President Trump’s interest in securing Greenland is correct, but he should broaden his ultimate objective.
Greenland is critically located along the Northwest Passage and other vital Arctic Sea routes that with Climate Change are now navigable for a longer summer season.
The island is strategically located for U.S. air defenses and Russian submarine access to the North Atlantic. It has large deposits of rare earth minerals.
Denmark, a small nation, can’t defend Greenland alone. But only after President Trump threatened tariffs on Denmark and seven other European nations and made veiled threats of invasion did the UK seek to organize a credible European defense of Greenland and the broader Arctic region.
Unfortunately, such threats, even if bluffs, alienate Europe.
Russia is beefing up its Arctic military presence.
In 2018, China declared itself a Near-Arctic state and has made numerous efforts to gain a commercial foothold in Greenland.
It’s the latter we should be most, but not solely, concerned about.
Since World War II, Denmark has allowed the United States virtually whatever military presence it desired. But Greenland, unlike Iceland, isn’t certain to remain tethered to Europe and NATO.
In 1985, Greenland withdrew from the European Community, predecessor to the EU, to ensure control of its fishing waters. And its longer-term commercial loyalties could be on the auction block with important strategic implications.
Greenland as a sovereign state wouldn’t add up.
With a population of just 57,000 on a land mass bigger than California, Texas and Montana, it can’t reasonably finance itself without continuing outside support or foreign investment that generated equivalent royalties.
It has a respectable per-capita income of over $58,000 but with such a thin population, it can’t finance all of the needed domestic infrastructure and international overhead of a sovereign state.
Denmark provides large annual grants of about $10,000 per capita, but those would likely end if the island voted for independence.
With Greenland’s political parties fermenting for some form of sovereignty, it’s easy to see an eventually independent Greenland playing the United States and Europe off against China and Russia to solve its financial challenges.
It could access China’s Belt and Road Initiative to help build seaports, airports and other infrastructure and develop its rare earth minerals.
The latter are difficult to cost competitively exploit, but Beijing could subsidize production to gain political influence.
Consider what a sizeable Chinese stake in Greenland’s seaports and airports would mean for the integrity of U.S. conventional air, missile and space-satellite defenses.
China’s efforts to gain a commercial foothold in Greenland have so far been rebuked, but a sovereign Greenland strapped for cash could become more receptive.
Trump’s initial impulse was to buy or annex Greenland, but now he may be willing to settle for ownership of—sovereignty over—the land under U.S. bases in the Greenland. Officials in Nuuk have indicated that’s a red line it will not cross.
However, it’s financial challenges, strategic location and security vulnerability to Russia and eventually China could ultimately motivate it to compromise on that issue.
Given a sovereign Greenland could one day fall into China’s or Russia’s commercial orbit, the United States should seek something broader but not so offensive to Greenlanders’ sovereignty sensibilities.
The United States has Free Association Compacts with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau in the Pacific.
These give the United States full military access to the region and the right to deny third countries access. In exchange, their citizens can serve in the U.S. military, live and work in the United States, receive access to certain federal programs and services and economic assistance—analog to the Danish block grants to Greenland.
Annexing Greenland is ludicrous.
In order for a territory to become part of the United States, its residents must want to join up, and the majority of Greenlanders are not interested.
Threatening little Denmark makes the United States look little better than Russia and China intimidating its neighbors.
It’s an intemperate tactic and not likely to succeed.
In any case, we should be seeking something less offensive to Greenlanders’ national aspirations and more appealing to their practical necessities.
Perhaps a Joint Free Association Agreement with both Denmark and the United States that provides the United States the kind of strategic monopoly it enjoys through its agreements with Pacific states in exchange for U.S. support to replace the Danish grants.
But the United States and Denmark must be able to exclude outside commercial projects that could compromise the security interests of the United States and other NATO nations—read investment from China, Russia and their allies.
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Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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