Trump has threatened to takeover Greenland (Image: Getty)
A secret hidden agenda may be driving Donald Trump’s plan to take control of Greenland.
“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,” he declared last month.
The president-elect’s ambition to reshape the world map came days after suggesting that America could retake control of the Panama Canal if shipping tolls were not lowered, and proposed making Canada the 51st US state.
Worryingly, he refused to rule out the use of military force to seize control of Greenland.
Yet multiple experts believe that Trump, long accused of conflating policy with self-interest, may have more disturbing ulterior motives behind his desire to control the world’s largest island.
READ MORE: Greenland ‘ready to talk’ after Donald Trump sparks invasion fears
“Trump’s secret motivation for wanting to annex the remote Arctic isle may be more narcissistic: his Greenland-sized ego.”
“Greenland is ripe for exploitation,” says one former Democratic White House aide. “Is it too far-fetched to think of Greenland with Trump hotels, Trump casinos and Trump golf resorts, Trump mining interests and Trump housing complexes?
“And Trump’s wealthy friends will probably support him because they’ll hope to get a slice of the exploitation of Greenland’s natural resources: its minerals, energy and fisheries.”
Though more than three times the size of Texas, Greenland and its 57,000 residents have carefully protected the Arctic island’s fragile environment, limiting mining and tourism, and banning oil exploration.
But it has emerged that Denmark has reached out to Trump’s team in recent days about Greenland’s security measures, with discussions covering a potential boost in US military presence.
The Danish government wanted to better understand Trump’s motivations for the island, US news site Axios reported.
And there is still much to understand. Trump, aged 78, who was reelected in November with his vow to “Drill, baby, drill!” in America’s protected wilderness regions, may view Greenland as a vast under-exploited strip mine just waiting to be ripped open.
Arctic ice receding due to global warming – likely to accelerate under Trump’s eco-unfriendly watch – is making it easier for mining operations to exploit its rare minerals, oil and natural gas.
But beyond the island’s military strategic importance and its wealth of natural resources, Trump’s secret motivation for wanting to annex the remote Arctic isle may be more narcissistic: his Greenland-sized ego.
Donald Trump’s plane landing in Greeland last week (Image: Getty)
Don Jr visited Greenland earlier this month (Image: Getty)
“He wants to be remembered as America’s saviour, like a founding father,” says the former White House aide. He’s made no secret that he wants his face carved on the Mount Rushmore monument.”
Indeed, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem recalls meeting Trump at the monument, where he confessed: “It’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore.”
Adding Greenland to America’s portfolio would certainly add lustre to his dubious presidential legacy of bigotry, racism, misogyny and intolerance.
“It’s easy to imagine that Trump wants to follow in the tradition of presidents who greatly expanded their territory, like in the 19th century when the United States expanded westwards and then bought Alaska,” says international politics professor Thomas Jäger of the University of Cologne told German television network NTV. “This would be something that would define him as a truly great president.”
Greenland, four-fifths covered by ice, poised between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans and famed for its glaciers and fjords, is an autonomous territory with its own parliament under the sovereignty of Denmark, and in recent decades has been campaigning for independence.
So it’s hardly surprising that being sold to America like a bowl of steaming suaasat seal meat soup is not the most appetising dish to serve the islanders.
Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlander member of the Danish parliament, has already hit back.
“I don’t want to be a pawn in Trump’s wild dreams of expanding his empire and including our country in it,” he said.
As has Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. “Greenland is not for sale and will not be in the future either,” he declared.
Don Jr stopping for a selfie with a supporter in Greenland (Image: Getty)
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr, visited Greenland last week to advance his father’s agenda, only to leave after less than a day, rebuffed by infuriated islanders.
Republican Senator Kevin Cramer warned, with notable understatement, that “a military invasion would be a diplomatic disaster.”
There is even a suggestion it could create an international predicament for Nato.
Elisabet Svane told “If they invade Greenland, they invade Nato.”
Elisabeth Svane, chief political correspondent for Danish newspaper Politiken warned. “So that’s where it stops. Article 5 would have to be triggered. And if a Nato country invades Nato then there’s no Nato.”
Any occupation by military force would almost certainly be viewed by Russian president Vladimir Putin as justification for his invasion of Ukraine, and would likely provoke condemnation in the United Nations.
But such criticism is easy to ignore for the incoming president who has promised on Day One in office to end the Ukraine war (despite the absence of a plan or negotiations), pardon the insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the duly elected president Joe Biden in 2021, and this week announced his intention of renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America – a proposal that evoked mirth from Mexican authorities.
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz famously lamented in 2019 that Trump’s MAGA “embodies and celebrates unbridled selfishness and self-absorption,” and former US defence secretary Mark Esper said: “Donald Trump, aș best I can assess, is a person driven by self-interest.”
Dr Jeremy Chapman of Britain’s business ethics advocacy group the Integrity Centre in Stroud told the Express that Trump’s seemingly “impulsive and ego-driven” ambition to annex Greenland is in line with his value system that “prioritises image, financial gain and personal legacy overriding collective concerns like environmental stability or societal wellbeing . . . reframing leadership as a vehicle for personal gain rather than public service.”
Trump, whose art of the deal seemingly favours bullying and coercion, won’t take “No” for an answer.
Yet despite his aggressive transactional take on diplomacy, Trump is right in thinking that America and Nato could benefit from placing Greenland under US control. The US already has several military bases on the island, including nuclear weaponry and the US Space Force missile warning system. Greenland’s strategic position in the Arctic between the US and Russia is particularly attractive.
It’s not a new idea: America debated buying Greenland in 1867 until Congress objected, and in 1946 its $100million offer was rejected by the Danes. Trump’s bid to seal the deal in 2019 was also rebuffed. Yet it’s not unthinkable: Denmark had sold the Danish West Indies islands in 1917 to America, which renamed them the US Virgin Islands.
America is also concerned by China’s mounting interest in Greenland, aiming to build airports, roads and investing £1.9billion – equivalent to the entire nation’s GDP – in an iron ore mining operation, giving China enormous sway over the nation.
Greenland also has untold reserves of gold, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, lead, and rare earth minerals vital for producing electric vehicles, cell phones and military technology.
The island has been careful to protect its pristine wilderness, but Trump would be expected to encourage investors to drill, dig, frack and extract every last asset. Equally troubling is his long history of using government policy to benefit his own interests. Former New Jersey Governor and Republican presidential contender Chris Christie called Trump a “self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog”.
The Trump Organisation is a multi-tentacled corporate octopus with around 250 subsidiaries and affiliates across the globe. Hotels, resorts, golf courses, property and construction interests are just the tip of the iceberg.
The group has operated commercial and private aviation, online travel and food services, which could all see explosive growth if Greenland opens its doors for unfettered development.
US presidents traditionally put their business interests in a blind trust and divest from their business interests while in office to maintain an ethical separation from their political endeavours. Not Trump, who repeatedly cashed in on his presidency.
Greenland PM Múte Bourup Egede said: ‘We don’t want to be American’ (Image: Getty)
The Trump Organisation earned tens of millions of pounds when 252 events were staged at 14 Trump properties by special interest groups, foreign governments and political groups during his first four years in office, ending in 2021.
Trump racked up more than 3,700 conflicts of interest during his presidency, according to watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which accused him of “using his power as the president to boost his own profits through frequent visits to his hotels and golf courses, relentless promotion of his properties, and countless other interactions between the Trump Organisation and the government.”
Despite promising voters that he would not have time to leave the Oval Office to play golf, he paid 328 visits to his golf courses, and charged the Secret Service more than GBP 400,000 for golf cart rentals so they could protect him on the links.
Trump called cryptocurrencies “a potential disaster waiting to happen” and said Bitcoin “seemed like a scam,” but changed his tune when launching his own cryptocurrency business World Liberty Financial in September, promising loosened regulatory controls.
He now wants to “Make Greenland Great Again,” and in doing so Make Trump Great Again by bringing MAGA’s vulgar, self-serving, exploitative values to the isolated isle.
A Fox News pundit opined: “He is talking a lot about how to get criminal illegal immigrants out of our country, and if countries like Venezuela – that we don’t have relations with – won’t take them back, maybe he’d build a facility in Greenland and ship them there.”
But Denmark has no desire to relinquish Greenland, and islanders show little desire to become yet another star on the US flag, while still fighting to shed the yoke of Danish control.
“Greenland is ours,” said Greenland Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede. “We must not lose our years-long fight for freedom.”
To Trump, those may sound like merely the opening words in a negotiation, with dollar signs at the end of them.