The Trump administration is planning a PR effort to attempt to convince the people of Greenland to join the U.S., according to The New York Times.
Both the prime minister of the Arctic semiautonomous Danish territory and the prime minister of mainland Denmark have made clear that the territory is not up for sale and cannot be annexed. Many Greenlanders may want independence from Denmark, but few actually want to join the U.S.
Multiple cabinet departments are part of the PR effort following years of President Donald Trump talking about wanting to acquire Greenland. The island’s economic and strategic value has increased as global warming leads to melting Arctic ice, opening up new sea routes and access to natural resources.
Trump, meanwhile, may also be viewing the island’s vast size, 836,330 square miles in all, as a chance to make a historic real estate deal.
The president has repeatedly made clear his will to take control of the island.
Speaking before Congress last month, he said: “We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it.”
“One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” he added at the time.
The National Security Council has met numerous times to discuss the topic and recently distributed instructions to several parts of the government, an official told The New York Times.
Even as some details of the plan remain unclear, the official told the paper that the council never seriously took into consideration the possibility of using military force. The policy is instead a PR effort to convince the Greenlanders to join the U.S.
Trump aides have discussed possible advertising and social media campaigns to change public opinion among the 57,000 Greenlanders, according to the paper.
However, in last month’s election on the island, an opposition party that supports quickly moving towards independence and getting closer to the U.S. came in second place with only a quarter of the vote.
The official told the paper that the messaging campaign will focus on Greenlanders having shared heritage with the native Inuit people in Alaska. Greenland’s Inuit population is descended from people who came to the island from Alaska hundreds of years ago, The New York Times noted. The official language of Greenland is derived from Inuit dialects first introduced in northern Canada.
Publicly, Trump aides have argued that only the U.S., and not Denmark, will be able to protect it from Russian and Chinese interference.
Trump shared a short video on social media last month, praising the American soldiers who came to the island during World War II after Nazi Germany occupied Denmark.
The Danes had hoped that the U.S. would depart after the war, but they never did so, still maintaining a military base on the island, which was recently visited by Vice President JD Vance, Second Lady Usha Vance, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
The Trump administration is also looking at the possibility of replacing the $600 million in subsidies that the Danish government hands the island with an annual payment of about $10,000 a year for each resident.
Some officials think such payments can be made back from extracting natural resources on the island, such as rare earth minerals, copper, gold, uranium, and oil.
National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes told the paper that the president “believes Greenland is a strategically important location, and is confident Greenlanders would be better served protected by the United States from modern threats in the Arctic region.”
Hughes mentioned Vance and Waltz’s recent visit to the island and that they “laid out the important case for a partnership between Greenland and the United States to establish long-term peace at home and shared prosperity abroad.”
Speaking to reporters during his March 28 visit to a U.S. military base on the island, Vance said Greenlanders would “choose, through self-determination, to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there.”
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