Denmark: Siltanews – News Desk
Throughout his second term, US President Donald Trump has trained his focus on a sprawling but sparsely populated island that stretches into the Arctic Circle.
The United States needs that island – Greenland, a territory of US ally Denmark – “very badly,” Trump said in an NBC interview that aired on Sunday, echoing comments he’s made repeatedly in recent months.
“Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security,” he said, while adding, when asked, that he would not “rule out” taking the island by force.
Trump’s justification? There were Russian and Chinese boats, “Gun-ships all over the place — aircraft carriers, Gun-ships — going up and down the coast of Greenland,” he said Sunday. “We need that to be protected.”
Vice President JD Vance laid a similar assessment during a visit to the US’ singular military installation on the island, the Pituffik Space Base, in March.
The base, which lies some 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, was not well protected from “aggressive incursions” from Russia and China, Vance told troops during an address at that time.
“Denmark has not kept pace in devoting the resources necessary to keep this base, to keep our troops, and, in my view, to keep the people of Greenland safe from a lot of very aggressive incursions from Russia, from China and from other nations,” Vance said – a claim Denmark disputes.
The Trump administration’s interest in Greenland appears to be part of what Washington sees as a broader competition for power in the Arctic, where Russia is a dominant force and China aspires to expand its footprint and capabilities.
But, when it comes to Greenland, experts are puzzled by the administration’s characterization.
Chinese firms, like others, have mounted efforts to develop expensive and geologically challenging mining projects on the resource-rich island. They’ve also bid on constructing airfields there – initiatives observers see as linked to Beijing’s broader aims to enhance its role in the Arctic and gain control of critical minerals.
But those projects have all fizzled, experts say, either due to business reasons or as governments in both Greenland’s capital Nuuk and US NATO partner Copenhagen rebuffed them, at times reportedly under pressure from Washington.
That’s left “almost no Chinese footprint in Greenland,” outside a limited presence in the fishing industry, according to Andreas Østhagen, a senior researcher at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway, who added: “There is no evidence of any ‘aggressive incursions’ by any actor in Greenland, at least not publicly available.”