With Threats to Greenland, Trump Sets America on the Road to Conquest

It seems safe to assume that when Harry Truman forged NATO at the dawn of the Cold War, he never imagined that over the course of nearly eight decades the only country that would wage economic war and threaten actual war against the allies for the purpose of territorial conquest would be the United States itself.

And yet that is the reality of this upside-down, might-makes-right world of President Trump’s creation as he slaps tariffs on America’s treaty partners and holds out the possibility of using military force to strong-arm Denmark and its European friends into giving up Greenland, a territory whose citizens do not want to become part of the United States.

Never in the past century has America gone forth to seize other countries’ land and subjugate its citizens against their will. Since the days of World War I, America was the country that resisted conquest, standing up to Hitler’s Germany, Tojo’s Japan, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Kim Il-sung’s North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq when they seized foreign terrain. Now Mr. Trump aspires to put America into the category of conquerors.

Coercing a loyal ally into giving up territory over its adamant objections would have been seen not long ago as preposterous, even mad — indeed, one of Mr. Trump’s own cabinet secretaries in his first term privately considered it delusional when he raised it back then. But it is a measure of how much Mr. Trump has changed the definition of normal that his appetite for seizing land that does not belong to him is debated as a serious proposition rather than dismissed out of hand as a brazen violation of U.S. treaty obligations and international law.

Not that the United States has always respected the sovereignty of other nations. There have been plenty of times in its history when America has toppled governments or temporarily occupied countries it considered hostile. But never has it done so against a longtime ally that posed no threat. And not since the Spanish-American War of 1898 has it kept territory that it captured through force of arms.

The United States in the 20th century “took the lead in de-legitmating colonial rule and ending the age of empire,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown and former Europe adviser to President Barack Obama. “Those days may be coming to an end. If the United States were to use economic and military coercion to take control of Greenland, it would be an unabashed act of imperial aggression against a democratic ally.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers dispute that analysis. “We don’t go in there trying to conquer anybody and trying to take over anybody’s country,” said Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, recently named by Mr. Trump as his special envoy to “make Greenland a part of the U.S.,” in the governor’s words. Speaking on Fox News on Friday, he added: “We say: ‘Listen. We represent liberty. We represented economic strength. We represent protection.’”

But the president himself is sending a different message, one of pressure, not persuasion. “We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” he told reporters this month. “One way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland,” he said aboard Air Force One last week. Over the weekend, he vowed to punish European countries that have stood by Denmark against his territorial demands by increasing taxes on their imported goods.

Mr. Trump has rebuffed efforts at diplomacy. When Norway’s prime minister asked to talk about the dispute on Sunday, the president refused, sending a text making clear that he had no interest in a conversation “considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS.” (The prize is awarded by an independent committee, not Norway’s government, and Mr. Trump’s claim to have ended eight wars is exaggerated.)

Mr. Trump’s stated rationale is that the United States needs Greenland for security reasons. His logic is that Russia or China could take it over, so therefore the United States should take it over. But neither Russia nor China has shown any inclination lately to seize Greenland for itself. The only country threatening Greenland at the moment is Mr. Trump’s America.

If security were really the issue, the United States already has troops in Greenland and, under a 1951 agreement, could send more forces and reopen bases there tomorrow if it wanted to. In his five years in the White House, Mr. Trump has never seen the threat to Greenland being so urgent that he chose to do that.

In fact, Mr. Trump’s interest seems less about security than about grandiosity. “I said, ‘Why don’t we have that?’” he explained in a 2021 interview for the book “The Divider” about his first term. “You take a look at a map. I’m a real estate developer, I look at a corner, I say, ‘I’ve got to get that store for the building that I’m building,’ etc. It’s not that different. I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States.’”

In an interview with The New York Times this month, he framed it in terms of personal desire. Asked why ownership was important instead of just fortifying Greenland, he said, “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success.” Asked if he meant psychologically important for himself or psychologically important for the country, he said, “Psychologically important for me.”

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Mr. Trump got turned onto taking Greenland by the billionaire businessman Ronald S. Lauder, a friend since school, whose interest has raised questions about who might profit from such a move. During his first term, Mr. Trump instructed his national security adviser, John R. Bolton, to come up with a plan to buy it. Mr. Bolton thought an outright purchase was not viable, but saw value in enhancing security ties and assigned a team to figure out how to satisfy the president’s desire short of ownership.

That was not enough for Mr. Trump. For months, he demanded action. He suggested taking federal money from Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory he disdained since being criticized for his response to a 2017 hurricane there, and using it to buy Greenland. At one point, according to an administration official, Mr. Trump suggested they just trade Puerto Rico for Greenland because “Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.”

The effort to buy Greenland in his first term blew up when The Wall Street Journal reported it in 2019, prompting the Danes to reject it out of hand. But few understood then just how deep Mr. Trump’s fixation was.

Greenland never came up during the 2024 campaign, but on Dec. 22 of that year, just weeks after winning his old office back, Mr. Trump posted an online message calling acquisition of Greenland “an absolute necessity.” And unlike in his first term, this time he pointedly left military force on the table.

Danish leaders responded by making clear that Greenland was not for sale, but otherwise sought to not provoke Mr. Trump and asked European allies not to get involved in hopes that the president would move on. By midyear, it seemed as if he had.

Then, once again just before Christmas, Mr. Trump revived the issue. By the president’s account, Mr. Landry called him at Mar-a-Lago and pitched himself as special envoy on Greenland. This time, the Danes have concluded that a low profile will not work and have enlisted European allies to speak out and even send forces to Greenland for military exercises.

Suddenly, America is viewed as the rapacious aggressor likeliest to seize NATO territory, not Russia. During the singing of the national anthem before an NBA game in London on Sunday, a spectator shouted, “Leave Greenland alone!” generating applause. Protesters took to the streets in Denmark and Greenland over the weekend, chanting, “Yankee, go home!” The Russians, for their part, cheered the discord, chortling about the “collapse of the transatlantic union,” as Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin negotiator, put it.

Greenland is not the only example of Mr. Trump trying to take what belongs to other countries. Since sending Delta Force commandos into Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro on federal drug charges, Mr. Trump has asserted that he now “runs” the country and is taking its oil. While he is not talking about absorbing Venezuela into the United States, he has threatened to make Canada the “51st state” and threatened to seize the Panama Canal.

Mr. Trump’s disregard for the territorial integrity of other nations stands in contrast to his own speech to the United Nations in 2017 when he used the words “sovereign” or “sovereignty” 21 times. “We must reject threats to sovereignty, from the Ukraine to the South China Sea,” he said then, calling for “respect for law” and “respect for borders.”

Now he seems intent on returning to an age of Manifest Destiny, when the United States built an empire in the 19th century by pushing across the continent, violently forcing Native Americans off their land and waging war against Mexico to procure much of the west. Such imperialism largely ended by the turn of the century after America seized the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam from Spain. After years of bloody resistance, the United States eventually granted the Philippines independence.

As it emerged as a global power in the 20th century, the United States positioned itself as a defender of other countries against foreign aggression. It came to the aid of Europe against Germany twice, refused for decades to accept Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, freed much of the Pacific from Imperial Japan, stopped the takeover of South Korea by the North, expelled Iraqi invaders from Kuwait and, more recently, armed Ukraine to fight off Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.

The United States helped create the United Nations to protect the sovereignty of independent countries. “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations,” says Article 2 of the U.N. Charter.

Mr. Trump, who by contrast has agreed to recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory as part of a possible peace deal, has articulated no legal doctrine allowing him to do with Greenland what Mr. Putin is trying to do with Ukraine. Instead, he has argued that he can do anything he wants, declaring that the only limits on his global power are “my own morality” and “my own mind.”

Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, has dismissed international treaties as “international niceties” and demanded to know “by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?” Mr. Trump adopted that line of argument in his text to Norway’s prime minister, stating, “There are no written documents,” although Greenland has been part of Denmark longer than the United States has been a nation.

Even Republicans have pushed back, while trying to blame the people around the president. “The fact that a small handful of ‘advisors’ are actively pushing for coercive action to seize territory of an ally is beyond stupid,” Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who helped lead a congressional delegation to Denmark, wrote on social media over the weekend.

Mr. Trump is not the first American president to eye Greenland. Truman himself agreed that it could be an important addition to the country and in 1946 made a secret offer to Denmark to buy it for $100 million in gold.

But when Denmark declined to sell, Truman did not punish it. Nor did he threaten to invade. He took no for an answer.

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He is covering his sixth presidency and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework.

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