When US forces struck the Venezuelan capital and ousted the country’s president Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, it turned one of President Donald Trump’s rhetorical threats into reality.
In the days since, his frequent musings about other items on his foreign policy wishlist have rung with renewed force, especially his repeated desire for the US to take over Greenland – the vast autonomous Arctic territory ruled by Denmark.
In the wake of such a brazen display of US military power in Venezuela, this rhetoric has taken on a different character, straining Washington’s relationship with its NATO ally.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen reiterated Monday that she had already “made it very clear where the Kingdom of Denmark stands, and that Greenland has repeatedly said that it does not want to be part of the United States.”
It’s the world’s least densely populated country and is so remote that its 56,000 residents travel by boat, helicopter and plane between its towns, which are predominantly scattered along the island’s western coast. Nuuk, the territory’s capital city, is emblematic of those towns, featuring brightly colored houses crowed together between a jagged coastline and inland mountains. Greenland occupies a strategic geopolitical position, sitting between the US and Europe and astride the so-called GIUK gap – a maritime passage between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK that links the Arctic to the Atlantic Ocean.
Its rich deposits of natural resources, including oil, gas and rare earth minerals, make it even more strategically important, especially as China has leveraged its domination of the rare earth industry to exert pressure on the US. These rare earth minerals are increasingly crucial to the global economy since they are required to manufacture everything from electric cars and wind turbines to military equipment. Greenland’s trove of minerals may become more accessible as the climate crisis melts Arctic ice, a phenomenon which also makes northern shipping routes navigable for more time throughout the year, potentially reorienting trade and making the region even more important, despite Trump calling the climate crisis “the greatest con job.”
Trump has downplayed the significance of Greenland’s natural resources, telling reporters last month: “We need Greenland for national security, not for minerals.”
But his former national security adviser Mike Waltz suggested in January 2024 that Trump’s focus was on natural resources, telling Fox News that the administration’s focus on Greenland was “about critical minerals” and “natural resources.”
Source: Here