Trump missed Greenland and copied his predecessors' homework

We all know about Trump's "mapquest" these days. And the world went into pandemonium when he said that the United States would not rule out military action to "buy" Greenland.

That was a bit out there, but in doing so, Trump was just channeling his predecessors – all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who both tried to make Greenland part of the US.

Right in the middle of the shortest possible route between Washington and Moscow sits the most northern American military base. In this strategic location in the Arctic, the US tried to buy Greenland from Denmark in 1946 and again in 2019. Back then, Harry Truman, who just happened to be the president of the US, made the following offer: "Greenland is essential to the protection of the Western Hemisphere, and, in the event that we cannot reach an agreement with Denmark looking to the acquisition of full sovereignty over Greenland, we shall occupy it."

Donald Trump, who was also born in 1946, said more or less the same thing in 2025.

In fact, even before President Truman offered Denmark a billion dollars for the island, his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had decided to take over Greenland. And he had already accomplished this in 1940, even though it was still formally part of the Danish kingdom back then, and the mother country occupied by Germany.

According to US Coast Guard records, the US had no right to deploy military personnel in Greenland. So it recruited coast guard members for a special operation under the banner of "The Bureau of the Census."

These men – it was exclusively men – left the US military voluntarily. They were promised double pay and accommodation and food. In other words, they were mercenaries. After the US military conquered Greenland, there was a yearlong political campaign to bring about a declaration of independence from Denmark, which was then occupied by Nazi Germany.

Shortly thereafter, the governor of the island invited the US to establish bases on the island. A few months and one war later, the US received a formal agreement from the exiled Danish government recognizing its full occupation of Greenland as legitimate.

So Denmark, in contrast to, say, Canada, Mexico, or Panama, is the only country in Trump's mapquest that the US has not invaded. Although we are still wondering what the world would look like if Trump had succeeded in bringing Greenland into his "great, great country."

In 1968, a US bomber crashed over Greenland. It was carrying four hydrogen bombs, and some of the radioactive material leaked out. Decades later, scientists from Denmark detected the radiation from the crash.

Greenland is home to vast deposits of rare earths and uranium – and, of course, oil, too. So the US is clearly looking at this part of the world again. Trump has not ruled out the use of military force to acquire Greenland, but that's about the only thing that has not happened yet on the road to making America Great Again.

When Trump's Greenland plan was first exposed in 2019 and the people of Greenland rejected the idea of being bought out, it turned out that his "mapquest" went beyond words. The US government decided to punish Denmark, at least diplomatically. But it also decided to pump more and more money into Greenland directly.

It reopened a consulate in 2019 – 65 years after the US had previously closed its diplomatic mission – and offered 12 million US dollars to the local population of 50,000. It's worth keeping in mind that this is the man who is constantly complaining about other countries not spending enough on their own defense. "Send her back," he said of Representative Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia. He says he is only interested in "America First." And he has clearly stated that he does not want the US to provide any kind of development aid.

So it was remarkable that the man who was, at the time, the president of the world's largest economy offered so much money to a group of people who live a very long way from the White House. You could see it as an acknowledgement of a kind of friendship.

But now Trump is back. And now there is more news about Greenland. On January 7, Trump's son was in Nuuk, the capital of the self-governing region of Denmark. In a video he shared on Twitter, a man, supposedly from Greenland, can be seen with a MAGA hat, holding a petition. In the background, a sign reads: "Buy Greenland!"

Greenland resident: Buy us! Buy Greenland!

But it soon came to light that the man with the MAGA hat was no ordinary Greenlander. In 2016, he was arrested and charged for drug trafficking. He has also been accused of attempted murder, assault, and extortion.

Still, there were plenty of American supporters of Trump who wanted to make things as easy as possible for him in his mapquest. They shared photoshopped images of US states, including New England, with Greenland attached to them, and sent positive messages to Trump.

Elon Musk: Greenland would be well welcomed as a US state.

American talk show host Jesse Wuster: I would be honored if Greenland was taken over by the US. It's what the entire world wants.

Well, maybe not the entire world. But let's assume that Greenland became a US state, and that Musk's welcoming words would soon become reality.

The question is: What would become of those citizens from Greenland who were so eager to be bought by America?

It would actually be worth answering this question even before we get to a third party – Denmark. After the US bought the Danish islands St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John in the Caribbean back in 1917, to prevent them from falling, for example, into the hands of Germany, which had imperial ambitions in the region, they became known as the US Virgin Islands.

Now, more than 100 years later, these islands are still known as unincorporated territory. Their residents are US citizens, at least on paper, but they have no federal votes in presidential elections or in Congress. And on this paradise island in the Caribbean, more than three-quarters of the population is Afro-Caribbean.

I wonder how those Greenlanders who welcomed Trump with open arms would feel if it turned out that even if they, too, became US citizens and Greenland, too, became an unincorporated territory, they, too, would not be able to vote for their president.