‘Our country needs it’: Trump suggests a Greenland invasion, taking it away from Denmark
Donald Trump “needs” Greenland – just like he apparently needs Canada and the Panama Canal – and his supporters want to give it to him.
In a post on X, Never Trumper group Republicans Against Trump shared a video where a group of Trump supporters listen with phones out to the words of the president-elect, who wants to own the world’s largest island because “our country needs it, the whole world needs it.”
The whole world came to remind Trump that he doesn’t need Greenland at all.
This user is right, U.S. ownership of Greenland provides no tangible benefit whatsoever to the island’s 50,000+ inhabitants. In fact, Greenland’s native population has already suffered due to United States’ meddling in the Danish territory’s affairs. Greenland is currently home to the Pituffik Space Base – renamed from the Thule Air Base in an effort to heal the contentious relationship between the U.S. military and the island’s mostly Greenlandic Inuit population.
When the base was constructed in 1951, the United States military forced the native people’s living at the site to relocate from their homes. In 1968, a military plane carrying four nuclear bombs crashed in the area, and the pollution from the disaster contaminated swathes of sea ice. While the base provides missile defense and space surveillance for the United States military, as well as a foothold in the globe’s far north, the United States military presence in the area has arguably done more harm than good for the islanders. Should Trump make good on his plan to own the island, its local population will likely fare far worse.
Another user questions whether or not Trump’s invasion could be considered an act of war.
The “Article 5” in question is a key article of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) which refers to the principle of “collective defense” enshrined in the treaty. In short, “collective defense” means that any attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all NATO allies. Article 5 has only been invoked once in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The “collective defense” principle described in Article 5 is intended to be understood as NATO’s response to an attack on an ally from a non-allied nation – Article 5 doesn’t specifically stipulate what would happen if a NATO ally were to attack another ally. It’s unthinkable, but Trump is thinking it just the same. To do so would be disastrous, and would weaken NATO immensely, making its allies vulnerable to the non-allied nations Article 5 was written to provide defense against.
Many countries aren’t putting up with it. The Danish Prime Minister reiterated that Greenland is “not for sale” ahead of Trump’s son’s visit to the island, and previously called the president-elect’s notion to buy the island “absurd” when he brought it up during his first term in 2019. Trump’s dubious foreign policy decisions have earned him rebuke from other world leaders as well. Responding Trump’s notion bring the Panama Canal back into American control, Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino vowed that the waterway will remain Panama’s “forever.” As for Trump, Mulino said that he and the president-elect had “nothing to talk about” with regard to a potential exchange.
Another user chided Trump for his treatment of Puerto Rico, the U.S. island territory he famously neglected during his first term in office. According to island’s mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, the Trump administration killed thousands of its inhabitants due to its botched response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017. If Trump gets Greenland, more devastation is on its way.
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