Is Trump serious about Greenland? Gaming it out
President Donald Trump seems to be running out of ways to assure everyone that he’s dead-serious about taking over Greenland.
"We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not," he said Friday.
"One way or the other, we’re gonna have Greenland," Trump said Sunday.
"Anything less than that is unacceptable," he added Wednesday on social media.
It’s to the point now where, if Trump doesn’t actually get Greenland, it will look a whole lot like a major second-term failure.
Yet the prospect – which Trump has floated dating back to 2019 – still seems unthinkable enough that many appear to be struggling to grasp it or figure out what to do with it.
Even in recent days, prominent Republicans who have warned Trump against the unpopular idea have layered their comments with apparent wishful thinking that Trump doesn’t really mean it.
So what’s going on? Is Trump serious? Let’s game out a few possibilities.
He’s trolling or distracting – or expanding the Overton window
One of the most popular theories when Trump says something outlandish is that he’s just doing it for effect.
To Trump’s critics, they’re deliberate "distractions" from the really important things we should be paying attention to.
To Trump’s allies, they’re wily bits of "trolling" that prove Trump’s psychological edge over his foes – four-dimensional chess, and all that.
"I mean I know that y’all — they’ve trolled y’all into taking the bait," Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said last week about Trump using the military in Greenland.
And that’s certainly possible here. Maybe Trump thinks it’s better to talk about this than persistent inflation or the ICE shooting in Minneapolis last week.
Maybe he just likes to needle everyone.
Maybe he’s trying to stretch the Overton window – that is, he’s talking about something as drastic as taking Greenland so that his other expansionist goals in the Western Hemisphere sound a little more realistic.
Or maybe …
He’s serious, and it’s about coercing Denmark to sell Greenland
But we’ve also seen Trump lodge this idea for a very long time now. He often talks about it even when there’s not something that he’s obviously trying to shift attention away from.
He’s now set it up so that failing to get Greenland would be a pretty significant broken promise. He hasn’t just said this is a goal; he’s said it will happen, somehow.
This also happens to fit very neatly with what appears to be Trump’s big foreign policy initiative right now: the domination of the Western Hemisphere. His administration previewed this goal in a national security strategy document last month, and the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and efforts to commandeer control of that country’s oil in recent weeks suggest it’s a serious endeavor.
Trump certainly loves a big piece of real estate. Greenland also makes sense as a target for many of the reasons Venezuela does – strategically and natural resource-wise.
Of course, ousting Maduro with an hourslong operation – and otherwise leaving the government in place – is not the same as taking over a semiautonomous territory, which just so happens to be under the control of NATO ally Denmark.
The president has so far kept the option of military force on the table, which would be an extremely drastic option. It would apparently necessitate other NATO countries coming to Greenland’s defense under the charter’s Article 5 mutual defense provisions – against the United States.
All of which points to perhaps the most likely option: Trump is attempting to coerce Denmark and Greenland.
Threatening military force could just be a means to getting Greenland and Denmark to come to the table on handing over the massive island. After all, Trump and his White House have spoken repeatedly in recent days about how much leverage they have – and about their intention to use it in the Western Hemisphere.
He’s dead-serious, and he’ll take it by force if he needs to
The problem with that approach is Denmark and Greenland aren’t playing ball. They’ve shown approximately zero willingness to negotiate.
"Greenland has never been for sale and never will be for sale," Aaja Chemnitz, a member of the Danish parliament from Greenland, said last week.
That could be a negotiating posture, sure. But the prospect of selling such a massive piece of land feels like an idea out of a different century – like, the 19th century.
Greenland’s citizens are also overwhelmingly opposed to being under US control, according to polls, and Denmark’s leaders probably don’t love the idea of giving in to Trump’s extortion.
So, what if Denmark’s and Greenland’s posture doesn’t change? What does Trump do? Does he actually pursue a military option?
Failing to do so, at that point, would be a capitulation. And Trump has certainly proven he’s increasingly willing to dispatch the military for the things he wants – both overseas and domestically. He also appears to have either fewer and fewer qualms about drastic measures in his second term, or fewer and fewer people around him who might thwart them – or both.
He might also reason that NATO won’t actually defend Greenland and that it would be pretty easy pickings to invade a place that’s home to fewer than 60,000 people.
"Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland," White House adviser Stephen Miller declared earlier this month.
But there is no question this would be a huge provocation. It would almost surely lead to a breakdown between the United States and its European allies.
Trump certainly has less regard for the Western alliance than pretty much any recent president. But does he really think that would be worth it?
The problem with this whole effort is that almost nobody besides Trump is asking for it.
A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released on Thursday showed just 25% of Americans approve of Trump’s efforts to take Greenland.
Many congressional Republicans have also signaled they’re not on board – with either a military option or coercion. It even seems possible that Congress could vote to prevent an invasion, given the NATO issue, and lawmakers’ so far unsuccessful efforts to rein in his powers to strike Venezuela again.
(GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska this week introduced a bipartisan bill that would block Trump from taking Greenland by force. )
Trump has lots of power as commander in chief, but that lack of support also matters.
The most likely outcome, if past is predicate, is that this results in some kind of agreement over not the ownership of Greenland, but defense capabilities. That’s the big reason Trump has cited for taking the island, after all, and it could save some face to at least walk away with something.
The problem is that there’s very little reason to believe Trump couldn’t have that now – today – if that’s all he wanted.
The United States has a longstanding defense agreement with Denmark and Greenland, dating back decades, and it has used the island for a number of different purposes. The United States actually has a historically small presence there right now, compared to previous decades.
"I have yet to hear from this administration a single thing we need from Greenland that this sovereign people is not already willing to grant us," Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Wednesday on the Senate floor.
But Trump has said defense agreements wouldn’t be good enough. He’s argued that ownership is necessary because, he claims, otherwise Russia or China will take it over. He’s repeatedly alluded to Russian and Chinese ships in the area that don’t actually appear to exist.
Trump told the New York Times last week that owning Greenland is "what I feel is psychologically needed for success."
"I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty," Trump said. "Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document."
He’s taken a maximalist approach here. And it seems we’re about to find out just how serious he is – and how much he can and will commit to that approach.
