Greenland Won’t Be Red, White, and Blue

Photo by Nanopixi, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

One of Donald Trump’s signature new policies is a good representation of what I expect from his new administration. The idea that the US will annex Greenland (and Canada and Panama) is an unrealistic idea that has no chance of being fulfilled. It also doesn’t address the cost-of-living concerns of the voters who, in their infinite wisdom, decided to send Mr. Trump back to Washington.

The idea of annexing the world’s largest (but not as large as it looks on a Mercator projection) island isn’t new. Trump brought it up in his first presidency, and Harry Truman made an offer to buy the frozen island from Denmark decades before that. Andrew Johnson even considered a Greenland purchase at about the same time the US bought Alaska.

As with Trump, previous presidents have considered Greenland for both military and commercial reasons. As readers of Tom Clancy novels may recall, the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap was and is a strategic chokepoint for Russian nee Soviet submarines transiting to the Atlantic Ocean. The US got rights to a military airbase in Greenland in the 1950s. Thule AB was renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2023 but still hosts the US military. The base also houses an early warning system for ballistic missiles.

As CNN notes, Greenland contains a wealth of natural resources such as oil, gas, and rare earth minerals. The Arctic seas are also becoming increasingly important trade routes as decreasing sea ice leads to longer navigation seasons. Arctic shipping is up by 37 percent over the last decade.

But even if there are legitimate reasons to covet Greenland, it will never become the 51st state. Mark that down, and expand it to include becoming a territory, protectorate, or occupied territory.

The reason is simple. Greenlanders don’t want to become Americans, and Denmark doesn’t want to hand over the island.

Greenland is currently a self-governing territory of Denmark and both the Danish and Greenlander prime ministers have said that Greenland is not interested in joining the US, although the Danes have left open the possibility of Greenland independence.

A recent shocking poll reported that 57 percent of Greenlanders favor joining the US, but the outcome becomes less shocking when you read on to discover that the pollster was Patriot Polling, a low-rated and partisan pollster. Likewise, The Guardian reported that a group of MAGA hat-wearing Greenlanders who came to a luncheon with Donald Trump, Jr. were not Trump supporters, but in reality, were homeless people who showed up for free food.

In reality, Greenland’s 57,000 citizens are made up primarily (88 percent per the CIA World Factbook) of native Inuits and would be unlikely to embrace American ownership. As a former prime minister told CNN, “Just think of how the US have [sic] treated its own Indigenous Peoples.”

Greenland also seems a poor fit for MAGA. Aside from the majority of the population being Indigenous, few speak English. The most common languages are Greenlandic and Danish. The most common religions are Evangelical Lutheranism and Inuit spirituality, neither of which seem to be a good fit for Trump’s Christian Nationalist base.

The truth is that we already have most of the benefits of Greenland without the hassles of ownership. Our security treaties with Denmark incorporate Greenland into our defense strategy and the US already does a lot of trade with both Denmark and Greenland.

It is Trump’s machinations that threaten both our security and trade. The president-elect has threatened to enact heavy tariffs if Denmark and Greenland do not bow to his demands and has refused to rule out military force. It is Trump’s own actions that threaten our ability to access Greenland’s resources and that may cost us Danish and Greenlander assistance in our national defense.

So why is Trump so locked in on a deal that isn’t going to happen and may undermine US policy in other areas? I can think of a couple of possibilities.

One is that the Greenland talk is purely for MAGA consumption. It’s all about making America great and expanding our borders. It may help to distract Trump’s base from failures such as the Matt Gaetz nomination, the fact that gas is not going to return to $1 levels, and rising consumer prices if Trump follows through with Trade War II.

A second and more nefarious possibility is that Trump is purposely trying to scuttle agreements with our allies. Trump has previously considered leaving NATO in addition to ginning up trade wars with our best trading partners. It may be that a tiff over ownership of Greenland would give him a pretext to do both.

A third possibility is that Trump is just an incompetent boob with no filter between his unhinged ideas and his flapping gums. I’ll concede that more than one of these possibilities may be true.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that Trump’s antics cede the US’s moral high ground when it comes to opposing imperialism by China and Russia. After all, the US has no claim whatsoever to Greenland, but China and Russia can cite historic precedents in their claims to Taiwan, Ukraine, and other countries. It’s difficult to argue that China has no right to Taiwan when Trump is threatening to invade Greenland.

I’ve spent most of my time on Greenland, but the same arguments apply to Canada and Panama. The citizens of those countries don’t want to become Americans and MAGA Republicans probably wouldn’t want them to be voting Americans anyway. Canada is pretty liberal by US (and especially by MAGA) standards, and Panama is filled with the same people that Republicans are trying to seal the southern border to keep out.

As an aside, Canada probably wouldn’t be the 51st state anyway. It would be the 51st through the 60th since Canada is composed of seven provinces and three territories. A party that doesn’t want to admit Puerto Rico because it is too likely to vote Democrat is unlikely to admit 10 states filled with liberal Canadians, eh?

So, back to my original point. Trump’s annexation dreams are probably an accurate predictor for the next four years. They are wildly improbable, unrealistic, and unpopular outside the MAGA base as well as being poorly thought out. They also have nothing to do with the promises that he made to win the election. The very attempt to implement his ideas is likely to make things worse.

Welcome to the next four years of our lives. Buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.