Reviving an Old Ambition; America's Long Path to Greenland

As Donald Trump, the President of the United States, reiterates his desire for the annexation of Greenland, the people of this Danish-controlled island will head to the polls on Tuesday, March 12. Just a week before this general election, Trump claimed in his congressional speech that the U.S. needs this island to ensure its national security and will acquire it "by any means necessary." Trump had previously mentioned the need for active U.S. presence in the Arctic, citing the activities of Chinese and Russian ships in the region. The U.S. interest in Greenland is not new, as Washington has had its eyes on this territory for over 150 years. The first to name this icy land "Greenland" was the Norwegian explorer Erik the Red in the 10th century, who established the first camps on the island, justifying the name by saying, "People like to live in a place with a pleasant name." However, the settlement of Norwegian immigrants in Greenland did not last long. Researchers state that these newcomers fell victim to climate change and economic hardships caused by the plague pandemic and other issues. By 1721, when Danish missionaries arrived in Greenland, only the Inuit natives remained on the island. One Danish missionary described the hardworking Inuit as being so calorie-deficient that they would pull lice from their clothes and eat them. He claimed they would lick the sweat from their faces to avoid wasting salt and other minerals. Denmark declared Greenland part of its territory in 1921 and monopolized trade with the island. The restriction on foreign merchants allowed Copenhagen to control the supply of whale and seal oil for lamps based on its interests. During World War II, Denmark was occupied by the Nazi German army, which led to the presence of German forces in Greenland. According to George L. West, a U.S. Foreign Service officer, President Theodore Roosevelt immediately stated, "We must do something about Greenland." American forces occupied the island and took control of its valuable cryolite mine. As weather forecasting became a critical factor in warfare, German forces made several attempts to establish secret weather stations in remote parts of Greenland. West explains that a significant portion of Western Europe's weather is influenced by conditions in this icy island, making access to weather reports from Greenland extremely important from a military perspective. Part of the American forces' mission in Greenland was to identify and destroy these German weather stations. At the end of World War II, the United States returned Greenland to Denmark but kept its military forces there. In 1951, the two countries signed an agreement allowing Washington and the newly established NATO to "prepare and optimize this area for military use." One of the American facilities in Greenland, known as Camp Century, was introduced as a research center. In reality, it was part of a project called "Iceworm," a vast network of missile launch platforms targeting the Soviet Union from beneath Greenland's ice sheet. The secret U.S. nuclear weapons base faced many problems from the start, as engineers constantly dealt with the accumulation and deformation of ice sheets around the sensitive storage facilities for nuclear warheads. In 1966, Camp Century was abandoned, leaving its radioactive waste buried beneath the ice. The first U.S. proposals to buy Greenland date back to 1867, when Washington seriously considered this idea. In 1946, a serious proposal to buy Greenland, equivalent to about one billion dollars today, was presented to Copenhagen. An American senator described this move as a "military necessity" for the United States. According to Washington, Greenland allows the U.S. to conduct military operations against its enemies in polar regions by establishing bases. The Danish Foreign Minister at the time rejected this proposal, stating, "Although we owe a great deal to the U.S., I don't think this debt amounts to the entire island of Greenland." Trump frequently mentioned the annexation of Greenland during his first term in 2019, but these remarks were not taken seriously. However, after declaring the island as one of America's priorities at the beginning of his second term, Copenhagen responded by highlighting the role of the polar bear as a symbol of Greenland on the Danish royal coat of arms and emphasizing that this land is not for sale. Currently, Greenland is largely autonomous in many areas, including having its own parliament; however, it remains heavily dependent on Denmark. The island receives about 600 million dollars in aid from Copenhagen each year, an amount that constitutes more than half of Greenland's total government budget and is equivalent to over 10,000 dollars for each of the 57,000 Greenlanders. If the growing independence movement in Greenland can separate the island from Denmark in the March 12 election, Washington will no longer need to negotiate with Copenhagen for the acquisition of this territory. However, a new poll has shown that while most Greenlanders desire independence from Denmark, 85% of them oppose the island joining the United States. The complex geopolitical situation surrounding Greenland was recently articulated by Mette Frederiksen, the island's Prime Minister, who told reporters, "We do not want to be Danish or American. We want to be Greenlandic."