Greenland: Land of Possibilities or Impossibilities?

American Thinker 

In this current situation where a superpower has its eyes on acquiring a micro-society of people living on a strategically-placed massive block of ice that is capping valuable resources under its permafrost, it may be wise to step back from saber-rattling, bombasticating, and threatening behavior for awhile and consider the realistic options of adopting soft power.

The U.S., or more specifically, President Trump, wants Greenland, has to haveGreenland, is gonna get Greenland. We get it. We've heard it and so has the rest of the world since his first term in office. That he doesn't "package" his wishes to take charge or control of another country in niceties all delivered with a hand-written gift card, we get that, too.

It's unsettling to the Greenlanders who have been Denmark's wards for nearly all of their existence if you exclude their time as a Norwegian possession and the five years in the 1940s when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis. It's also worrying their protector, Denmark. They worry that if Greenland were to accept the Americans' offer of "marriage," they would stand to lose about 93% of their entire kingdom (when measured in land mass), not to mention prestige.

Those of us who know where Greenland is also know why whoever is in control of it is determinative to world security. On that point, Donald Trump is correct. The Arctic may be cold and desolate, but it is also geographically strategic for securing that part of the world. And it's critical for shipping (nearly 90% of all the shipping traversing Greenland occurs on its western coast).

The country is a veritable buffet of valuable minerals and metals that lie buried beneath its vast region of permafrost (which can be as deep as 600 meters, making any mining extremely expensive). They include rare earth elements (REEs), iron ore, gold, zinc and lead, nickel, copper, cobalt, graphite, and the platinum group metals (PGMs).

Greenland is not the Klondike.

Any country that controls Greenland also controls the rights to mine for those items – within certain limits which are strongly affected by political decisionsand environmental restrictions, of course. But any attempt to recklessly "mine, baby, mine" would be met with major international disapproval, and in that regard it is not the Klondike of 1896 which ended up raping the countryside.

Then there is the tourism sector to be considered. From the Greenlanders' point of view, their current equation is simple; maximize the tourist spending while minimizing the tourism footprint. There is always going to be a question of how much is too much for any city or locality, and just because there's plenty of ice to go around, Greenlanders will still want to preserve their privacy and peace of mind so that the capital, Nuuk, doesn't become an ice palace Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons of Long Island with thousands of tourists running around.

Greenlanders don't want their daily lives to mirror those of the Danes in Copenhagen in the summer. Copenhagen has actually reached its saturation point with about 5 million to 8 million tourist overnight stays in the summer months taking the shine off the "coziness" factor of the city that is literally flooded with people. 

Nothing like that can happen in the short term in Greenland, however, because the country has an undercapacity of hotel rooms. The last hotel built there was a Best Western with 78 rooms in 2021.

Why is Denmark so intent on holding on to Greenland?

I suspect there are many reasons. One is pride. Another is history and tradition, and a third may be a centuries' old bad taste left in the Danes' mouths from when the Danes sold their Danish West Indies Islands of the three "Saints": St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix to the Americans in 1917 for $25 million in gold. A terrific real estate deal when seen in the economies of those three islands today.

The Danish Kingdom is a long-standing monarchy and the Danes are proud of their monarchs and their two step-children that enjoy self-governance: the Faroe Islands and Greenland. They would hate for even one of them to "leave home." That is understandable, but nearly all children leave home at some point, cutting the apron strings to achieve their independence and brave the new world on their own.

In Greenland, the self-rule movement that advocates for separation from Denmark has been around for decades, but ever since Donald Trump started rattling his presidential saber about taking over Greenland, that movement has been growing. A 2025 polling average suggests a majority of Greenlanders would vote for independence if a referendum were held today (e.g., about 56% support independence, with 28% opposed -- source: veriangroup.com).

Another source finds that support for full independence has increased over time — rising to around 84% in 2025 compared with about 67.8% in 2019 — though attitudes vary depending on economic concerns and living standards. It's important to stress that the Greenlanders wanting independence realize that the process is a long one and that their answers were given in the context of getting independence "eventually." We must remember that the Greenlanders' clock ticks at a very different speed than that of the Americans.

What then to do? Enter "soft power."

While the EU "coalition of the willing" (to support Denmark and oppose Trump on the Greenland issue) is growing, the EU is worried about a possible U.S. military operation to "free" Greenland and place it under a kind of benevolent American "political receivership" similar to post-war Japan or maybe like Grenada after the 1983 American invasion. Then, the American government exerted temporary, externally supervised control during a political transition, not a permanent U.S. administration. There is no question that the recent events in Venezuela are creating a lot of worry on the part of the Danes, the Greenlanders and the EU members, not to mention the leaders of Venezuela's neighboring countries.

The Danes, Greenlanders and Americans are due to meet in Washington next week to discuss the "Greenland situation," but instead of pulling a Khrushchev at the U.N. by hammering their shoes on the table and expressing outrage or anger, I would suggest that the Danes and Greenlanders huddle up and adopt a totally different strategy of "soft power" – one that is designed to slow Donald Trump's momentum and offer a third way to solve the crisis, at least temporarily.

That third way would include something Trump loves … building, developing, project management. Greenland needs investment in its tourism sector and it needs tourists and the U.S. private sector could give it to them. The U.S. "Greenland team" needs to brush up its Shakespeare and take a page or two from "The Tempest." The character Prospero ultimately forgives his enemies who betrayed him; conflicts are resolved through mercy rather than revenge; broken relationships (political, familial, romantic) are restored and the play ends not with punishment, but with release, harmony, and return. The Tempest is often viewed as Shakespeare’s final statement on forgiveness and reconciliation, and it ends a whole lot better than Hamlet.

Therefore, the Danes should help the Greenlanders create a package of business-related projects or ideas that essentially bring American businesspeople together to form a crack unit of pro-Greenland "troops" who might be willing to invest in the country and who would be given some very attractive economic incentives for being the first wave of investors there. A few key universities could offer some scholarships to outstanding Greenland students and perhaps establish some exchange programs.

The U.S. government could encourage the U.S. EXIM Bank to sponsor a fact-finding mission to Greenland and then bring interested local Greenlanders and Danes (government and private sector) back to the U.S. for follow-up visits. It's time to think creatively and ratchet down the rhetoric and put our sabers back up on the wall where they belong. No one needs to apologize for using soft power, especially when it leads to ending conflicts.