00:00And for more on this story, I'm joined by Klaus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway University of London.
00:06Thanks so much for being with us here on France 24.
00:09So way back in 2019, during his first term, Donald Trump talked about the U.S. taking Greenland and what he described as a big real estate deal.
00:17Everyone seemed to laugh it off. I think it's clear to say that no one is laughing now.
00:22How high are the stakes here?
00:25Good evening. The stakes are incredibly high.
00:28I think when that offer was made in 2019 and Trump was rebuffed, and if you remember, the invitation to Denmark was terminated.
00:39I think there was a mistaken feeling that this is this is a man who won't secure a second presidential term.
00:46And everyone thought that the issue would just die away.
00:50I think when President Trump won the second election in 2024, it was obvious this is very much back on the agenda.
01:00And he's been very, very consistent, which is in the sense of thinking of the United States as a dominant Western hemispheric power.
01:08And he's made it very clear that he thinks Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, including Venezuela, are part of that grand design.
01:18Well, so move to take Greenland by force would most certainly be illegal under international law.
01:24But given what we've just seen in Venezuela, that that might not matter much to the White House.
01:28So how likely do you think that that the U.S. could actually move here to take Greenland?
01:32Could this really happen?
01:35I don't I don't think President Trump is that bothered about international legal frameworks and the kind of norms associated with the U.N.
01:43charter around self-determination, territorial integrity.
01:47I think that ship, if you will, has as well and truly sailed.
01:51I think what you're hearing is essentially two or three options.
01:57One option would be is that the United States puts a proposal to the people of Greenland directly with with a very large cash based inducement,
02:08which goes along the lines of come and join us in a free association.
02:13The second is to say to Denmark, if you remember, President Truman in 1946 offered you one hundred million dollars worth of gold.
02:22We're prepared to offer you whatever the sum might be in U.S. dollars or gold for outright purchase.
02:32And then, of course, the third, the most outlandish, which we shouldn't rule out,
02:37is some kind of direct annexation with all the consequences that would follow,
02:43clearly not only for the Kingdom of Denmark, but also for NATO cohesion.
02:48And we'd be well and truly past that point where the contemporary international legal order, I think, would be recoverable.
02:57Let's talk about that possibility you were just mentioning, buying Greenland rather than invading it.
03:01Is that feasible in your view? And does Denmark even have the authority to to sell Greenland?
03:09Well, that's a really good point, because one one thing is worth understanding is that when President Truman raised raised this idea of purchasing Greenland in 1946,
03:22the world was in a very different place. Denmark, for example, had been occupied by Nazi Germany.
03:28There was no doubt that Greenland was a remote colony. Fast forward many decades later,
03:36you've got Greenland as an integral part of the Kingdom of Denmark with high degrees of autonomy,
03:44so much so that we talk quite rightly of a government of Greenland and Greenlandic wishes and interests.
03:49So it would cause a cataclysmic split within the Kingdom of Denmark if such a purchase was ever contemplated.
03:59But I simply make the point there is historical precedent for the United States making an approach based on a purchase.
04:10Why is Greenland so important to Donald Trump?
04:12You know, the White House has called it a national security priority.
04:15Why does Trump seem so insistent that the U.S. must have it?
04:20I think for three or four reasons. First things first, we really need to be clear that whilst, you know,
04:27I might be a professor of geopolitics, I think a lot of this is about ego politics, not geopolitics.
04:34So this is a president who wants to make America great again.
04:38And in making America great again, he thinks he will be one of the greatest American presidents.
04:43And he's been very, very clear that this could be, I think, something akin to the Trump purchase.
04:52You know, you recall the Louisiana purchase of the 19th century.
04:56Here's an opportunity to acquire a territory three times larger than Texas and truly to make America great again in terms of expanding its territorial footprint.
05:06That's number one.
05:07Number two, Greenland does have mineral potential, particularly around rare earths.
05:14And everybody, I'm sure, understands well now that minerals of all sorts, including copper, let alone cobalt, lithium, are going to be absolutely essential,
05:24not least if you want to build AI data centers, which are also very energy intensive.
05:30Thirdly, Donald Trump wants to keep China out of the North American Arctic and both Greenland and Canada have had over the last decade and a half consistent approaches from Chinese companies.
05:43And the last thing he wants to see is China get that foothold.
05:48The fourth thing I would say, I think this is part of a grand bargain between Russia and the United States,
05:54which goes along the lines of you let us take Greenland, we'll cut a good deal for you in Ukraine.
06:00And by the way, if you want to see Svalbard, which is a Norwegian territory in the high north,
06:06we won't stand in your way because we understand that is integral to your sense of, in this case, bastion defense.
06:14So I think, to be honest, it's all of those.
06:17And then the final thing, I'm afraid, which is very uncomfortable for Europeans, Donald Trump, I think, wants to punish us as Europeans for free riding on the U.S. security umbrella.
06:29And he will cause chaos within the European states.
06:32And you'll see that the European response will not be as robust as you might have thought it would have been, given the scale of the threat.
06:42I do want to talk about the European response, but you mentioned there Russia and China.
06:46And I wanted to ask you to fact check something that President Trump has been saying.
06:49He claims that Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships.
06:54Is that true?
06:57Well, I think that that's a little bit of a rhetorical flourish.
07:00However, it is also true to say that China has become a polar power of some note.
07:10China and Russia, as a consequence of the sanctions imposed upon Russia following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, have worked more closely with one another.
07:20And some of that undoubtedly includes joint aerial and maritime patrols in various parts of the Arctic.
07:29China does have ambitions in the Arctic Ocean.
07:32And Russia, of course, as recent events involving the oil tanker siege that you highlighted just a moment or two ago, Russia does have a very active submarine presence in the North Atlantic.
07:45And that inevitably involves the waters of Greenland.
07:49So all of that, I think, you can take as red, if you will.
07:55But that doesn't mean that Denmark has been delinquent in Donald Trump's terms in terms of defence and security.
08:03And really, since 1951, Denmark and the United States have had a defence agreement which gives the United States considerable latitude to operate in Greenland.
08:14And they could have come back to Denmark and said, we need to look again at this agreement.
08:19We need to upscale our military presence.
08:22They haven't done that.
08:24They've gone literally straight to the nuclear option, if you will, which is, we want Greenland.
08:30We only have a short time left, but I wanted to ask you about the European response.
08:34You know, many countries have spoken out in defence of Greenland.
08:37Do you think that these countries can do anything to prevent Donald Trump from making a move to take Greenland?
08:44We as Europeans, whether we're part of the European Union or not, it doesn't matter.
08:50We as Europeans are in a desperately difficult situation.
08:56And what you're going to see is fairly weak-worded joint statements from a select number of European leaders saying,
09:03we stand behind Greenland and Denmark in that hour of need.
09:07And yet, I note, my own government here in the UK was very quick to champion its collaboration with the United States when it performed the interception of the Bella One, the Shadow Fleet oil tanker,
09:22and made it very clear the UK saw the United States as its most important security partner.
09:28I think that gives you a clue as to how all of this is going to play out.
09:33And a final reminder is that the United Kingdom has a number of territories in the Western Hemisphere,
09:39and there must be a concern that if the United States acts against Greenland, where else might it act,
09:46given the British and the French have overseas territories not that far away from the continental United States?
09:54Okay, we'll have to leave it there.
09:56Klaus Dodds, Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London.
09:59Thanks so much for joining us here on France 24.
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