If President Donald Trump is serious about bolstering the US presence in Greenland, he has options -- but he may still want the most provocative one.
Trump has insisted that the United States needs the strategically located island, with Russia and China increasing military activities nearby and Arctic ice melting due to climate change.
He has repeatedly refused to rule out force to seize Greenland, infuriating Denmark, a steadfast US ally and founding NATO member that controls the autonomous island.
Washington already has a military presence in Greenland -- the Pituffik base, which dates from World War II when the United States sent forces to defend Greenland after Denmark fell to Nazi Germany.
Some 150 personnel are permanently stationed at the frigid base, but the United States stationed up to 6,000 troops across Greenland during the Cold War, largely out of concerns that any Soviet missile would cross the island on its way to North America.
Under a 1951 treaty, the United States could simply notify Denmark it is again sending more troops.
“The United States could significantly increase its military presence in Greenland without anything really needing to be done,” said Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Under different circumstances, Denmark and other NATO allies might be delighted at Trump demonstrating interest in European security, as Russia pursues its grinding invasion of Ukraine.
But for Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, the security presence may not be the point.
Trump has ramped up threats to Greenland after sending US forces to remove Venezuela’s leftist president Nicolas Maduro.
The Republican president has spoken of a new “Manifest Destiny” -- the 19th-century belief the United States was destined to expand -- and of a “Don-roe” Doctrine, his own aggressive take on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine that declared the Western Hemisphere out of bounds to other powers.
Trump’s motivation may lie more in “this notion of maps and legacy,” Berzina said.
“Perhaps the size of the country harkens back to this idea of American greatness, and certainly for the MAGA movement, American greatness matters a lot,” she said.
Greenland, which lies in the Western Hemisphere, is the size of the biggest US state of Alaska and has only 57,000 people.
Its integration would catapult the United States past China to having the third largest land mass after Russia and Canada.
The White House, while not ruling out an invasion, has said that Trump, a real estate tycoon, is studying an offer to buy Greenland.
Both Greenland and Denmark have made clear the island is not for sale. But there is precedent, if not recent, for a purchase.
The United States bought what are now the US Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917 for $25 million in gold.
Denmark had initially resisted the deal, in part due to concerns about how segregated America would treat the island’s largely Black population, but agreed after the United States threatened force, with Washington fearing Germany would seize the archipelago and gain a Caribbean foothold in World War I.
After World War II, president Harry Truman made his own offer to buy Greenland, but did so quietly and was rebuffed by Denmark.
The issue had appeared moot with the creation of NATO, the alliance that Trump has belittled as unfair to the United States.
Diplomats say that another option mulled by the Trump administration has been to offer a compact association like the United States has with Pacific island nations, which are independent but rely for their defense on the United States.
Greenland’s leaders have made clear they do not want to be part of the United States.
Even if Trump could persuade Greenlanders with cash payouts, he would face formidable hurdles of seeking consent from the US Congress, let alone Denmark.
“There are a lot of options that might exist in principle but they seem fairly far-fetched,” said Brian Finucane, a former legal expert at the State Department now at the International Crisis Group.
“There are a lot of hurdles to incorporating Greenland into the United States and it’s hard to know how much of this is bluster from Trump and trolling,” he said.
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