The first time Donald Trump offered to buy Greenland in 2019, Danish politicians expressed their displeasure, calling him and his proposal a joke.
This time, after the US president-elect renewed his interest in controlling the geopolitically important Arctic island, the government in Copenhagen was more cautious.
Trump's informal policymaking has a way of unsettling even his closest allies, especially when his moves border on trolling. On Tuesday, his son Donald Jr. made a “special visit” to… GreenlandThey are meant to admire the snowy beauty of the vast island with a population of just 56,000 people.
The latest proposal put forward by the president-elect puts politicians in both Copenhagen and Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, in a major dilemma. How can they respond to what increasingly looks like serious play by the United States, their main security guarantor, while jostling with Russia and China for influence in the Arctic?
Mette Frederiksen, Denmark's prime minister, called Trump's offer “ridiculous” in 2019. “This has to be an April Fool's joke,” said Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark's current foreign minister. Trump immediately canceled a state visit to the northern country.
Their tone on Tuesday was somewhat different. Frederiksen insisted that Greenland, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, was autonomous.Not for saleBut she also stressed that Denmark wants to cooperate with the United States. “We have a clear interest in it being the United States that plays a big role in that region, not Russia, for example,” said Frederiksen, who remains responsible for Greenland’s foreign and security policy.
That awkward attempt to avoid offense Trump Even before he began his second term, he was not universally popular in Copenhagen. Billy Dragstedt, political spokesman for the far-left Inhandslesten party, strongly criticized Frederiksen for failing to criticize Trump's “disrespectful and dangerous neo-colonial” language.
He added: “Our Prime Minister's answer is clearly that Trump can do whatever he wants regarding Greenland and Denmark.”
Trump himself appears to feel this way, as he said in a press conference on Tuesday that he could not rule out military coercion or tariffs against Denmark, a NATO ally, if he did not get his way in Greenland.
Trump's comments Touch the nerve In Denmark precisely because Copenhagen has long seemed to undervalue and even mistreat Greenland. Experts say Denmark has been slow to appreciate the geopolitical importance of Greenland, perhaps the most important land mass in the Arctic and a potentially large source of minerals in the future as the ice melts.
Recent revelations about the mass forced sterilizations of indigenous women in Greenland in the 1960s have damaged relations with Denmark and increased rhetoric about trying to break free from “the shackles of the colonial era,” as Greenlandic Prime Minister Mott Egede recently said.
Frederiksen herself admitted on Tuesday that Greenland appears to be moving towards independence, even if it wants to keep the Kingdom of Denmark – which also includes the self-governing Faroe Islands – together.
But Trump's proposal is not at all clear about Greenland, and requires a different proposal Balancing act From politicians in Nuuk.
Egede has consistently maintained that Greenland “will never be for sale.” There is little desire on the island to exchange one colonial power for another. But the Prime Minister and other Greenlandic politicians have stressed that the island is open for business and keen to attract foreign investment, especially American.
Egedi is also keen on independence from Copenhagen, using his New Year's speech to ramp up his rhetoric on the issue ahead of elections in April. The biggest obstacle to this is Greenland's economic dependence on Denmark, and its annual economic grant of 3.9 billion Danish kroner ($540 million) – roughly $10,000 per Greenland.
Despite all the focus on the oil and mineral wealth that could be unlocked through climate change in Greenland, existing projects have made relatively little progress in the past decade. One day, a Greenlandic businessman put it this way: “There is potential, but it always seems to be just around the corner.”
Opposition politicians have accused Egedi of doing little to promote independence during his time in office, and some worry that Trump's proposal could overshadow other issues in the upcoming election.
All of this is likely to please the US president-elect, as he works to keep traditional allies from Europe to Canada off balance through various transactional tricks. Greenland and Denmark will be busy guessing what might be enough to buy Trump.
But Egedi, speaking on Tuesday, tried to stress that the future of one of the world's most strategically important landmasses belongs solely to Greenland's 56,000 residents.
“Our future and our struggle for independence is our work. Although others, including Danes and Americans, are entitled to their opinions, we should not be distracted by hysteria and external pressures that distract us from our path. The future is ours, and we must build it.” He said.
