While Trump raises fears of Russian and Chinese ships swarming Greenland, the island’s residents fear the much realer possibility of American ships swarming the world’s largest island.
While US President Donald Trump raises fears of Russian and Chinese ships swarming Greenland, Greenlanders and Danes are fearing the much more real possibility of American ships swarming the world’s largest island.
In the wake of the US military’s devastatingly successful removal of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro from power last week, people in Greenland are now sleeping with one eye open, worried that their country may be the next to fall in the Western Hemisphere.
Last week, a seamless US operation stole Nicolas Maduro and his wife from Caracas and spirited them to a jail in Brooklyn. The next day, Maduro was perp-walked down a hallway in the Metropolitan Detention Center, where Luigi Mangione, the American who allegedly killed the CEO of United Healthcare, is also imprisoned.
The made-for-TV spectacle prompts questioning of whether the extraction of the Venezuelan president will be turned into a Netflix series much like Osama Bin Laden’s killing in 2011 was last year. After all, so much of what the Trump administration does seems to be for the sheer hell of it.
But more seriously, Operation Absolute Resolve, as the intervention in Caracas was named (the US military has never been one to undersell their activities), has set the world afire. People are wondering out loud what country will be next to fall in the Western Hemisphere – and if it will be Greenland.
The “Donroe Doctrine,” as it’s being called, is now in full effect. US President Donald Trump appears bent on exercising his will with the backing of the world’s most powerful military in what he sees as America’s rightful sphere of influence. The original Monroe Doctrine, issued by US President James Monroe in 1823, asserted US primacy in the Western Hemisphere. But it also promoted the idea that America was for Americans – meaning people from the top of Canada to the bottom of South America – and that European interference would not be tolerated. The Monroe Doctrine aimed to rid the Americas of European colonialism, strengthen and secure the independence of Central and South American republics, and improve friendship between all American nations from north to south.
What the Monroe Doctrine did not originally do was suggest that the Western Hemisphere was exclusively for the United States. Yet that is how Trump, with his expansionist ambitions, appears to be interpreting the strategy. The question is if the president will take Greenland – or, for the fatalists, how.
Trump: Swagger over statesmanship
Trump lives for spectacle, whether it involves ascending a golden escalator, bombing Iranian nuclear sites, or removing Maduro in the dead of night. Spectacle is necessary for him to both exercise power and feel empowered, as his countless rallies demonstrate. So when Trump refuses to rule out using military power to take Greenland, it’s because his view of power demands swagger. In his eyes, simply asking Copenhagen if the US could expand its military presence on the island, as the existing 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement allows, would look weak.
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, explained regarding the option to take Greenland by force: “That’s something that’s currently being actively discussed by the president and his national security team…The president has been very open and clear…that he views it in the best interest of the United States to deter Russian and Chinese aggression in the Arctic region, and so that’s why his team is currently talking about what a potential purchase would look like.”
Perhaps it’s all a bunch of hot air. Yesterday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot claimed that in a phone call, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had nixed the possibility of invading Greenland. But Rubio’s comments provide little assurance to those in Greenland, Denmark, or the rest of NATO, for that matter. In November 2025, for instance, Trump ruled out a “ground invasion” in Venezuela. Two months later, while not exactly carrying out an invasion, the US military still hunted down Maduro, killing dozens of Cuban and Venezuelan military and security officers in the process.
Returning to the question of Greenland, a similar operation that would forcibly remove Greenlandic Prime Minister, 34-year old Jens-Frederik Nielsen, from Nuuk is likely out of the question. For starters, the cover of stopping drug wars isn’t available. Two days ago, Nielsen issued a statement avowing, “Our country isn’t something you can deny or take over because you want to.” The prime minister thanked fellow European states for their support and urged the US to “seek respectful dialogue through the correct diplomatic and political channels.” Next week, Rubio and administration representatives will meet with Danish officials, with all the world watching.
As another option of acquiring Greenland, Trump is still considering purchasing the island. For the former New York real estate baron, a deal like this would hold some appeal. But Nuuk and Copenhagen have repeatedly asserted since 2019, when the president first suggested the purchase, that the island is open for business, but not for sale.
It’s not just territory
The US Consulate in Nuuk. Photo: Mia Bennett, June 2025.
A few weeks ago, Trump appointed Jeff Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana, as a new special envoy to Greenland. Landry is a staunch supporter of the oil and gas industry, yet lacks any evident experience in Greenland or the Arctic. Upon his appointment, Landry expressed on social media platform X his desire to incorporate Greenland into the US:
Landry’s appointment has attracted a great deal of ire. But more knowledgeable – and potentially more menacing to Greenland – is Thomas Dans, who was appointed as chair of the US Arctic Research Commission (USARC) last month. The independent federal agency advises the president and Congress on domestic and international Arctic research.
In December, the Financial Times’ Richard Milne dove deep into Dans’ background and his machinations in Greenland. Dans has masterminded many of the exploits of Trump and his coterie in Greenland over the past year, from Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to Nuuk even before his father’s inauguration to Vice President JD Vance’s wife’s ultimately foiled plans to watch the National Dogsled Race (Avannaata Qimussersu) in Sisimiut. Dans has also been a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the Project 2025 manifesto, which seeks to elevate the executive branch and implement deeply conservative policies.
American Daybreak
In 2024, Dans founded an organization called American Daybreak. Its website is still “coming soon,” but its little-followed Instagram is replete with photos illustrating the organization’s objective of “Welcoming a New American Day in Greenland, the Arctic and Eurasia.” There are dozens of snapshots of Qaqortoq-born Jørgen Boassen, a Greenlandic bricklayer-turned-MAGA supporter, including one with Reform UK leader and Member of Parliament Nigel Farage. Then, there is a painting by Greenlandic artist Kristian Keto Christiansen of Trump in snow goggles prospecting for minerals while a Black Hawk helicopter flies overhead Greenlandic mountains.
In October 2024, Dans co-authored an op-ed in The National Interest, arguing, “All future U.S.-Greenland ties should comport with the full awareness and engagement of Denmark in light of its sovereignty over Greenland and strong, long-standing alliance with the United States.” This view appears to respect Danish territorial sovereignty over the island. The op-ed also underscores that Greenland’s role within American security equals or even exceeds that of Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia. These are all Pacific Island states that have signed Compacts of Free Association with Washington, DC, allowing the US exclusive military access to their territories along with granting it the right to deny other countries access.
But Dans, and the Trump administration more broadly, covet more than just increased military access. As explained, the 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement already allows that. Instead, Trump and his cronies desire Greenlandic territory and all the goods contained within, paralleling their goals in Venezuela. On X, just hours after Maduro’s capture, US Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s wife posted an inflammatory map of Greenland draped in the US flag with the caption, “SOON.”
The head of the US Arctic Research Commission’s experiences in rough-and-tumble, post-communist Russia may indicate the administration’s goals, which far exceed social media trolling. Much as in Venezuela, it seems the objective is to first sow instability and then to grab resources – and they have background in this regard. Dans, who posts actively to LinkedIn, spent the 1990s making deals with oligarchs in Russia. This is exactly the kind of work that should worry Greenlanders. Just as Venezuela seems likely to be bled dry of its oil, under US authority, Greenland could be squeezed for its rare earths and other minerals.
The Trump administration has made no secret of its fixation with raw materials, as its heavy-handed dealings with Ukraine made clear. Under the U.S.-Ukraine Minerals Deal signed in April 2025, Kiev will need to contribute half of all revenues from new minerals, oil, and gas projects to a reconstruction fund jointly managed with Washington, DC.
For years, Greenlanders have debated the benefits and risks of foreign investment in its mineral resources. Few might have considered the US to pose the greatest threat of all. But the violent history of the country’s military presence in Greenland, from the ships and tanks that chugged across the Atlantic to build Thule Air Base in 1951 (now Pituffik Space Force Base) – forcing over 100 Inughuit to leave their homes – to the radioactive toxins that the US dumped in the Greenland Ice Sheet is telling. The US has long viewed its neighbor as a giant, icy aircraft carrier-slash-mine flanking the Western Hemisphere rather than as a homeland inhabited by 57,000 people with every right to determine their own destiny.
Revisiting how we make sense of the Arctic
In 2008, when I was an undergraduate at UCLA, I approached a political science professor and told him that I wanted to research whether conflict or cooperation would prevail in the Arctic. He looked at me like I was clueless, explaining that such outcomes were impossible to predict. Divining the geopolitical tea leaves is more the work of futurologists than serious academics, I suppose.
Motivating my inquiry, however foolish, was the sense that climate change was transforming a landscape that had been locked in ice for centuries. The great thaw would put shipping lanes, resources, and even a new ocean up for grabs, so the story went.
But in light of US President Donald Trump’s intervention in Venezuela, the tendency over the past two decades to resort to environmental determinism to explain the future of Arctic geopolitics seems misguided. Yet if we try to understand why we thought climate change would determine the future of the Arctic, perhaps this explanation emerged from a sense that absent a volatile climate, the international order was stable.
In the mid-2000s, even if Francis Fukuyama’s thesis that history had ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism had been put to bed, there was still a feeling – or some might say a certain smugness – among liberals that the world was still broadly trending towards globalization and democracy. It would take a convulsion on a planetary scale – a phenomenon like climate change – to throw the world off kilter.
In 2008, relations between the US and China were still cordial. That year, then-president George W. Bush attended a church service in Beijing, while Bill Gates met with Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong in the Chinese capital to agree to improve cooperation between Microsoft and China’s science and education. The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics were well-received, with global audiences oohing and awing at the stadiums and railways the government had erected. And when it came to Russia, in 2009, the Obama administration began attempting a “reset” in relations with Moscow.
By February 2022, all of that congeniality became inconceivable. China was still hosting the Olympics – this time, their winter iteration – an event which, at Beijing’s request, ostensibly delayed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine by two weeks. The start of the war underlined that geopolitics had returned with a vengeance. National desires for territory and resources were determining international borders – not climate change.
In the Arctic, climate change is still ongoing, and faster than ever. The risk now is that we overcorrect as we try to bring geopolitics back to the fore to explain exactly how it came to be that Greenland may fall into the hands of Trump. Even in an age when history seems once again determined by “old men in a hurry,” the ice is still melting, the permafrost thawing, and oceans acidifiying.
Coming to terms with all of instability is enough to make one feel like the world is falling apart. It may make you lose sleep. But just imagine what it feels like to live in Greenland right now.
