The one that first put a bug in Donald Trump’s ear about Greenland — if a 2022 biography is to be believed — was his good friend Ronald Lauder, a New York billionaire and inheritor to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune.
However it might be mistaken to imagine that U.S. curiosity in Greenland originated with idle chatter on the nation membership, fairly than actual strategic issues.
Trump’s discuss of utilizing pressure to annex Greenland — which might be an unprovoked act of battle towards a NATO ally — has been rebuked by Greenlandic, Danish and European leaders. A Fox Information workforce that travelled to Greenland’s capital Nuuk reported again to the Trump-friendly present Fox & Pals that “the general public we spoke with didn’t help Trump’s feedback and located them offensive.”
It has been broadly assumed that the motives driving Washington’s curiosity are Greenland’s deepwater harbours on an necessary delivery route or its strategic location as a gateway to the Northwest Passage and as one finish of the so-called “GIUK gap” — by means of which Russian nuclear submarines should move to entry the broader Atlantic.
Definitely, navy issues motivated the last U.S. attempt at shopping for Greenland in 1946.
However Trump didn’t cite a navy rationale for wanting Greenland, saying as a substitute that “we want them for financial safety.”
Independence fears
The navy worth to the U.S. of buying Greenland is far much less clear in 2025 than it was in 1946.
Russian nuclear submarines now not must traverse the GIUK. They will launch their missiles from nearer to house.
And in any case, the U.S. already has a military presence on Greenland, used for early warning, satellite tv for pc monitoring and marine surveillance. The Pentagon merely ignored Denmark’s 1957 ban on nuclear weapons on Greenlandic territory. Certainly, an American B-52 bomber carrying 4 hydrogen bombs crashed in Greenland in 1968.
“The U.S. already has nearly unhindered entry, and simply constructing on their relationship with Greenland goes to do much more good than discuss of acquisition,” mentioned Dwayne Menezes, director of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative in London.
The complication, he says, is Greenland’s own independence movement. All present defence agreements involving the U.S. presence in Greenland are between Washington and the Kingdom of Denmark.
“They can not management what’s occurring between Denmark and Greenland,” Menezes mentioned. “Over the long run, the one option to mitigate that threat altogether is by buying Greenland.”
Menezes additionally does not imagine U.S. curiosity in Greenland is only navy.
And Trump’s incoming nationwide safety adviser Michael Waltz appeared to confirm as a lot when requested by Fox Information why the administration wished Greenland.
“That is about crucial minerals, that is about pure sources. That is about, because the ice caps pull again, the Chinese language at the moment are cranking out icebreakers and are pushing up there.”
Sources of the long run
Whereas america has an abundance of pure sources, it dangers arising quick in two very important areas: rare-earth minerals and freshwater.
Greenland’s obvious barrenness belies its richness in these two key Twenty first-century sources.
The U.S. rise to superpower was pushed partly by the great fortune of getting ample reserves of oil, which fuelled its industrial development. The nation remains to be a net exporter of petroleum.
China, Washington’s chief strategic rival, had no such luck. It has to import greater than two-thirds of its oil, and is now importing greater than six occasions as a lot because it did in 2000.
However the future might not favour the U.S. as a lot because the previous.
It is China, and never the U.S., that nature blessed with wealthy deposits of rare-earth parts, a set of 17 metals resembling yttrium and scandium which are more and more needed for high-tech functions from cellphones and flat-screen TVs to electrical automobiles.
The rare-earth factor neodymium is an important a part of many laptop laborious drives and defence techniques together with digital shows, steerage techniques, lasers, radar and sonar.
Three a long time in the past, the U.S. produced a 3rd of the world’s rare-earth parts, and China about 40 per cent. By 2011, China had 97 per cent of world manufacturing, and its authorities was more and more limiting and controlling exports.
The U.S. has responded by opening new mines and spurring recovery and recycling to scale back dependence on China.
Breaking the dependency
Such efforts have allowed the U.S. to claw again about 20 per cent of the world’s annual manufacturing of rare-earth parts. However that does not change the truth that China has about 44 million tonnes of reserves, in comparison with fewer than two million within the U.S.
“There’s an enormous dependency on China,” mentioned Menezes. “It presents China the financial leverage, within the midst of a commerce battle specifically, to limit provide to the West, thus crippling industries like defence, the inexperienced transition. That is the place Greenland is available in.”
Greenland’s recognized reserves are nearly equal to these of the whole U.S., and rather more might lie beneath its icebound panorama.
“Greenland is believed to have the ability to meet a minimum of 25 per cent of worldwide rare-earth demand effectively into the long run,” he mentioned.
Do not promote to China
The Tanbreez Mine on the southern tip of Greenland was the main target of consideration from U.S. officers final yr, lengthy earlier than Trump started to muse publicly about annexation.
The positioning has a big deposit of eudialyte ore, wealthy in rare-earth parts resembling neodymium, cerium, lanthanum and yttrium. It additionally has gallium, a crucial mineral positioned below tight export controls by China last month due to its navy functions.
Principally owned by New York-based Crucial Metals Corp. since final summer season, the mine was reportedly visited twice by State Division officers final yr.
Tanbreez CEO Greg Barnes advised Reuters he got here below heavy American lobbying not to sell the mine to Chinese language bidders.
A Chinese language firm is already the most important shareholder in a rare-earth minerals project at Kvanefjeld, additional up the identical community of fjords as Tanbreez.
In November, State Division Undersecretary for Financial Development, Power and Surroundings Jose Fernandez travelled to Greenland for 4 days of talks with native officers.
He confused that the Biden administration wished to do issues the good manner.
“Sure, we need to get their crucial minerals and use them in our economic system, however we do not need to do this at their expense,” mentioned Fernandez.
He added, fairly ominously because it turned out: “I can not forecast what the subsequent administration will do, however the enterprise case is not going to change.”
An abundance of freshwater
The melting ice caps referenced by Trump’s nominee for nationwide safety adviser are one other Greenlandic useful resource the world is more and more considering.
Seventy per cent of the world’s freshwater is locked up within the Antarctic ice cap. Of the rest, two-thirds is in Greenland, in a large ice cap that’s turning to liquid at practically twice the volume of melting in Antarctica.
“We all know this as a result of you’ll be able to weigh the ice sheet from satellites,” mentioned Christian Schoof, a professor of Earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences on the College of British Columbia who spent a part of final yr in Greenland learning ice cap melting.
“The ice sheet is heavy sufficient that it impacts the orbit of satellites going over it. And you’ll file the change in that acceleration of satellites because of the ice sheet over time, and instantly weigh the ice sheet.”
“And so we all know that 250 cubic kilometres, give or take, is how a lot the ice sheet loses yearly, and that price has been accelerating.”
Had been all of Greenland’s ice to soften, NASA estimates world sea ranges would rise seven metres — unhealthy information for locations like Miami-Dade County, the place the common elevation is 2 metres above sea stage.
However within the meantime, there are many People who might use that water.
Ice soften on the market
“There’s a rising demand for freshwater on the world market, and using the huge water potential in Greenland might contribute to assembly this demand,” the Greenland authorities announces on its website.
The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland discovered 10 places that have been appropriate for the industrial exploitation of Greenland’s ice and water, and has already issued a variety of licenses.
Schoof advised CBC Information that previous initiatives that tried to tow Greenlandic ice to irrigate farms within the Center East “have not actually taken off … however people are resourceful and creative, and we face some actually vital points sooner or later.”
For the U.S., these points embrace the 22-year-long “megadrought” which has left the western U.S. drier than at any time up to now 1,200 years, and which is already threatening the future of some American cities.
Mud with miraculous qualities
Even the “rock flour” that lies below the ice cap might have nice industrial and strategic significance.
Floor into nanoparticles by the crushing weight of the ice, analysis has revealed it to have nearly miraculous properties, says Menezes.
“Scientists have discovered that Greenlandic glacial flour has a selected nutrient composition that allows it to be regenerative of soil situations elsewhere,” he advised CBC Information. “It improves agricultural yields. It has direct implications for meals safety.”
Chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton speaks with Greenland MP Pele Broberg, who shares his response to Trump’s threats of taking management his nation, and why he says this might truly increase its independence motion.
Spreading Greenland rock flour on corn fields in Ghana produced a 30 to 50 per cent increase in crop yields. Comparable yield positive factors occurred when it was unfold on Danish fields that produce the barley for Carlsberg beer.
With melting ice depositing an estimated one billion tonnes of glacial flour a yr, Greenland has the potential to revive depleted soils around the globe, whereas a single tonne of it can capture 250 kilograms of carbon.
The fabric requires no processing, and there may be sufficient of it merely mendacity round in Greenland to cowl each acre of agricultural land on the planet.
“There may be nice materials on the market,” mentioned Menezes, “that I feel deserves consideration. It truly is — like water — the long run.”
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