Americans might wonder why President Donald Trump declares that America needs to control Greenland. They might think it sounds aggressive to talk about “taking” territory from a long-time ally, but let’s look at the facts.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, is part of North America and sits strategically to the immediate northeast of the continental United States between the United States and Russia.
The United States military occupied Greenland during World War II, built most of the infrastructure, and remained until the end of the Cold War, making up about 25% of the inhabitants of the world’s largest island, now occupied by approximately 57,000 Greenlanders, Danes, and others.
The United States has maintained a base in northern Greenland since then that serves as an early warning radar system. Greenland will now be part of the hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of projects under the Trump administration’s Golden Dome initiative. The Golden Dome is intended to secure the U.S. Homeland, much like Israel’s Iron Dome, but for longer-range missile-type threats.
In 2019, while I served as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark, Trump told the Danish Prime Minister that Greenland was not secure and that Denmark needed to invest in Greenland‘s security. The Danish Prime Minister committed to investing $200 million in Greenland security, but she didn’t keep her word, and Denmark did not invest in Greenland security.
When I would visit Greenland, there were about 30 Danish Joint Arctic Command Officers and two dog sledge teams to secure the entire island, one-third the size of the continental U.S. Denmark had very rudimentary localized awareness of threats on, above, and below the giant and strategic waters surrounding Greenland in the GIUK gap. These seas and skies are essential for trade and defense.
Allies can be fickle, and demographics and leadership can change. Look at the recent threat to our American base, Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands, and our even closer ally, the United Kingdom. The U.K. leadership has threatened our important base by proposing to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Thus, over time, the United States may lose control of strategic assets.
Greenland is so large and difficult to secure that only the United States or China with Russia’s help have the resources to do so.
Denmark has never bothered to develop Greenland and instead has kept it in a welfare transfer, subsistence state without needed infrastructure development. Denmark has taken more than it’s given to Greenland, but with its small economy and large social welfare spending, Denmark can’t afford to develop or defend Greenland. And so Denmark sabotages Greenland and gaslights the Greenlanders to fear the United States so that Greenlanders end their quest to be independent of Denmark.
Denmark even encouraged Greenland to pass a law so that Greenland couldn’t exploit their incredible oil and gas reserves, believed to be three times greater than Norway’s gas reserves and more than twice Norway’s oil reserves. This action was taken to address the climate crisis and adhere to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. Meanwhile, energy is a pathway to Greenlandic independence from Denmark, and Norway’s prosperity and its ownership of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund are largely a result of its abundant energy harvesting in its own seas.
What do you do when you control an asset that you can’t afford?
Much like Denmark, NATO’s European and Canadian allies are not capable of securing Greenland. They don’t have the money, and most can’t even defend their own territories, which is a requirement under Article 3 of the NATO Charter.
The U.S. needs Greenland for security. Greenland needs the U.S. for development. Denmark has propagandized the Greenlanders into a panic. Now, finally, everyone is in the room, talking about the path forward and what it will look like.
Americans can be sure that the Trump administration will secure the region on our behalf.
Carla Sands is the former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark. She currently serves as the Chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Foreign Policy Initiative and is a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Energy & Environment at AFPI.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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