Will Donald Trump invade Greenland?

Donald Trump has announced renewed interest in taking over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. Why does he want it and what are the implications?

Donald Trump Jr's plane landed in Nuuk, Greenland
(Image credit: EMIL STACH/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)

Ahead of his inauguration, Donald Trump engaged in some sabre-rattling. Not against America’s enemies, though, but three close allies: Denmark, Canada and Panama. Trump’s musings about absorbing Canada as the 51st US state were mostly treated as bombastic posturing. But his threat to annexe Greenland – a self-governing territory of Denmark – spooked European allies. Denmark and the US are long-time Nato allies, and Greenland is already home to a large US airbase. Taking it by force would blow up the Western alliance. But Trump said it was an “absolute necessity” for the US to now take “ownership and control” of the resource-rich Arctic territory – two million square kilometres, and home to fewer than 60,000 people. “We need it for national security,” he said, refusing to rule out military force.

The history behind the US attempting to buy Greenland

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.