What’s the best structure for securing American interests on the world’s largest island?
How Trump Can ‘Acquire’ Greenland Without Buying or Seizing It
President Trump’s intervention in Venezuela has somehow sparked renewed interest in the administration’s Greenland ambitions.
Trump’s critics are decrying imperialism and Denmark thinks there is something rotten about the whole idea of the U.S. entrenching itself in the Atlantic colony of the Danes. Meanwhile, our allies are quietly admitting the strategic case for a stronger American presence in Greenland is obvious.
But not enough attention has been paid to the practical question: What’s the best structure for securing American interests on the world’s largest island?
We’re not going to invade Greenland. And annexing or buying Greenland is probably the wrong approach. The United States doesn’t need sovereignty over two million square kilometers of ice and rock. We need durable access: military and space bases, infrastructure, and a clear framework for strategic minerals. Before we get to the better structure, it helps to see why an outright acquisition—either by conquest or purchase—is a suboptimal way to secure our strategic and economic interests in Greenland.Why Greenland Matters
Greenland sits astride the Arctic approaches that connect the Atlantic and the far North, routes submarines use and militaries plan around. And the U.S. footprint there is not theoretical: Pituffik Space Base (formerly known as the Thule Air Base) anchors missile-warning and space-tracking capabilities that matter precisely because the shortest paths from Eurasia to North America run over the pole.
Then there’s the resource angle. Beneath Greenland’s ice are significant mineral deposits, including rare-earths—inputs that sit inside everything from consumer electronics to advanced defense systems. China’s dominance in rare-earth supply chains has already shown the West what “geopolitical leverage” looks like when one country controls a chokepoint input.
Add in an Arctic that is becoming more navigable, more contested, and more surveilled every year, thanks in part to climate change.
