A Brief History of the US Trying (and Failing) to Buy Greenland

President Donald Trump’s obsession with the United States obtaining Greenland has rattled key US allies, with Danish officials even warning that any military effort to seize its semi-autonomous island territory would mean the end of NATO. Trump’s political allies in Washington have also expressed concern about the president’s continued calls for Greenland to be part of the United States.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told reporters on Tuesday evening.

Like a child before Christmas waiting for the season’s new must-have toy, Trump remains fixated on the United States taking control of the island—a point he also told reporters on board Air Force One while returning from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to Washington on Sunday.

“It’s so strategic,” Trump said. “Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.”

The White House has said a “range of options” are being considered on how to make the self-governing Danish territory a part of the United States. US officials have not ruled out utilizing US military force. Some, including deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, have even highlighted it as a distinct possibility. Outside the White House on Monday, Miller declared that “nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland”—meaning in effect that Denmark could not protect the island if the United States decided to invade.

An official transfer to the United States isn’t actually required for the United States to maintain a military presence. In fact, a 1951 treaty signed between Washington and Copenhagen already gives the United States an option to beef up its military presence in Greenland.

“The US has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants,” Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen,

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