Why Greenland is important to Trump
Why Greenland is important to Trump
The President-elect of the United States, who is awaiting his inauguration on January 20th to take power in America, continued his series of controversial statements by emphasizing that he does not rule out the use of military force to annex Greenland.
Trump’s insistence on acquiring Greenland has raised the question for many as to why he is so focused on this region. According to reports from the East, this ice-covered territory belonging to Denmark, known as the world’s largest island, has long been of interest to strategists in Washington and elsewhere due to its location on vital shipping routes and its key mineral resources, which are rarely found elsewhere.
A source close to Donald Trump, in response to a question from the New York Post about the President-elect’s intentions behind these remarks, pointed to several reasons and explained that Trump’s statements are a calculated and strong message to Beijing.
It’s not just talk, it’s action.
It’s about bringing ambition back to America. This source emphasized that the President-elect of the United States is sketching out the initial framework of the Trump Doctrine with his statements in recent weeks.
According to the Wilson Center, a think tank focused on foreign policy in Washington, the United States is currently engaged in a trilateral competition with China and Russia over the natural resources of the Arctic region, including lithium, cobalt, and graphite.
Alex Plitsas, one of the experts from the Atlantic Council, told the New York Post that there are two main reasons for annexing Greenland. The first is the presence of large reserves of rare earth elements that are vital for the defense and electronics industries. The second is that Greenland legally covers a vast area of the Arctic, which could strengthen the United States’ position in the increasing competition for access to the region’s navigation routes and resources.
For years, the United States has been quietly competing with China and Russia over access to the Arctic, sending its military icebreaker ships there on missions aimed at exploring the region’s rich resources.
According to experts, Washington has long been overly reliant on Beijing for rare mineral supplies, which are found not only in Asia but also in the Arctic and are used in everything from mobile phones to weapons of mass destruction.
Therefore, Alex Plitsas believes that this dependence on Beijing cannot be sustainable given the current geopolitical realities, and it seems that Donald Trump is seeking alternative ways.
He emphasized that there are also major reserves of these materials in places like Afghanistan, but for various reasons, exploiting them is not possible, and Greenland appears to be the simplest route.
In a 2023 report, the Wilson Center noted that the increasing demand for electric vehicles, renewable energy-based systems, and advanced technologies has made the United States highly dependent on critical materials to foster more innovation and maintain its position in this global competition.
Rare minerals are used in most forms of national defense technologies, including missiles, tanks, satellites, warships, and fighter jets. As a result, securing these items has become a national security necessity.
According to Plitsas, synthetic elements made in laboratories do not perform as well as natural minerals, which makes the United States vulnerable in the defense production sector, especially as tensions with China have increased in recent years.
Competition for the Arctic has intensified in recent years due to climate change, as these changes have caused the polar ice to melt, making access to resources that were previously almost impossible now possible.
In fact, global warming has led to more freedom of movement for sailors in the Arctic. However, while the U.S. competes with its other rivals to exploit Arctic resources, the limited number of icebreaker ships is one of the country’s problems.
This issue has long worried some Republicans, including Mike Waltz, Trump’s National Security Advisor. In 2017, he posted on the social network X, formerly Twitter, saying that in the Arctic, where we will compete for natural resources, the Coast Guard needs more than one icebreaker, while Russia has dozens.
The U.S. Coast Guard currently only has two vital icebreaker ships, but Waltz recently promised in response to a post on X, which called for a dozen more icebreakers, to work in the next Congress to increase the number of these ships.
On December 24th, he promised that this is the plan, now that the United States is building rare mineral processing plants and working to reduce reliance on China. Having more icebreaker ships and buying Greenland seem like attractive prospects, as the United States only holds 13% of the world’s rare earth minerals, while China’s reserves are estimated at up to 70%.
However, Trump’s ambition has not been welcomed in Denmark, and the country’s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, reiterated on Tuesday in response to Trump’s eldest son’s visit to Greenland that this land is not for sale.
The United States has been interested in acquiring Greenland for a long time and even intended to make an offer to purchase this North Atlantic island in 1867 when it bought Alaska from Russia.
Nearly eight decades later, after World War II, the United States offered $100 million in gold bullion for Greenland, which Denmark rejected.
However, that offer led to the signing of a defense treaty that granted the United States access to the Thule Air Base, now transformed into the Pituffik Space Base, the northernmost military point of the United States. This base gained critical importance during the Cold War due to its proximity to Russia. Trump also raised the issue of purchasing Greenland during his first presidency and publicly mentioned the idea in 2019, but the leaders of Greenland and Denmark strongly rejected it.