IMAGE: REUTERS
IN THE first term of Donald Trump’s presidency, the idea of the United States purchasing Greenland was dismissed by the Washington establishment as a strange notion—a real estate tycoon’s daydream, like his plans for nuking hurricanes. Six years later, the laughter has died in the throat. In the icy clarity of a second term, what was once a joke has become a matter of “iron laws”.
The phrase comes from Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff for policy and the architect of Mr Trump’s ideas. Speaking on CNN recently to defend the administration’s renewed pressure on Greenland, Mr Miller was unambiguous. The world, he said, is not run by “international niceties” but “by strength… by force… by power”. For a man who has overseen mass deportations and orchestrated the capture of Venezuela’s president, taking a resource-rich island seems a simple next step in consolidating control over the western hemisphere.
The change in tone matches a change in tactics. In 2019 the talk was of a transaction, a “large real estate deal” that might relieve Denmark of a financial burden. In 2026 the language has hardened into national security. Mr Trump now warns that Greenland is “covered with Russian and Chinese ships”—a claim at odds with the facts of the American military presence but useful at home. By casting the takeover as a defence against foreign threats, the administration dresses up what increasingly looks like old-fashioned territorial covetousness.
This new assertiveness is being tried at a moment of recent geopolitical success. The weekend raid in Caracas that ousted Venezuela’s dictator president, Nicolás Maduro, has given the White House a potent proof of concept. If American forces can be dispatched thousands of miles away to snatch a head of state, the reasoning goes, the frozen reaches of the north should be a straightforward exercise. Mr Trump’s confidence in his command of the American war machine appears unusually high, and he shows scant concern for the sovereign rights of a NATO ally. “You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security in Greenland?” he asked reporters recently. “They added one more dog sled.”
Yet by threatening an ally, the United States risks undermining the post-war order more than any tariff or trade spat ever could. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has warned that repeated threats over Greenland put NATO itself in jeopardy. She is not exaggerating. Were Washington to move troops against a fellow member, Article V—the rule that an attack on one is an attack on all—would collapse under its own logic. It is hard to claim collective defence when the attacker is the alliance’s guarantor.
For the president’s ideological inner circle, this may be intentional. Some backers have long eyed Greenland as a proving ground for “network states”—loosely governed, crypto-driven territories free from the usual constraints of government. Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor close to the administration, has already scouted the island. To Silicon Valley, Greenland is more than uranium and coal: it is a clean slate for the twenty-first century.
Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to calm nerves by insisting the administration still favours a purchase over an invasion, the White House has been careful not to dismiss the possibility of military action. This “good cop, bad cop” routine is classic Trump, but it is losing credibility in Copenhagen and Brussels. The joint statement from six NATO countries this week, declaring that Greenland belongs to its people, was a rare show of European backbone.
The obsession with Greenland is also putting a strain on American politics. Within the Republican Party, unity is cracking. Senators like John Thune, the party’s top figure in the upper chamber, have dismissed any talk of military action as something no one is “seriously considering”. Yet anyone who has followed Stephen Miller’s rise—from Senate staffer to a key architect of executive power—knows that the gap between a reckless remark and a signed order is smaller than it seems in this administration.
The push for Greenland ultimately may have more to do with the president’s psyche than the map. His domestic popularity is sagging, and, as chief of staff Susie Wiles has reportedly noted, Mr Trump’s personality thrives on high-stakes gambles that suspend discomfort. Seizing a territory or capturing a foreign leader provides a quick thrill that messy domestic politics—with its gridlocked Congress and endless court battles—simply cannot.
If the administration presses ahead, it will discover that the so-called “iron laws” of power are rarely as simple as a TV soundbite. Greenland may be a strategic prize and a store of minerals, but it is also a semi-autonomous land (that answers to Denmark) with people who have no interest in becoming America’s fifty-first state. In the meantime the White House seems content to leave the threat of force hanging, treating the Arctic like the world’s most expensive distressed property. Whether they plan to strike a deal or just enjoy the drama, one warning is that in a second Trump term, no joke stays a joke. ■
