On the marketing campaign path main as much as his election in 2024, Donald Trump made a loads of weird guarantees which have fallen by the wayside. Arguably the strangest one he’s nonetheless harping about? Greenland — an enormous island within the Arctic Ocean, presently a territory of Denmark, that he desperately desires to grab.
Geopolitical analysts and pundits have spilled loads of ink over the previous 12 months attempting to give you some rational clarification for Trump’s obsession with the concept. One of many easiest, the New York Times suggests — but someway probably the most cynical — has to do with the scientific certainty that Greenland’s ice will quickly soften away.
From September 2024 to September 2025, Greenland misplaced a staggering 105 billion metric tons of ice, according to researchers on the Danish Meteorological Institute. Between 1985 and 2022, Greenland’s ice sheet has shrunk by some 2,000 square miles. These developments are positive to proceed within the years to return.
Beneath all that ice and permafrost is a veritable treasure trove of minerals like graphite, zinc, and uncommon earths. Principally, because the local weather warms and Greenland’s ice melts, increasingly more of these minerals will change into obtainable for extraction.
In a nakedly empire-building kind of method, in different phrases, Greenland makes good sense. The one drawback? Publicly, Trump disparages the very notion of local weather change — which means that if actually does perceive the wealth of assets that the phenomenon is opening up in colder elements of the world, he’s fibbing to his base for jaded political causes.
“His fixation on Greenland is an admission that local weather change is actual,” John Conger, an advisor to the Middle for Local weather and Safety informed the NYT.
If Trump or his advisors actually are intrigued by Greenland as a result of they’re anticipating a thawing world, that places them in good firm with Trump’s longstanding allies in Russia, the place the ruling oligarchy is said to be banking on an identical technique for the nation’s immense frozen expanses.
If it sounds convoluted, it’s solely as a result of different explanations for Trump’s North Atlantic fixation simply don’t add up.
As financial historian and analyst Adam Tooze explains, the US has a long-standing Cold War treaty with Denmark giving the US army carte blanche to do no matter it desires on Greenland’s territory. As such, there’s no nationwide safety justification for why the US must personal Denmark outright.
“If Greenland isn’t presently adequately defended, it is likely to be to do with the truth that America has fully run down a number of army bases it used to take care of on Greenland in the course of the Chilly Battle,” Tooze stated on a latest episode of his podcast Ones and Tooze.
Oil — the traditional raison d’être for US intervention on international soil — additionally doesn’t apply right here. (Nor Venezuela, for that matter.)
In 2021, the governing physique of Greenland stopped granting oil exploration licenses, the NYT notes, as a result of “local weather issues, environmental issues and financial frequent sense.” That information got here after 50 years of unsuccessful makes an attempt to strike black gold within the icy waters off the island’s coast, which means oil is a most unlikely motivation.
On the finish of the day, we in all probability gained’tknow the administration’s true motivations for Greenland until they really pull the set off — although if Venezuela is any indication, a straight reply is way from assured.
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