There’s only one way to describe President Trump’s fixation with seizing Greenland: madness.
It’s a preoccupation that’s untethered from reality and lacks any rational justification. Indeed, none of the shifting rationales offered by the Trump administration makes any sense — particularly the supposed national security grounds for annexation.
It’s impossible to say what the United States might gain from such a move because the country would not gain anything from it. The U.S. military already possesses extensive access to Greenland, thanks to the 1951 agreement between Washington and Copenhagen. The U.S. Space Force maintains a base at Pituffik in the territory’s far north that helps monitor for ballistic missile attacks.
Moreover, America is already committed to defending Greenland against aggression via Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Per that provision — invoked only once in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States — an armed attack on Greenland, an autonomous and self-governing territory under Danish sovereignty, would be considered an attack on the United States itself.
