On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump told other world leaders in Davos, Switzerland, for the first time that the US has no plans to seize Greenland by force, but made clear he would not be daunted by demands for it.
In discussing his tariff-based negotiating strategy, President Trump cited Greenland’s strategic position among the United States, Russia, and China as the main reason for his desire to acquire Greenland.
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President Trump talked about America’s history with Greenland and Denmark during World War II, saying, “We were successful in saving Greenland and preventing our enemies from gaining a foothold in our hemisphere.”
This is pretty accurate. After Germany invaded Denmark, the United States assumed responsibility for the defense of Greenland and established a military presence in Greenland that still exists today, albeit to a reduced extent.
However, President Trump went too far when he said after World War II, “We returned Greenland to Denmark.”
“All the United States wants is a place called Greenland, which we already had as a trustee and only recently respectfully returned to Denmark,” he said.
The United States defended Greenland during World War II, but the United States never claimed Greenland and could not return it. Experts told PolitiFact that Greenland’s status as part of Denmark is not in question and has not been for more than 100 years.
Denmark’s colonization of Greenland dates back to the 1720s. In 1933, the International Court of Justice settled the territorial dispute between Denmark and Norway, ruling that as of July 1931 Denmark “possessed effective sovereignty over all of Greenland.”
(After the ratification of the United Nations Charter (the founding document of the United Nations and the basis for much of international law) in 1945, Denmark incorporated Greenland through a constitutional amendment, giving it representation in the Danish Parliament in 1953.
Since then, Greenland has made gradual but consistent progress toward greater autonomy.
Greenlandic political activists promoted and achieved national governance in 1979, establishing a parliament. Currently, Greenland is a constituency within the sovereign Danish state and has two members elected to the Danish Parliament.
What about Iceland?
In his Davos speech, Trump mentioned Iceland instead of Greenland four times.
President Trump said, “Yesterday, our stock market fell for the first time because of Iceland.” “So Iceland is already paying a lot of money, but the decline is miniscule compared to the gains to date, and we have an incredible future.”
The US market reacted negatively to President Trump’s remarks on Greenland the day before the Davos meeting, and prices fell by about 2%.
But in recent weeks, President Trump has said nothing about buying Iceland, an independent island nation of about 400,000 people east of Greenland.
In President Trump’s post-Davos post, the White House press secretary criticized a reporter who had repeatedly posted that Trump “appears to be confusing Greenland and Iceland.” Caroline Leavitt said that President Trump’s written comments referred to Greenland as a “slice of ice” and that is what it is. President Trump referred to Greenland as “very big ice,” but also mentioned “Iceland.”
Traditionally, Icelanders have maintained strong ties with the United States, dating back to World War II when Reykjavik welcomed American troops into the country. In 1949, Iceland became a founding member of NATO, and in 1951 the two countries signed a bilateral defense agreement that still exists today.
Its location between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, making it a strategic naval chokepoint between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, means that Iceland is geographically important to both North America and Europe, despite having no standing military.
In 2006, the United States abandoned its permanent troop presence at Keflavik Air Base, a 45-minute drive south of the capital Reykjavik, but American troops remain there on a rotating basis. Icelandic civilians currently carry out important NATO missions, including monitoring submarines and operating four radar sites on the country’s periphery. Iceland also makes financial contributions to the NATO Trust Fund and contributes a small number of technical and diplomatic personnel to NATO operations.
Former Republican congressman Billy Long, who was chosen by President Trump to be ambassador to Iceland, drew criticism earlier this month after he was heard saying that Iceland should follow Greenland as a U.S. state and that he would serve as governor.
Long apologized in an interview with Arctic Today.
“There was nothing serious about it. I was with people I hadn’t seen in three years, and they were making fun of Jeff Landry being the governor of Greenland and started making jokes about me. If anyone was offended by that, I apologize,” Long told the magazine. President Trump has nominated Louisiana Republican Governor Landry to be the US special envoy to Greenland.
Silja Bala R. Ómarsdóttir, a professor of international affairs who currently serves as president or chancellor of the University of Iceland, told the Tampa Bay Times in August that the new focus on Iceland’s security, including concerns about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other parts of Europe, is “obviously getting a lot of attention at the political level.”
Several Icelandic analysts half-jokingly told the paper that the key to surviving in the Trump era was to remain invisible, and for some reason Greenland was unlucky not to be able to do that.
“Iceland’s policy toward the United States can be said to have been trying to keep a low profile,” said Pia Elisabeth Hansson, director of the Institute of International Studies at the University of Iceland.
