Donald Trump threatens to forcibly annex Greenland, even though 85% of Greenlanders oppose this.
The US wants to restrict China’s access to the Arctic region, and to exploit the territory’s natural resources, especially critical minerals needed for new supply chains.
The vast majority of people in Greenland oppose becoming part of the United States, despite Donald Trump’s threats to colonize their land.
A staggering 85% of Greenlanders do not want to join the US, according to a poll published in January by a Greenlandic newspaper.
Just 6% of people in Greenland support Trump’s proposal to annex their homeland. (The remaining 9% are undecided.)
Greenland Wants Independence From Both Denmark And The US
Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, although polls have long shown that the majority of people there, who are of indigenous Inuit descent, consider themselves to be a separate country and want formal independence.
Just because they want independence from the Danish empire, however, does not mean that Greenlanders want to instead be colonized by the US empire.
“We don’t want to be Danes. We don’t want to be Americans. We want to be Greenlanders”, insisted Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede.
The Trump administration has openly rejected the wishes of the Greenlandic people, and has made it clear that it is serious about taking control of Greenland.
A Trump ally, Republican Congressman Earl “Buddy” Carter, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that calls to “authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as ‘Red, White, and Blueland’”.
Top US officials have acknowledged that they have two main goals: minimizing China’s influence in the Arctic region, and exploiting Greenland’s critical minerals.
US Targets China And Greenland’s Minerals
US Vice President JD Vance has confirmed Washington’s motives.
Greenland is “really important to our national security. There are sea lanes there that the Chinese use, that the Russians use”, Vance explained in an interview on Fox News.
Climate change is expected to melt some of the ice in the Arctic, making it easier for ships to pass through the region, opening up new trade routes.
The US government is seeking to militarize the Arctic region, to restrict China’s access.
Washington also wants to remove China from its supply chains. The US House of Representative’s anti-China committee has a Critical Minerals Policy Working Group dedicated to precisely this task.
The United States hopes that it can diversify its critical minerals supply chain by instead extracting resources from Greenland (and from Ukraine, where Trump is trying to impose an unequal treaty that will give the US control over its critical minerals and export revenue).
In Greenland, “They’ve got great natural resources there; they’ve got an incredibly bountiful country that the Danes aren’t letting them develop and explore”, Vice President Vance said. “Of course, Donald Trump would take a different approach, if he was the leader of Greenland”.
In another interview on Fox News, Vance reiterated, “Greenland is really important for America strategically. It has a lot of great natural resources … I think there actually is a real opportunity here for us to take leadership, to protect America’s security, to ensure that those incredible natural resources are developed, and that’s what Donald Trump is good at”.
What are those natural resources? Reuters noted that Greenland has at least 25 of the 34 minerals designated “critical raw materials” by the European Commission.
Greenland has significant deposits of rare earths, graphite, copper, nickel, zinc, gold, diamonds, iron ore, titanium-vanadium, tungsten, and uranium, Reuters reported.
Trump Hints At Military Threat, While NATO Chief Gives Green Light To Colonization
Donald Trump promised at his inauguration on January 20 that he would “expand” US territory, invoking the colonialist concept of “Manifest Destiny”.
In another speech on January 25, the US president told his supporters, “We may be a very substantially enlarged country in the not too distant [future] — isn’t it nice to see?”
Foreign territories that Trump wants to colonize include Greenland, the Panama Canal, Gaza, and even Canada.
Trump made further threats against Greenland in a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House on March 13.
“We need [Greenland] for international security”, Trump said. “We have a lot of our favorite players, you know, cruising around the coast, and we have to be careful”, he added, obliquely referring to China and Russia.
The NATO chief agreed with the US president. “When it comes to the high north in the Arctic, you are totally right. The Chinese are using these routes. We know that the Russians are already arming”, Rutte said.
Rutte complained that NATO countries “have a lack of icebreakers”. Trump lamented that Russia has 40 icebreakers, whereas the US only has one. “You’ve got to get your own icebreakers”, he said.
“That whole area is becoming very important and for a lot of reasons”, Trump added. “The routes are, you know, very direct to Asia, to Russia, and you have ships all over the place. And we have to have protection”.
The Trump administration has revived the 202-year-old colonial Monroe Doctrine to try to justify its aggressive interventionist policies, treating the entire western hemisphere as the US imperial “sphere of influence”.
In this meeting, Trump threatened military force to take over Greenland.
“We really need it for national security. I think that’s why NATO might have to get involved in a way, because we really need Greenland for national security. It’s very important”, Trump declared.
“You know, we have a couple of bases on Greenland already, and we have quite a few soldiers that — maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers go there”, he added.
The United States has one known military base on Greenland, the Pituffik Space Base. The existence of other military facilities has not been officially acknowledged in public, but Trump has repeatedly said that the US has multiple bases there.
While Trump threatened to colonize the autonomous territory of a NATO member, the NATO chief sitting next to him essentially gave the US president the green light.
“So, when it comes to Greenland, yes or no, joining the US, I would leave that outside, for me, this discussion, because I don’t want to drag NATO in that”, said Secretary General Rutte.
Greenlanders Say They “Will Never Become The USA”
Almost no one in Greenland actually wants to join the United States. As previously established, a poll found that 85% of people oppose Trump’s plan, whereas just 6% support it.
Greenlanders have held large protests condemning the US threats, with messages like “Aggression! Don’t take over our country! You are not welcome!” and “Yankee, go home!”
Greenland’s population is very small, at just around 57,000 people. The majority are of indigenous Inuit descent, and they have seen how the US government has abused and terrorized indigenous peoples in North America.
Greenlanders also have a social-democratic government that guarantees universal healthcare and education, which they could lose if they were annexed by the United States.
The prime minister of Greenland, Múte Bourup Egede, asserted in a Facebook post that “we will never in any way become part of the USA and become Americans”.
“Kalaallit Nunaat will never become the USA”, he wrote, using the name of the country in the indigenous Greenlandic language.
“Greenland is one country that we all stand behind”, he added. “And the parties stand united against the unacceptable behavior of the American leader and we continue the fight for our country”.
In response to the US annexation plans, Egede declared, “I cannot accept that in any way”.
“We must intensify our rejection of Trump”, the prime minister added. “We must not continue to be treated with disrespect. Enough is enough”.
Egede is a member of the socialist political party Inuit Ataqatigiit, which supports the independence of Greenland from Danish colonialism.
His party is not the only one, however. Although Greenland’s other political parties have differences on internal affairs, even the centrist and right-leaning ones support independence.
The leaders of all five parties in parliament published a joint statement denouncing Trump’s threats, writing, “We — all party chairmen — cannot accept the repeated statements on annexation and control of Greenland… We, as party chairmen, find this conduct unacceptable”.