Peter Harmsen is a journalist and the author of Fury and Ice: Greenland, the United States and Germany in World War II.
The historically minded among us may have sensed a certain déjà vu this weekend when U.S. President Donald Trump talked to NBC News about the role military force could play in gaining control of Greenland, currently an autonomous territory of long-time ally Denmark: “I don’t take anything off the table.”
After all, in 1940, when the Americans were slowly waking up from their isolationist slumber to side with the Western democracies in the struggle against fascism, they took a break from this grand mission to threaten Canada and Britain with armed might to keep Greenland to themselves.
“If there is any more monkey business, we are going to have a destroyer sent up there and stop it,” assistant secretary of state Adolf Berle said at the time, reacting to intelligence that Ottawa and London were preparing to occupy parts of Greenland in a pre-emptive move ahead of a feared Nazi takeover.
When it comes to the world’s biggest island, just as there is consistency over time in American bullying tactics applied against friendly nations, U.S. interests have also remained remarkably constant down through the ages.
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As early as in 1868, the United States spelled out what it liked about Greenland: It was tempted by its strategic position and its natural riches. One year after the acquisition of Alaska, a report commissioned by the State Department described the vast island as a bulwark against European expansionism while also pointing out that it was the only site in the world for the extraction in meaningful quantities of cryolite, an essential ingredient in the production of aluminum.
Fast forward to the 2020s, and the same two factors remain paramount: location and resources. Greenland lies astride the shortest routes, as the crow and missiles fly, between major parts of the Eurasian landmass and the population centres on America’s east coast. And while cryolite has decreased in importance, the rare earths to be found in the Greenland underground have taken its place.
Even the American rhetoric regarding Greenland has been strikingly similar across the decades. In 1910, the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Maurice Francis Egan, then a well-known proponent of purchasing the island, decried Copenhagen’s indifference to its Arctic possession, stating that it “gives very little attention to the development of the resources of Greenland.”
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After the passage of 115 years, the ambassador’s words are echoed in an article carried by Breitbart News and linked to by Mr. Trump on Truth Social: “For its part, Denmark has a curious relationship with this territory. On the one hand, the Danes like owning Greenland. On the other hand, they don’t want to do anything with it. They see it as a nature preserve.”
Inherent in both statements is the idea that you lose your moral right to territory if you don’t do something useful with it – useful, that is, by America’s definition of the word. Without pushing the point too far, a similar rationale was behind the gradual conquest of the West in the 19th century, as white settlers took over land previously inhabited by Indigenous populations considered unable or unwilling to make full use of its riches.
One is reminded of the dictum that there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests – and, one might add, permanent rhetoric and a permanent willingness to use force – or at least deploy the threat thereof – against old allies.
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So far, over the decades, Denmark has been able to keep the Americans at bay by offering them what they wanted in Greenland while staying within the framework of existing institutional arrangements. In the Second World War, that meant letting them build ports and bases all around the island’s jagged coastline. In the Cold War, it was accomplished by allowing extensive U.S.-funded military infrastructure to serve as part of the forward defence against Soviet nuclear attack.
So, can’t the Danes put their minds at rest with this history of feeding the American giant in a piecemeal fashion, constantly sating the hunger of the beast just enough to keep it from devouring Greenland whole?
The answer in normal times would be yes, probably. But these are abnormal times. Most importantly, perhaps, one cannot rule out the notion that Mr. Trump seeks to go down in history as the president who secured the largest territorial expansion in American history, as Greenland would represent even more land than was gained in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
In this way, history plays a role for Mr. Trump, too, although in a manner altogether different from how the past guided his predecessors in performing their unique duties as leader of the free world.