August 24, 2019
Here’s How Trump Should Have Approached Greenland
The United States can build on its strategic toehold without buying the entire country.
The news that U.S. President Donald Trump was pushing to purchase Greenland probably didn’t take its government entirely by surprise. The United States has long harbored designs on the island—and unlike in the years after the Cold War, when Greenland receded from the geopolitical forefront, climate change has put Greenland, Iceland, and other Arctic nations back on the front pages. New sea routes are opening up through the Arctic, and mineral-rich areas of Greenland are becoming economically accessible.
Trump is not wrong about Greenland’s importance to the United States. But in his fumbling and flippant attempts to buy it, and thereby gain the United States an expanded strategic purchase, he has achieved the opposite effect, needlessly closing the door on more conventional paths to a larger U.S. presence there and insulting Denmark, one of the United States’ closest allies.
Read the full article in Foreign Policy.
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