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President-elect Donald Trump has argued that the U.S. should buy Greenland since his first term in the White House.
The island, with 56,000 inhabitants, is an autonomous territory of Denmark, and both the Danish government and local authorities have repeatedly said that the island is not for sale.
But that hasn’t deterred the president-elect.
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he wrote on Truth Social last month as he announced his pick for ambassador, PayPal co-founder Kenneth Howery, to Denmark.
Greenland is about three times the size of Texas and is situated northeast of Canada. Denmark ruled the island for more than 200 years and retains some control over its foreign policy, The Washington Post noted.
“We are not for sale and will never be for sale,” Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede has said.
Trump, meanwhile, argues that owning Greenland is a national security imperative. The U.S. does have a base on the island, Pituffik Space Base, and the island is in a strategically important location for missile defense and space surveillance missions, according to The Post. The base was constructed at the beginning of the Cold War.
The island measures over 800,000 square miles and has plenty of natural resources, such as oil and rare earth minerals. In 2019, Senator Tom Cotton wrote in a New York Times op-ed that there are strategic benefits to buying Greenland, pointing to China trying to buy an old U.S. naval base on the island in 2016 and several attempts by the country to build airports there.
Denmark controlled the island from the early 18th century until 1979. The island is now self-ruled when it comes to local issues, a Danish government site states. The Nordic country also maintains the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic as an autonomous territory.
In 2009, Greenland approved the Self-Government Act, leading to home rule, but defense and foreign policy matters are still up to Denmark.
Former Danish foreign minister Martin Lidegaard told The Post in 2019 that “The Greenlandic people have their own rights.”
Greenland’s residents are Danish citizens and have two representatives in the Danish parliament. The country’s Indigenous peoples are a majority of the population on the island.
The U.S. has considered buying Greenland in the past: The administration of President Andrew Johnson authorized a report in the 1860s finding that the island’s natural resources could be a good investment, but the idea went nowhere at the time.
The administration of President Harry Truman offered $100 million for the island just after the end of the Second World War.
Because of its natural resources and industries, buying the island could cost as much as $1.7 trillion, The Post estimated.
Last month, the Danish government announced new defense spending for Greenland of about $1.5 billion. Denmark’s Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the plans to increase defense spending on the island were made before Trump’s fresh calls to buy Greenland.
