President Donald Trump isn’t crazy to want a greater U.S. role in Greenland for national security reasons — and he probably could have negotiated a quick deal to expand U.S. military access and investment there with Denmark, which owns the island.
But Trump’s swaggering campaign to buy Greenland or seize it outright has instead produced a crisis that could damage American security for decades — far outweighing any gains from control of the barren island. “Shooting yourself in the foot” is too generous a description for Trump’s effort. It’s more like shooting yourself in the head.
Trump’s obsession with Greenland, which has grown year by year since 2017, seemed at first just another example of his 19th-century atavism. The Danish government initially adopted a “nice kitty” strategy of privately floating ideas for a new security agreement. But Denmark and the rest of Europe realized this month that Trump was serious about gaining control of the island, by force if necessary.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, bragged to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday. “Utilizing the U.S. military is always an option,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement the next day.
Given Trump’s history, this talk about military options for Greenland may simply be a negotiating tactic. He wants a piece of real estate, and he’s threatening the owner with ruin to compel a sale. The implicit offer to Europe may be: I’ll help protect you against Russia, and the price is Greenland. But with Trump, you never know. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro thought he was bluffing, too.
Military success is intoxicating for any White House. After last weekend’s dazzling capture of Maduro in Caracas, Trump and his aides began speaking the language of 19th-century imperialism. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller proclaimed to Tapper. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Trump started talking with aides about Greenland in 2017. His interest was not wholly unreasonable: The Arctic was a new locus of great-power competition, and the Danish-owned territory was more important strategically. In these conversations, Trump complained that the United States had untrammeled access to Greenland during the Cold War but had given it away, sources tell me.
Back then, it seemed more presidential whim than policy. When a 2019 Wall Street Journal article surfaced Trump’s desire to buy Greenland, the island’s foreign ministry tweeted cheerily: “We’re open for business, not for sale.”
Trump had plenty of other worries in his first term — and aides who were ready to give him a reality check. But the fixation returned with greater force after he won a decisive victory in November 2024. He posted the next month that “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.” On. Jan. 7, Donald Trump Jr. visited on the family jet, “Trump Force One,” after Trump posted his renewed desire to control the island. Two days later, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry jumped in on X: “We need to ensure that Greenland joins the United States. … Let’s get it done.” Trump last month named Landry special envoy for the island, saying he would “lead the charge.”
Danish officials privately assured the White House that military pressure wasn’t necessary. The United States already has a military base in Pituffik, and it could add an unlimited number of troops. In addition, the U.S. maintained “the right of free access to and movement between the defense areas through Greenland” by land, air, and sea, under a 1951 agreement that, though amended, remained in force.
Trump was hardly the first U.S. official who wanted to own Greenland. But predecessors were checked by the need to maintain alliances.
When Defense Secretary Charles Wilson in 1955 queried Adm. Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about whether the military wanted to acquire Greenland, Radford said that was “axiomatic.” But “there are political and economic problems involved,” he cautioned. The State Department noted in a 1959 review of the purchase issue that “the time was long past when such a plan would be feasible,” cautioning: “Greenland is … an integral part of Denmark, just as much as the State of New Jersey is an integral part of the United States.”
Team Trump is thus pursuing something that even the Eisenhower administration rejected at the height of the Cold War. The intelligence community’s 2025 threat assessment, delivered in March, warned that both Russia and China coveted Greenland. Vice President JD Vance paid a brief symbolic visit to Pituffik that month, drawing protests from Greenlanders and the Danish government.
Danish officials worried as 2025 progressed that the White House was adding intelligence tools to its campaign. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent intelligence agencies a “collection emphasis message” in late April urging them to gather information about Greenland’s independence movement and popular sentiment about a greater U.S. role, according to the Wall Street Journal. Danish public broadcaster DR reported in August that three U.S. citizens had been involved in secret “influence operations” on the island. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said this interference was “unacceptable.”
Last month, the Danish intelligence service warned in its annual threat report: “The United States is leveraging economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to assert its will, and the possibility of employing military force — even against allies — is no longer ruled out.”
The Trump administration has already redrawn the map, administratively. Greenland is overseen by the National Security Council official responsible for the Western Hemisphere, sources tell me. Denmark may be European, in other words, but Greenland isn’t.
It’s characteristic of Trump’s dealmaking technique that he’s squeezing Denmark at a moment when all European countries are deeply worried about the threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin. They’re in a position of weakness, so it’s a good time to pressure them to sell. That’s the ruthless approach that made Trump an outcast in the New York business elite for decades.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned Monday that if Trump keeps pushing, he could wreck NATO. “If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops,” she said. Europeans increasingly have to worry: Could Trump really be so reckless that he would risk undoing America’s most important alliance?
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