At a news conference in early January 2025, President-elect Donald Trump rambled by a seize bag of grievances and proposals, together with his disdain for wind energy and low-flow showerheads and his ideas on the attainable acquisition of the Panama Canal, Canada and Greenland.
On the latter, he mused, “Individuals actually don’t even know if Denmark has any authorized proper to it, but when they do, they need to give it up, as a result of we’d like it for nationwide safety.”
The unfavourable commentary in outstanding information retailers was swift. Such “vague threats” and “messianic promises” have been “shocking … in their craziness,” a harbinger of a “chaotic and stream-of-consciousness presidency, a succession of opinion writers prompt.
But, with respect to Greenland, Trump’s proposal has an extended historical past. Right here, he’s responsible much less of territorial ambitions than of claiming the quiet half out loud.
Essential Air Power outpost
In 1823, President James Monroe established the principle that European powers have been to defer to the US on issues pertaining to the Western Hemisphere. Whereas what got here to be referred to as the Monroe Doctrine and its corollaries have been employed primarily to say American pursuits and ambitions in Latin America, they clearly utilized to northern neighbors as properly.
After the German invasion of Denmark in April 1940, Secretary of State Cordell Hull made this point clear to his Danish counterpart, asserting that “Greenland is throughout the space embraced by the Monroe Doctrine.”
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The 2 nations signed a “Defense of Greenland” settlement in 1941 that allowed the usto “assemble, keep, and function … touchdown fields, seaplane amenities, and radio and meteorological installations.” The U.S. pressed to retain its bases after the conflict, a call that was formalized by treaty in 1951.
Learn extra:
4 reasons why the US might want to buy Greenland – if it were for sale, which it isn’t
For the U.S., which had a considerable army presence in Greenland by the early Fifties, the territory was essential as an outpost for the Air Power and as a hyperlink within the so-called Distant Early Warning Line that monitored attainable Soviet incursions from the north.
In early 1955, virtually 70 years to the day earlier than Trump’s latest speech, the Joint Chiefs of Workers proposed a extra radical answer to preservation of American pursuits within the North Atlantic. In a memorandum for the secretary of protection, titled “Possible Acquisition of Greenland by the United States,” the army leaders reiterated the U.S. place: “Geographically, Greenland is a part of the Western Hemisphere and has lengthy been regarded so by the US.”
“As as to if it could be to the army benefit of the US to amass title to Greenland,” the memorandum continued, “the Joint Chiefs of Workers imagine it to be axiomatic that sovereignty gives the firmest foundation of assuring {that a} territory and its assets can be obtainable for army use when wanted. United States sovereignty over Greenland would take away any doubt as to the unconditional availability of bases.”
Just a few days later, a shorter model landed on President Dwight Eisenhower’s desk, with the summary assessment that “it could be to our army benefit to amass title to Greenland from a army viewpoint.”
Such musings, in 1955 or 2025, casually assume the universality of American pursuits and disrespect the sovereignty of allies. By the identical token, Trump’s proposal is evidently not simply one other of his often outlandish ambitions, when it has been a fixture of U.S. nationwide safety for over 70 years.
