President Donald Trump wants Greenland. When does he want it? Now!
“We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%,” Trump told NBC News recently, adding that there’s a “good possibility that we could do it without military force” but that he doesn’t “take anything off the table.”
Meanwhile, during his visit to the would-be American territory, Vice President and enabler-in-chief JD Vance added, “We cannot just ignore the president’s desires.”
Can’t we?
Now, the idea of adding Greenland to the United States isn’t new, with American officials having had their eyes on the not-so-green island long before Trump first floated the idea in 2019.
In 1946, President Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million in gold to buy it outright, albeit under the shadows of Cold War secrecy. William C. Trimble, assistant chief of the State Department’s division of Northern European affairs, noted that an American purchase of Greenland would provide “valuable bases from which to launch an air counteroffensive over the Arctic area in the event of attack.” While the purchase was never completed, the United States did achieve its goal of American bases in Greenland.
Even earlier, in 1867, during the same year of the Alaska Purchase, U.S. officials explored acquiring both Greenland and Iceland.
Why the interest in Greenland? Well, its position is of huge strategic significance, standing as a physical barrier between North America and Russia. It’s a geopolitical goldmine, not to mention the country’s untapped natural resources.
It’s not a problem that Trump wants Greenland. No, the problem is how he’s going about it, with such terrifying flippancy and shameless hypocrisy regarding the use of military force against yet another American ally, Denmark.
Move over, Russia, Qatar, and North Korea! Canada, Mexico, and now Denmark are the only nations deserving of Trump’s uncensored wrath.
Beyond throwing allegiances into the shredder for inexplicable reasons, the deeper issue with Trump’s obsession with adding Denmark to our roster of ex-allies is that it undermines one of the fundamental principles of the MAGA movement: that Trump is in the White House to end our supposed penchant for warmongering imperialism. For a political movement that loudly proclaims its anti-war credentials, why is the impending invasion of Greenland not setting off every alarm bell in the building?
The “Make America Great Again” movement, which is Trump’s movement, was built at least in part on a rejection of America’s foreign policy establishment. Trump ran in 2016 as a blunt instrument against the so-called neoconservative consensus. He called the Iraq War a disaster, promised to end the “endless wars,” and mocked politicians such as John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for their interventionist instincts.
To this day, his loyal supporters applaud when he questions the importance of NATO, criticizes U.S. involvement in nations such as Syria, or meets with dictators such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. “America first!” his base declares as they oppose U.S. military action against the Houthis, American support for Israel, and any American condemnation of Russian military aggression against Ukraine.
So, how do they explain the figurehead of the same “America First” movement calling, jokingly or otherwise, for the use of military force to take Greenland from Denmark? Not hostile territory. Not a terrorist haven. Denmark, a NATO ally.
Too often, Trump’s supporters excuse his rhetoric as trollish comedy, which would be fine if he were a comedian. But Trump isn’t a comedian. He’s the president of the United States. Jokes about murdering your wife become far less hilarious when you’re wielding a machete, and jokes about invading countries become far less hilarious when you’re in charge of the most powerful military in human history.
This isn’t just about Greenland. It’s about whether the MAGA movement is serious about the anti-war principles it claims to stand on — or whether it was always more about who holds the reins of power. Is it anti-war in principle, or just anti-Democratic wars? Does it oppose foreign entanglements or merely the kind that don’t benefit Trump personally?
A real anti-interventionist movement doesn’t daydream about conquest. It doesn’t flirt with colonial fantasies. It doesn’t treat sovereign territories as prizes to be seized.
Yes, there are legitimate strategic reasons to be interested in Greenland. The island sits atop valuable natural resources and has immense geopolitical importance in the Arctic. The U.S. already has a military presence there with the Thule Air Base. But in an international order that supposedly respects a basic set of rules — in which MAGA supporters still operate, regardless of their resentment — you can’t just invade your allies and expect to escape all international consequences.
Sure, you can negotiate, you can persuade, you can purchase. But you can’t posture with military threats, even “jokingly,” unless you’re prepared to destroy your own credibility.
Let’s imagine the roles were reversed and former President Joe Biden was the one joking about using military force to seize Greenland. Conservative media would be apoplectic, providing wall-to-wall coverage of his senility, recklessness, and warmongering — and correctly so. But when Trump does it, our reflex is to giggle and wave it away as just “classic Trump.”
That double standard is a problem if your goal is to build a serious anti-war movement. After all, it’s not like Trump’s comments on Greenland exist in a vacuum. They are built upon years of inflammatory and contradictory messaging on American power abroad. Ultimately, it’s time to be honest about what MAGA is, and whether it’s an anti-war movement or not.
US WILL ‘GO AS FAR AS WE HAVE TO GO’ TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND, TRUMP SAYS
If Trump’s offhanded comments are nothing more than a showman’s shtick, and it’s more entertainment than policy, then we should point out that his role is commander in chief, not entertainer in chief. And if he’s serious, even a little, then the MAGA base needs to think long and hard about what they actually believe in.
You can’t demand restraint in Eastern Europe or the Far East or the Middle East while fantasizing about military expansion in the Arctic. You can’t denounce regime change in Syria and then chuckle about it in Denmark. You can’t be anti-war and joke about invading Greenland.
Ian Haworth is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and podcast host. You can find him on Substack and follow him on X at @ighaworth.