(TNND) — President Donald Trump said he’ll huddle with various parties about his push to acquire Greenland during his trip to the World Economic Forum this week in Davos, Switzerland.
Trump has increasingly focused his attention on Greenland, the world’s largest island and an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
The president claims that U.S. ownership of Greenland is vital to national security.
And he’s warned that Russia or China will take over Greenland it the U.S. doesn’t do so first.
“And we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor,” Trump recently said to reporters.
“I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way,” Trump told reporters a couple of weeks ago while meeting with oil executives. “But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”
Greenland is, indeed, important to U.S. national security, experts said Tuesday.
But they said an aggressive American takeover would do more harm than good.
“If the goal really is national security, we are making the situation worse,” said Boise State Professor Michael Allen, a political scientist and expert in international relations. “If the goal is valuable real estate, then that’s an entirely different discussion.”
Allen said the U.S. already has all it needs to leverage Greenland from a national security standpoint.
The U.S. has just one military installation with about 150 troops stationed in Greenland, at Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base.
But the U.S. had a greater military presence in Greenland during the Cold War, and both Allen and Matthew Levinger, the director of the National Security Studies Program at George Washington University, said the U.S. already has the ability to increase its military footprint there now.
“Denmark and other American allies in Europe are more than willing to respond constructively to legitimate U.S. national security concerns in Greenland, including a more robust military presence and perhaps also including preferential access to certain economic resources,” Levinger said. “So, the path toward a more robust U.S. presence in Greenland is wide open should the U.S. decide to take that. But any attempt to forcibly seize Greenland from Denmark would backfire and have devastating effects on U.S. national security.”
Both men said America taking Greenland by force would fracture NATO, possibly destroying the alliance.
And both Allen and Levinger said NATO is much more valuable to U.S. national security than an American-owned Greenland would be.
“A vibrant and unified NATO alliance is the single greatest asset to U.S. national security, and the NATO alliance is exponentially more important to U.S. national security than ownership of Greenland,” Levinger said.
Greenland is gaining national security importance as climate change increasingly thaws the Arctic and puts its land and resources in play for global powers, including Russia and China.
Allen said receding ice has opened up potentially very valuable sea routes. While land boundaries in the Arctic are already relatively well defined, maritime boundaries aren’t, he said.
Both Russia and China have built Russian ports in the Arctic and deployed icebreaker ships and military assets as they seek greater control of the region, Allen said.
Countering those activities is advantageous to the U.S., Allen said.
The U.S. could also use Greenland to build a “golden dome” missile defense system.
The Space Force says the base already there offers a “Top of the World” vantage point that supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance missions.
Levinger said American military assets on Greenland can monitor for incoming attacks.
“But the probability of a full-scaled armed conflict in Greenland between great-power adversaries is vanishingly small,” Levinger said.
Allen, too, said it’s unlikely that Russia or China will pull up warships and invade Greenland.
Allen said Trump might be conflating the risks and opportunities facing Greenland specifically with the growing power struggle in the wider Arctic region.
Levinger said only the degradation or destruction of NATO opens up the risk of China or Russia taking over Greenland, and that risk “paradoxically” increases the harder Trump stresses the U.S. relationships with Denmark and other NATO allies over Greenland.
“I believe that President Trump is approaching the issue of seizing Greenland from the standpoint of an ambitious real estate magnate rather than from the standpoint of advancing U.S. national security interests,” Levinger said. “Greenland would be the single largest acquisition of territory in U.S. history, larger than the Louisiana Purchase of (Thomas) Jefferson, larger than Secretary of State William Seward’s acquisition of Alaska. And I believe that President Trump sees this as a step toward securing U.S. dominance throughout the Western Hemisphere. What the seizure of Greenland would not accomplish is enhancing U.S. national security in an increasingly volatile world.”
Trump was asked in the Jan. 9 interaction with reporters why he’s insistent on American ownership of Greenland and not satisfied with simply increasing the U.S. military presence there.
“Because when we own it, we defend it,” Trump said. “You don’t defend leases the same way.”
Allen said the best-case scenario would see the U.S. buying Greenland, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
The alternative route of acquisition would undermine U.S. interests, he said.
“If the U.S. is using aggression to acquire territory, our stance, our leadership, the institutions we have built since the end of World War II lose any credibility,” Allen said.
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