in defending the GI UK gap has increased in the modern world of the Internet and the valuable underwater high speed cables that connect the world together in the digital realm.

Two of these critically important underwater cables pass right by Greenland today.

The far north fiber cable that provides the quickest direct Internet connection between Japan and Europe and the Leif Ericsson cable that provides the quickest direct Internet connection between Canada and Scandinavia.

Moreover, if Russian submarines were able to pass through the Giuk Gap undetected today and advanced further into the North Atlantic, they could threaten to sabotage the numerous high speed Internet cables that connect the United States to Europe, a risk that could compromise the delivery of information from America to Europe long enough to briefly paralyze US military forces in Europe.

During a Russian attack on, say, the Baltic states As recently as 2020, Reuters described Greenland as a security black hole for the United States and its allies, reporting that its nearly 27,000 miles of largely uninhabited coastline was exceedingly difficult to properly monitor, especially for a small country like Denmark who spent decades underspending on their own defense.

Since the end of the Cold War, Denmark continually spent less than 2% of their GDP on defense for decades, until the Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked them to finally raise it back to more than 2% by 2023.

After granting Greenland their home rule in 1979, Denmark has still remained ultimately responsible for Greenland's defense.

As recently as 2020, Denmark only had four patrol ships, four helicopters, one single maritime patrol aircraft, and

six dog sled teams assigned to the whole of Greenland to patrol and defend an area that's roughly the size of Western Europe.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US government has repeatedly demanded that Denmark improve their aerial surveillance capabilities over Greenland.

And a study in 2022 by the US based Rand Corporation suggested then that integrating Greenland into the coverage of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or norad, would help to mitigate this.

The old American airbase at Thule has since been transformed into a U.S.

space Force base that's now known as Potufik Space Base.