From the Archives: Return to Greenland

In August 2019, US President Donald Trump’s cancellation of a state visit to Denmark – ‘based’, as Trump tweeted, ‘on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland’ – raised the question of whether the president of the United States could possibly be serious. Upon Trump’s return to office in January 2025, in his second inaugural address, after vowing to take back the Panama Canal from Panama, the president declared that the United States would ‘once again consider itself a growing nation, one that … expands its territory’ and pursues a ‘manifest destiny’. Over the subsequent year, and especially after the decapitating US attack on Venezuela, Trump again turned his attention to Greenland, stating that the US would obtain possession of it ‘the easy way’ or ‘the hard way’. An alarmed Prime Minister Frederiksen warned that American seizure of Greenland would mean the end of NATO. In the following short pieces, first published 21 August 2019 and 21 January 2025, Survival Editor Dana H. Allin traced early stages in the evolution of this Greenland affair into a full-blown transatlantic crisis.