Trump’s Self-Destructive Greenland Gambit

By Shawn Regan

Thursday, February 19, 2026

 

In January, a man attempted to raise an American flag on a flagpole in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. He did not get very far. Locals intervened, the police arrived, and a fine was issued. The would-be flag-raiser turned out to be a German comedian looking for attention. Nuuk’s mayor was not amused. The stunt was “not funny,” she said in a statement.

 

The episode was a small but telling sign of tensions that had been building for weeks. President Donald Trump had been talking, again, about Greenland. At press conferences, in speeches, and in off-the-cuff remarks, the president insisted that the United States “needs” Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark — and that acquiring it is a matter of national security. “I’d love to make a deal with them,” he told reporters in January. “It’s easier. But one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

 

Trump’s fixation on Greenland is not new. During his first term, he floated the idea of acquiring the island, which Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen dismissed as “absurd.” In his second term, the president has grown more emboldened, going so far as to suggest that the United States might seize control of Greenland by force. He later walked back the remark in a speech in Davos, after which Trump announced that he had reached “a framework of a future deal” with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to increase permanent U.S. access to the island, though the details remain murky.

 

What’s clear is that Trump sees Greenland as essential to America’s national security and economic interests. Sitting just off the coast of Canada, Greenland is the world’s largest island — roughly three times the size of Texas — though nearly 80 percent of it is covered by ice. Its capital is closer to New York than it is to Copenhagen, and its population of just 57,000 is smaller than Bozeman, Mont. Vast and sparsely populated, Greenland is rich in natural resources and strategically positioned on the global stage.

 

The idea that the United States might seek to acquire distant territory is hardly unprecedented. In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward secretly negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million — about $160 million in today’s dollars. The deal was derided at the time as “Seward’s folly,” a reckless bid to acquire a vast and distant frozen wasteland. In 1917, the United States bought the Danish West Indies, now the U.S. Virgin Islands, from Denmark for $25 million in gold. Over time, Washington has negotiated a variety of territorial arrangements, including compacts of free association and other bespoke governance relationships.

 

Nor is it America’s first flirtation with Greenland. Seward explored the possibility of acquiring the island but lacked the political capital after a bruising fight to secure congressional approval for his Alaska purchase. In 1946, the Truman administration offered Copenhagen $100 million in gold for Greenland. The Danes swiftly declined.

 

Trump’s modern revival of the idea, however, is something different. Greenland, today, is not a colonial possession to be traded among empires; it is a self-governing territory of a NATO ally. The president’s rhetoric has rattled the international community, threatening to upend NATO alliances and strain our relationships with European partners. In January, Trump floated new tariffs on NATO allies who opposed U.S. control of Greenland, though he later dropped the threat.

 

Given current geopolitical realities — and Greenland’s strategic location — it’s not hard to see why the United States would want to strengthen its position on the island. And yet, on closer inspection, it is far from clear what outright acquisition would achieve relative to the extensive access the United States already has under existing agreements. It’s also unclear what such a move would cost, not only in financial terms but in reputational damage and strain on the international order the United States has spent generations building.

 

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American strategic access to Greenland dates back decades. The island played a crucial role during World War II and the Cold War, hosting dozens of U.S. military installations. During World War II, the United States helped prevent German forces from seizing control of the island — and, crucially, its cryolite mines, which supplied wartime aluminum production. Greenland’s weather stations also provided vital data for Allied operations, tracking Atlantic storms that would hit Europe days later.This intelligence proved crucial for timing operations such as the D-Day invasion.

 

Today, the Pituffik Space Base on Greenland’s northwest coast provides critical missile-warning systems and surveillance capabilities. As sea ice melts, new shipping lanes are opening in the Arctic that could connect East Asia to Western Europe via routes much shorter than the Panama Canal. Control of these waters provides significant economic and security advantages, and Greenland’s position along this route lends it immense strategic importance.

 

Russia and China have both ramped up their Arctic presence in recent years. Trump has expressed concern that if the United States doesn’t take control of Greenland, then China or Russia will. And if the United States is expected to defend Greenland from foreign threats, the argument goes, it’s understandable to want to seek greater control over the island’s security environment.

 

But long-standing arrangements already allow the United States to establish additional military installations on the island, as long as it notifies Copenhagen first. The United States maintains its Pituffik base rent-free. While a new framework agreement might marginally improve monitoring of the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gap — a critical access route for Russian submarines — it’s not obvious that outright ownership would fundamentally change American military capabilities in the region.

 

Perhaps more enticing than its military positioning is Greenland’s vast mineral wealth. The island sits atop an extraordinary trove of natural resources. By some estimates, it contains known reserves of 43 of the 50 minerals the U.S. government classifies as “critical,” including rare earth elements essential for everything from smartphones to fighter jets. Greenland is home to two rare earth deposits that rank among the largest in the world.

 

At a time when Washington is scrambling to reduce its dependence on Chinese supply chains for such materials, the idea of tapping a vast, underdeveloped mineral frontier in the Western Hemisphere is undeniably appealing. But here, too, Trump’s strategy raises questions. America does not need to annex a country to access its minerals. Trade agreements and investment partnerships can achieve the same end. And Greenland has signaled its receptivity. As Greenland’s foreign minister put it: “We are open for business, but we’re not for sale.”

 

Despite its promise, Greenland has seen remarkably little mining. Since World War II, fewer than a dozen active mines have operated on the island. Today, only two are active, and neither produces rare earths. The obstacles to mining are formidable. Greenland’s harsh climate and lack of infrastructure make mining extraordinarily difficult and expensive. The island has fewer than 100 miles of roads. Electricity generation is limited. Ports, airports, and workforce housing all need to be built from scratch. Much of the island remains encased in ice and inaccessible for large portions of the year.

 

More significantly, mining is effectively banned throughout most of the island. In 2021, Greenland prohibited most uranium mining out of concern for environmental effects and its potential impact on the island’s fishing and tourism industries. Rare earth elements on the island typically occur alongside uranium deposits, making separation difficult. The ban halted a planned mining project in Greenland’s Kvanefjeld deposit — one of the largest known rare earth sites. Energy Transition Minerals, the company behind the project, is now pursuing legal action. Moreover, Greenland’s system of collective land tenure — rather than private ownership — tends to complicate large-scale resource development by weakening incentives for long-term, capital-intensive investment.

 

These decisions were not imposed by Denmark or foreign environmental groups but were the outcome of Greenland’s own domestic politics. From Washington’s perspective, this matters because it means that “owning” Greenland is not necessarily the key to unlocking its mineral wealth. The United States could annex Greenland tomorrow and still face the same local opposition, institutional constraints, and technical hurdles. America has no shortage of mineral deposits within its own borders that remain undeveloped for similar reasons.

 

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The United States is not alone in desiring control over Greenland — so do Greenlanders themselves. All major Greenlandic parties support independence in principle. While many Greenlanders recoil at the idea that America could buy the territory, it’s not as though they are eager to remain indefinitely under Danish rule. “We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes,” Greenland’s party leaders recently declared in a joint statement. “We want to be Greenlanders.”

 

The island’s relationship with Denmark is marked by ambivalence and resentment. For centuries, Greenland was administered as a Danish colony. In the 20th century, Danish authorities imposed assimilation policies that left deep scars, including a horrific program of forced contraception aimed at limiting population growth and reducing the cost of social services. These episodes remain vivid in Greenlandic political memory.

 

In 2009, Denmark formally recognized Greenland’s right to independence, subject to a referendum and final approval from Copenhagen. Since then, independence has become the consensus goal across Greenland’s political spectrum. Parties differ not on whether independence should happen but on when — and how. Recent polling suggests that a majority of Greenlanders would vote for independence if a referendum were held today. Yet most respondents also say they want Denmark to continue funding the island. Political independence will ultimately require economic independence, for which there is currently no clear plan.

 

The question, then, is how Greenlanders will achieve economic independence. As calls for economic self-sufficiency grow louder, there are concerns that the island may become more receptive to foreign investment from Beijing. China’s deep expertise in refining and processing rare earths gives it significant advantages in offering deals to access Greenland’s minerals. China has already attempted to acquire a stake in one proposed rare earth mine on the island, though U.S. officials lobbied the developer to block the deal.And Energy Transition Minerals, the company behind the stalled Kvanefjeld mining project, is owned in part by Chinese interests.

 

Greenlanders remain deeply reliant on Denmark’s nearly $1 billion in annual support — accounting for roughly half of Greenlandic government revenue. Denmark pays for police, courts, banking regulators, and largely free health care. If the United States were to replace that Danish grant, Greenland’s residents would become the largest per capita recipients of federal grants in America, far surpassing Alaskans or residents of other U.S.-affiliated territories.

 

Notably, Greenland’s fiscal arrangement with Denmark creates perverse incentives for resource development. Once mineral revenues exceed a modest threshold — about $11 million — Denmark offsets the gains by reducing its block grant by 50 percent of Greenland’s additional resource earnings. In other words, Greenland bears the environmental and political costs of mining while capturing only a fraction of the upside. This effectively functions as a steep marginal tax on large-scale mineral development.

 

So what would a realistic path to securing U.S. interests in Greenland actually look like? First, it would be expensive. Second, it would need to start small and proceed gradually to rebuild trust that Trump’s rhetoric has eroded. Most important, it would need to offer Greenlanders a credible pathway to self-sufficiency while respecting their right to self-determination.

 

Any realistic discussion of Greenland’s future must begin with the fact that Greenlanders want to govern themselves. The United States could support that goal through sustained, reliable investment in economic development and a compact of free association similar to U.S. arrangements with some Pacific island nations — though on a far larger scale.

 

Such an arrangement would need several components. It would require substantial U.S. investment in infrastructure as well as generous revenue-sharing agreements for resource development, structured to ensure that Greenland captures real financial benefits. If the United States needs to assert more military control over the island, it would need to commit to preserving Greenlandic political control over domestic affairs.

 

The mining issue presents the thorniest challenge. The United States would need to overcome local opposition through transparent environmental safeguards and safety guarantees. Projects would need community engagement and clear articulation of local economic benefits. The United States could work with Greenlandic officials to develop regulatory frameworks that address environmental concerns while enabling development.

 

None of this would happen quickly or cheaply. But the alternative — allowing China to fill the void — poses real risks to American interests. The question is whether the United States will engage on terms that respect Greenlanders and empower their independence or instead, because of Trump’s bluster, drive Greenlanders further away.

 

Greenlandic opposition to U.S. involvement may be overstated. A January 2025 survey found that over 85 percent of Greenlanders opposed incorporation into the United States. But when asked more nuanced questions, respondents were nearly evenly split, with 45 percent viewing Trump’s interest as a threat and 43 percent seeing it as an opportunity. An updated 2026 poll found that just 8 percent favored becoming part of the United States. Yet the intensity of rejection may reflect a reaction to Trump’s confrontational rhetoric — threats of military force — rather than opposition to partnership in principle.

 

Trump’s instinct that Greenland matters to American security and economic interests isn’t wrong. But expanding U.S. interests through force or coercion runs counter to American values and international law. More practically, it’s self-defeating. Greenlanders don’t want to trade Danish rule for American rule. They want independence and self-determination.

 

The path forward requires walking back the invasion rhetoric and approaching Greenland as a potential partner rather than a territorial prize. It won’t be as simple as writing a check or planting a flag. But if the goal is genuinely securing American interests in Greenland rather than just securing Trump’s legacy, it’s the only approach likely to succeed.