President Trump has been less than subtle in his insistence that the United States will “get” Greenland one way or another, reiterating on Friday that the United States cannot “live without it.”
By the time he uttered those words in Oval Office, the highest-level American political expeditionary force ever to step foot on the vast territory had already landed to inspect the real estate prospects. But they were confined inside the fence of a remote, frozen American air base, the only place protesters could not show up.
Led by Vice President JD Vance, the American visitors quickly discovered what past administrations have learned back to the 1860s: The meteorological conditions are as forbidding as the politics. When Mr. Vance’s plane touched down in the midday sunshine, 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it was minus 3 degrees outside.
Mr. Vance used a jocular and slightly vulgar epithet to describe the temperature, where he was wearing jeans and a parka, but no hat or gloves. “Nobody told me,” he said to the troops at the Pituffik Space Base as he entered their mess hall for lunch. The U.S. Space Force Guardians, who run what was once known after World War II as Thule Air Force Base, broke out laughing.
But for all the humor, the trip was simultaneously a reconnaissance mission and a passive-aggressive reminder of Mr. Trump’s determination to fulfill his territorial ambitions, no matter what the obstacles. As if to drive home the point, Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday: “We have to have Greenland. It’s not a question of ‘Do you think we can do without it.’ We can’t.”
In fact, of the four territories Mr. Trump has discussed acquiring — Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada and Gaza — it is Greenland that he seems most determined to get. Perhaps it is the vast expanse of the territory, far larger than Mexico. Perhaps it is its strategic location, or his determination to have an American “sphere of influence,” a very 19th-century view of how great powers deal with each other.
Yet one of the mysteries hanging over the Vance tour is how far Mr. Trump is willing to go to achieve his goal. That has been the question since early January, when Mr. Trump, awaiting his inauguration, was asked whether he would rule out economic or military coercion to get his way. “I’m not going to commit to that,” he said. “You might have to do something.”
Not since the days of William McKinley, who engaged in the Spanish-American War in the late 19th century and ended up with U.S. control of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, has an American president-elect so blatantly threatened the use of force to expand the country’s territorial boundaries. And the visit on Friday appeared designed to make that clear, without quite repeating the threat.
Mr. Vance is the first sitting vice president to visit a land that Americans have coveted for more than a century and a half. The fact that he was accompanied by the embattled national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and the energy secretary, Chris Wright, was clearly designed to underscore the strategic rationale that Mr. Trump cites as a justification for his territorial ambitions.
Before he landed, the leader of Greenland suggested that he viewed Mr. Waltz’s presence, in particular, as a show of Mr. Trump’s aggressive intent.
“What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland?” Múte Bourup Egede, Greenland’s 38-year-old prime minister, told the local newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”
Mr. Egede and other Greenland officials made it clear that the Americans were not welcome for a visit. The White House had to scrap a good-will tour by Usha Vance, the vice president’s wife, who had been planning to attend a dog sled race and hold conversations with ordinary Greenlanders. As it became clear that the roads around Nuuk, the capital, would be lined with protesters, the visit was moved just to the Space Force base, where distance from any population center and high fences assured there would be no visible dissent.
Mr. Trump is not wrong when he claims that there are strategic advantages to acquiring the territory. William Seward, the secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, was negotiating to buy the territory for a bit more than $5 million in 1868 — with Iceland thrown in — just after he acquired Alaska. But the deal never came to fruition. Harry Truman wanted the territory after World War II, recognizing that failure to control it would give advantage to the Soviets, and make the United States more vulnerable to Soviet submarines.
Today Greenland is the site of a surface and undersea competition with China and Russia for access to the Arctic, a territory with vastly increased military and commercial importance since global warming made traversing polar routes easier. And Mr. Trump has made clear he is interested in Greenland’s untapped mineral reserves and rare earths, as he is in Ukraine, Russia and Canada.
“If you look at the globe, you can see why we prefer that the Russians and the Chinese don’t control this,” said Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. “But we don’t need to own it to protect it and prevent them from taking control.”
Mr. Trump, he said, “wants the resources of Greenland, but in today’s world you can buy resources.” And by expanding the American presence, he could defend against growing Chinese or Russian influence without seizing control of the land.
But Mr. Trump looks at the world through the eyes of a real estate developer, and he clearly cherishes territorial control. In his inaugural address he talked about “manifest destiny” and praised Mr. McKinley. James K. Polk’s portrait has made it on the wall of the Oval Office, along with a selection of other past presidents; he was the president who oversaw much of the American expansion to the West Coast.
Mr. Vance’s audience was American troops, not Greenlanders, once his wife’s trip was turned into a vice-presidential mission. But he was clearly talking to a larger audience when, before getting back on his plane and returning to warmer climes in Washington, he made the case that the United States would be a far better steward for Greenland than Denmark has been for several hundred years.
“Let’s be honest,” he said. “This base, the surrounding area, is less secure than it was 30, 40, years ago, because some of our allies haven’t kept up as China and Russia have taken greater and greater interest in Greenland, in this base, in the activities of the brave Americans right here.”
He charged that Denmark, and much of Europe, has not “kept pace with military spending, and Denmark has not kept pace in devoting the resources necessary to keep this base, to keep our troops, and in my view, to keep the people of Greenland safe from a lot of very aggressive incursions from Russia, from China and from other nations.”
It was a remarkable public critique of a NATO ally, but milder than what Mr. Vance said to his national security colleagues about European partners in the Signal chat that became public earlier in the week.
“Our message to Denmark is very simple, you have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Mr. Vance said, all but goading Greenlanders into declaring independence from Denmark. “You have underinvested in the people of Greenland and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful land mass, filled with incredible people.”
In an exchange with reporters, Mr. Vance seemed to acknowledge that the drive to acquire the territory had as much to do with Mr. Trump as the national security threat. “We can’t just ignore this place,” he said at one point. “We can’t just ignore the president’s desires. But most importantly, we can’t ignore what I said earlier, which is the Russian and Chinese encroachment in Greenland.”
“When the president says we’ve got to have Greenland, he’s saying this island is not safe,” he said. “A lot of people are interested in it. A lot of people are making a play.” But he was careful to say the decision about whom to partner with was Greenland’s. (Mr. Trump himself has not put it in such voluntary terms.)
Just before he left, Mr. Vance was asked if military plans had been drafted to take Greenland if it declines to become an American protectorate.
“We do not think that military force is ever going to be necessary,’’ he said. “We think the people of Greenland are rational and good, and we think we’re going to be able to cut a deal, Donald Trump-style, to ensure the security of this territory, but also the United States of America.”