‘This is not a joke’: Could the US take control of Greenland?

With temperatures plunging to minus 10C overnight and snow piled in drifts in the street, Daddy’s brewpub in downtown Nuuk offers a welcome respite from Greenland’s famously unpredictable winter climate. Think nachos and rib-eye steak on the bar menu, comfy booths, pool and darts, soccer blaring from the TV and tap beer supplied by a neighbouring microbrewery: try the Nittaalaq, a crisp pale ale named for the Greenlandic word for a single perfect snowflake.

At the start of 2025, Daddy’s also gained more than a little fame. It hosted Donald Trump Jr when he swung by for a meet and greet during a surprise visit to the world’s largest island, where he reportedly extolled the virtues of the American way of life. Then, when Donald Trump snr, after his inauguration, reiterated his desire to somehow take over Greenland –which is an autonomous territory of Denmark – Daddy’s became a de facto HQ for the swarms of foreign journalists who descended on Greenland’s capital, intent on button-holing bewildered locals to ask them if they wanted to become American.

Many outlets reached out to Qupanuk Olsen, who wears many hats as a trained mining engineer, YouTube content creator and politician. “When Donald Trump Jr arrived in his plane, that was a mind-blowing moment,” Olsen told us at the time. “It’s no longer just words. At that moment when I saw the plane, it was like being hit in your stomach, like out of breath. Should I be excited? Should I be nervous? What kind of feeling should I have right now?” Greenlanders were no longer laughing at Trump, she said. Instead, they were asking, what happens next?

A year on, a lot had happened. Trump, following his intervention in Venezuela, doubled down on his avowed wish to “get” Greenland. Several European nations sent troops to the Arctic territory in response. Trump declared he would impose escalating tariffs on those countries until Greenland was sold to the United States. He even stated, in a leaked text message to Norway’s leader Jonas Gahr Støre, that he no longer felt an  obligation to pursue peace because he did not win last year’s Nobel Peace Prize (which is decided by a committee in Oslo). Within days, he was walking back his tariffs threats and ruling out force as a way to take Greenland, talking instead of a new framework for defence in the Arctic by the US and NATO nations. But the tensions that have spotlit this remote part of the world still linger.

Could the United States take over Greenland from Denmark if it wanted to? How could that practically happen? Doesn’t America have a base there already? What do Greenlanders say?

What’s going on with Greenland?

Giant icebergs. Insta-perfect multicoloured homes on bleak hillsides. Shaggy musk oxen, snow-white Arctic foxes, toothy narwhals and beluga whales. Glaciers and fjords. Sheer remoteness. For the visitor, Greenland inspires like little else. But there are plenty of challenges in one of the world’s least accessible tourist destinations. Two-thirds of the place is buried under permanent ice. You get a little over four hours of daylight in midwinter. There are few roads: travel between settlements is by boat, helicopter, plane or dog sled. Internet is patchy. Food, much of it imported, can be expensive (although Greenland does, somewhat improbably, boast several Thai eateries). The local language can prove impenetrable: “best regards”, at the end of an email, translates as “inussuarnersumik inuulluaqqusillunga”.

‘Don’t get us wrong, Greenland is a very special destination ... but there’s also some things not always in our control.’

Greenland visitors’ website

Tourist numbers, at 140,000 a year, are dwarfed by those to neighbouring Iceland, which hosts more than 2 million. Even the official visitor website warns: “Don’t get us wrong, Greenland is a very special destination that will give you experiences hard to replicate elsewhere, but there’s also some things not always in our control.” Time, it says, is not the most important factor in planning daily life on Greenland: “The Arctic weather is.” Direct flights between Nuuk (population 19,000) and New York have started in summer but, for now, tourists still mostly come on cruises, day-trippers flooding historic settlements such as Ittoqqortoormiit (population 361).

Politically and economically, Greenland has seen some patchy weather. It was governed by Denmark as a colony from the early 1800s and, until World War II, it was reachable only by boat. Many Greenlanders lived without electricity or running water. Some 90 per cent of today’s 59,000 residents are Inuit, descendants of the Thule people, who entered Northern Greenland across an ice bridge from Canada around the 12th century.

‘They may differ in terms of pace and in important questions on how to secure the economy but the aim is the same.’

Astrid Andersen, Danish Institute for International Studies

Old enmities with the Danish colonisers linger. In 1951, with echoes of Australia’s stolen generations, 22 Inuit minors known as the “experiment children” were resettled with Danish foster families in an attempt to re-educate them as “little Danes”. In the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD) in a Danish effort to control population growth. It remains unclear how many gave consent or were given a proper explanation. Last year, after a lengthy campaign for recognition and a formal inquiry, they were offered an apology by Denmark and some 4500 victims are now likely to be eligible for compensation.

“These were policies aiming at making Greenland an equal part of Denmark, but they were often taken on a very rash and even experimental basis without much sensitivity to cultural differences between Inuit and Danes and without much care for the individuals inflicted,” says Astrid Andersen, a specialist in historical justice at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen. “These discussions are very much still unfolding.”

There are many family ties between Greenland and Denmark, says Andersen, and quite a large number of Greenlanders live in Denmark and some Danes in Greenland. But “given that it is an expensive four-hour flight between the two countries, there are also many in Denmark who have never been to Greenland and probably do not spend much time thinking about Greenland either. Until recently, at least, Greenlanders no doubt had a much higher general level of knowledge about Denmark and Danish politics than vice versa.” This may have changed slightly, she notes, in recent times.

Greenland is self-governed domestically – its parliament is the Inatsisartut – but Denmark remains responsible for its foreign relations and defence and provides funding (a “block grant”) equivalent to a quarter of Greenland’s gross domestic product, about $1.3 billion a year. Many Greenlanders work in the largely Danish-funded public service and as Danish citizens (like their cousins in the Faroe Islands) have full rights to live, work and study in Denmark.

Greenland’s main industries have historically been fishing, seal hunting and whaling and various mines have flourished at one time or another – gold, rubies, coal and cryolite – but contribute little to the economy today (more on which shortly). Since 2009, the island has had the right to hold a referendum on whether to cut ties with the mother country. Many Greenlanders see full independence as inevitable – a general election in 2025 to fill the 31 positions in the Inatsisartut centred on the issue – but they don’t necessarily agree on the timetable or how to support themselves in the aftermath. “They may differ in terms of pace and in important questions on how to secure the economy,” says Andersen, “but the aim is the same.”

When did Donald Trump come into the picture?

The US president first publicly raised the notion of the United States somehow acquiring or controlling the island in 2019, during his first term in office, an idea that was generally treated as little more than a thought bubble. It’s been reported that a businessman friend of his had previously suggested it might be a good idea and that Trump had had his advisers look at how it might happen. He described it as “a large real estate deal” and was apparently miffed when Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen didn’t take him seriously, calling her “nasty”. “Denmark is a very special country with incredible people,” Trump tweeted, “but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time.”

‘I think Greenland we’ll get because it has to do with freedom of the world.’

Donald Trump

He made comments about Greenland again in December 2024, saying on social media that “for purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity”. Greenland’s then-prime minister, Mute Egede, responded: “We are not for sale, and we will not be for sale.”

Things got more serious when Trump Jr suddenly landed in his father’s “Trump Force One” plane on January 7, 2025, handing out “Make America Great Again” caps, two weeks ahead of his father’s inauguration. The timing seemed ominous, although he insisted he was there for a private visit, telling reporters: “We’re just here as tourists, seeing it – looks like an incredible place.” Soon after, Trump snr phoned Frederiksen, reportedly to push negotiations forward, in a call later described by European officials as aggressive and confrontational. In late January 2025, Trump told reporters: “I don’t really know what claim Denmark has to [Greenland], but it would be a very unfriendly act if they didn’t allow that to happen because it’s for the protection of the free world … I think Greenland we’ll get because it has to do with freedom of the world.”

‘If I had pitched this scenario as the opening for a new season of Borgen … I probably would have been laughed out of the writers’ room.’

Adam Price, Borgen creator

Frederiksen had crisis talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Brussels. “Europe is in a serious situation,” she said, “with war on the continent and changes in geopolitical reality. In such a time, unity is crucial.” Republican Congressman Andy Ogles, meanwhile, had already introduced legislation to Congress that would authorise the US government to acquire Greenland on behalf of the United States. “This is not a joke,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “This is in our national interest, and it needs to be solved.”

Greenland came back into Trump’s sights a year later, after his intervention in Venezuela. The White House escalated a clash with Europe over its fate by declaring that military action “is always an option” to secure an objective, after several NATO-member leaders warned Trump to drop his bid to take the Arctic territory. “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain and Denmark said.

When eight nations said they would send troops to Greenland as a sign of NATO’s commitment to the security of the region, Trump declared he would impose tariffs of 10 per cent on them, rising to 25 per cent.

For some, it feels too much like an episode from the popular Scandi political drama Borgen, centred on a fictional Danish prime minister and with plot lines in 2022 including oil-drilling shenanigans off the coast of Greenland and a bullying US ambassador. Its creator, Danish screenwriter Adam Price, observed in The Atlantic in 2025: “If I had pitched [the Trump] scenario as the opening for a new season of Borgen … I probably would have been laughed out of the writers’ room.”

Why does Trump want Greenland?

Trump and those in his orbit seem to view Greenland through a broad lens: as both a strategic prize, positioned conveniently on the map between the US and Russia, and as a land of potentially untapped opportunity, rich with valuable rare-earth minerals and promises of vast oil and gas reserves off its coastlines. As Greenland’s ice sheet melts, more resources may become accessible to exploitation in the coming decades.

Across the Arctic, the shrinking polar ice cap is also opening up shipping routes and raising concern about which nations might seek to control them. “Chinese merchant shipping will increase passage along the Northern Route, as it’s shorter for them, but presumably Chinese warships will also use that route,” Ben Hodges, a former commander of US Army forces in Europe, told Radio Free Europe in January 2025. The area of ocean between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, known as the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap, is an important naval choke point, heavily monitored during the Cold War for Soviet submarines making their way into the Atlantic and still a gateway for Russia’s Northern Fleet.

The US has kept a military presence on Greenland since World War II when it might otherwise have fallen into the hands of the Nazis after the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940. The US built radio stations, ports, search-and-rescue stations and other facilities to support the North Atlantic convoys that supplied its allies.

In the Cold War, Greenland remained a base for early warning systems for nuclear missile attacks, with thousands of US personnel garrisoned there at its peak. There were even plans to drill into the ice to house up to 600 nuclear missiles that could pepper Soviet cities in minutes. The scheme, Project Iceworm, was abandoned due to movement in the glaciers. Today, with continuing Danish consent since 1951, around a total of 650 US military personnel plus support staff are based at Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base) where they track satellites, conduct space and Arctic research and continue to watch for attack by nuclear missiles.

There has, at least publicly, been little threat to continuing US activities on the island. Nor would it make sense. Denmark and the US are partners in NATO with common strategic goals. Moreover, Denmark has tacitly admitted it has underinvested in its defence of Greenland – in part using traditional dog-sled patrols to cover 2.16 million square kilometres – and the US has been happy to pick up the slack. (Greenland is nowhere as large as it appears on a conventional map due to the Mercator map projection, which enlarges countries near the poles. In reality, Australia is about four times larger.)

‘If the Chinese begin to threaten Greenland, do we really trust that that is not a place where those deals are going to be made?’

Marco Rubio

Still, some in Trump’s camp have not been content with the status quo. Their concerns seem to be largely based on growing Chinese and Russian interest in the increasingly accessible Arctic and potential threats to America’s presence on Greenland should the islanders gain independence and seek new economic accords. US Vice Pres­id­ent J.D. Vance has said Green­land is “really import­ant” to US national secur­ity and has complained that Denmark was “not doing its job, and it’s not being a good ally”.

Marco Rubio has said the Arctic would become “critical for shipping lanes” and has raised the prospect of Chinese dominance in the region. “So the question becomes, if the Chinese begin to threaten Greenland, do we really trust that that is not a place where those deals are going to be made?” Rubio said. “Do we really trust that that is not a place where they would not intervene, maybe by force?” Trump himself has talked about the necessity of controlling Greenland (and the Panama Canal) as essential for “economic security” and in January told The New York Times how important it was for the US to actually own the icy island. “Ownership is very important,” he said. “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.” In other public comments during a meeting at the White House, he threatened that the US was “going to do something [in Greenland] whether they like it or not”.

Yet the case for more US military control doesn’t stack up, Rasmus Jar­lov, a former Dan­ish min­is­ter and cur­rent Con­ser­vat­ive MP in the Danish parliament, told The Financial Times in 2025: “If it’s so import­ant to have mil­it­ary pres­ence in Green­land, why do they have only 150 troops? They used to have 15,000. It’s their choice. We didn’t ask them to leave. They them­selves have decided to scale it down.” He added: “Noth­ing would be achieved by invad­ing Green­land in a war between the West and Rus­sia. You would just freeze to death.”

‘There’s clearly a lot of min­er­als up there, but the logistic cost in a place where you don’t have roads … is enorm­ous.’

Jakob Stausholm, Rio Tinto

Also possibly overheated is US interest in Greenland’s mineral reserves. A rare mineral called cryolite, needed in aluminium smelting, was mined there from the 1850s and was critical during World War II, and there was interest in uranium deposits until the mid-1980s when Denmark passed a law prohibiting power production from nuclear energy. Today, there are only two active mines in Greenland, one producing gold, the other anorthos­ite, which is mostly used in fibre­glass. Still, explorers today are attracted by geological surveys revealing the presence of rare-earth metals: among them, niobium, platinum group metals, molybdenum, tantalum and titanium. A venture backed by billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg is prospecting for nickel, copper, platinum and cobalt in a region known as Disko-Nuussuaq.

Local regulations can prove prohibitive. A rare earths project operated by an Australian-based company, Energy Transition Minerals, has effectively been blocked because of the pres­ence of uranium in the area. A legal dispute is ongoing.

Even if you dispensed with the red tape, experienced miners acknowledge that many hurdles remain. Snow, high winds, restricted access and lack of a large local labour force make production difficult and expensive. ” We have been explor­ing it for 15 years. We have never been able to come up with a prof­it­able project,” Rio Tinto chief exec­ut­ive Jakob Stausholm told CNBC. “There’s clearly a lot of min­er­als up there, but the logistic cost in a place where you don’t have roads … is enorm­ous.”

Aus­tralian metals explorer Sky­lark Min­er­als has wound up its operations in Green­land after 17 years. “Com­mer­cially, it was hard to make it work,” former Aus­tralian for­eign min­is­ter Alexander Downer, an adviser to the company, told The Financial Times.

As for oil, in 2021, Greenland announced an end to 50 years of largely unsuccessful prospecting for petrochemical reserves both on- and offshore, concluding that the environmental risks were too great.

Is it even possible for Trump to take over Greenland?

Annexing Greenland is not a new idea: the US has shown interest since the early 1900s, when it wasn’t seen as quite so appalling to trade dominions and subject peoples like Monopoly pieces. Indeed, in 1917, after decades of negotiations, the US successfully bought what are now called the US Virgin Islands from a cash-strapped Denmark, paying what was then $US25 million in gold coins for the former Danish West Indies colonies of St Thomas, St John and St Croix, Caribbean islands of strategic importance to the recently opened Panama Canal. In 1946, the US offered Denmark $US100 million (about $US1 billion today) in gold bullion for Greenland, which it considered vital for US interests and “completely worthless to Denmark”. Nothing came of it.

This time around, when Trump was asked by reporters if he would rule out using military or economic force to take over Greenland or the Panama Canal, he responded: “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two.”

Most observers say a US military incursion in to Greenland would likely be brief and effective. Yet it would face legal, diplomatic and human rights hurdles. “The US Army’s biggest challenges would not be overcoming Danish forces,” writes Harrison Kass at the defence and security site National Interest, “but battling the weather and sorting through the international fallout. Militarily, the operation would be simple and straightforward. Politically, the operation would be catastrophic.”

It is contested whether Trump actually has the authority to order an attack on a peaceful ally, especially without the support of Congress, and whether the US military would go along with his command at that point. There is also a statute that bars the president from unilaterally taking any actions that could threaten US involvement in the NATO alliance, which would be a likely outcome of an attack on Greenland given its international affairs are the responsibility of NATO member Denmark.

The alliance has survived conflict between fellow NATO members in the past, notably friction between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus in the 1970s, but this would be on a far bigger scale given direct US involvement. Critically, it would test NATO’s much-vaunted Article 5, the clause that obligates each member to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area”. Would the European NATO members go to war with the US? Or would they sit on their hands, thus signalling to the likes of Russia that Article 5 is a mirage? “If the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop,” said Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen on January 5.

The United States already enjoys sweeping military access in Greenland thanks to its 1951 agreement with Denmark. It currently has one base in a very remote corner of the island but the agreement allows it to “construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases across Greenland, “house personnel” and “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and waterborne craft.” Republican Congressman Michael McCaul said in January: “The fact is, the president [already] has full military access to Greenland. For him to militarily invade would turn Article 5 of NATO on its very head and, in essence, press a war with NATO itself. It would end up abolishing NATO as we know it.”

As for Denmark simply handing over, or selling, Greenland to the US; in January, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration was “actively” discussing a potential offer to buy the territory. Hurdles to overcome would include that Denmark has repeatedly stated that Greenland is not for sale; and the right to trade territory bumps up against international law governing the right to self-determination of existing peoples.

Greenland is a particularly complicated case given its semi-autonomy from Denmark, recognised by the 2009 Self-Government Act. “This raises foundational questions about whose consent is legally required for territorial transfer, whether self-determination permits territorial transfer to a third state rather than only independence (or continued association with Denmark), and how such claims interact with the principle of territorial integrity and the prohibition on coerced consent,” notes Alberto Alemanno, an expert in European law in Paris, on the constitution discussion forum Verfassungsblog. Indeed, Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law at ANU told us in 2025, “It was always understood that Denmark would have certain obligations to ultimately allow the Greenlanders to exercise the right of self-determination.”

‘If independence is the end-goal then one would need to find a replacement to that Danish block grant, and this is what I suspect Trump understands.’

Klaus Dodds, University of London

There are more subtle avenues that the US could pursue. Were Greenland to vote for independence from Denmark, it could choose to associate itself with the US as either an “unincorporated organised territory” or “unincorporated, unorganised territory”, depending on its degree of autonomy. Like Guam, Palau or the Marshall Islands, Greenland could remain kind-of independent but enjoy US military protection and economic support.

“The reality is that Greenland, even independent, will need some kind of free association with a larger entity,” says Klaus Dodds, an Arc­tic expert and pro­fessor of geo­pol­it­ics at Royal Hol­lo­way, Uni­versity of Lon­don. “It is an expensive island to support because the population outside Nuuk is scattered and there is very limited infrastructure. If independence is the end-goal then one would need to find a replacement to that Danish block grant, and this is what I suspect Trump understands.”

What do Greenlanders think?

In January, thousands of Greenlanders and Danes protested against a possible sale. “If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark,” Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told a news conference. “One thing must be clear to everyone. Greenland does not want to be owned by the United States. Greenland does not want to be governed by the United States. Greenland does not want to be part of the United States.”

In 2025, Greenland’s parliament passed a bill banning political parties from receiving contributions “from foreign or anonymous contributors”, a move that “must be seen in light of the geopolitical interests in Greenland and the current situation where representatives of an allied great power have expressed interest in taking over and controlling Greenland,” according to accompanying documents.

Internet vlogger Qupanuk Olsen, 40, told us last year that Trump’s comments were her catalyst for her running for office. “I’ve always said I’ll go into politics when I’m older, like later on in life but now, because of all this attention, it’s like a big movement is happening. Anyone in Greenland now needs to have an opinion on whether we want to stay on, continue with Denmark, whether we want to become independent or whether we want to become a state under the United States.” She said it was a good thing that Greenland was finally being seen, “the way we’ve been treated from Denmark over the last 300 years. We’re taking back our country.”

Instead, says Donald Rothwell: “There’s always the prospect that the Greenlanders might say, ‘Look, yes, we’re happy to exercise the right of self-determination, but that right of self-determination will see us retain our connections with Denmark. We’ll exercise a much more vigorous and developed form of self-government [but] we’re actually quite happy to fall under Denmark’s defence umbrella and its security and some contribution to foreign affairs.’” The bottom line, says Klaus Dodds: “Greenlanders want independence, for sure, but not at any price or Faustian pact.”

This Explainer was first published in February 2025 and has been updated to reflect developments.

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