Remember Greenland? Trump does

Is the crisis going to reignite?

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What seems like five lifetimes ago, Donald Trump was threatening to send the U.S. military to take over Greenland, and European NATO states were talking about dissolving the alliance if he did it. It was one of the most existential moments that the transatlantic relationship has faced, and only an abrupt decision by Trump to row back calmed the situation down - at enormous cost to trust between all sides.

When the immediate crisis passed, the U.S., Denmark and Greenland started a diplomatic process in order to negotiate changes to the U.S. presence in Greenland. As you may remember, the U.S. has a military base in Greenland - Pituffik Space Base - and an already-existing right to expand its military presence there after consultation with Copenhagen and Nuuk. The Trump administration claims that China and Russia pose a big threat to Greenland which, for nebulous reasons, requires the U.S. to exercise much greater control over the island.

Those talks have been continuing fairly opaquely for a few months. Meanwhile, Trump appointed a special envoy to Greenland, former Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, and sent him to the island to scare children:

President Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, came to the island this week on a self-proclaimed good will mission to “make a bunch of friends.”

So far, he has not found many.

Within hours of landing on Sunday in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, Mr. Landry was touring the town in a cold drizzle when one Greenlander gave his entourage the finger.

After he offered some MAGA hats to Greenlandic children, several shook their heads.

He even told some kids that if they came to his mansion in Louisiana, they could have “all the chocolate chip cookies you can eat.”

Senior U.S. officials wandering the streets trying to entice children to their mansion with cookies is one thing, but more concerning for Greenlanders is what the U.S. is still demanding in the ongoing diplomatic talks.

According to The New York Times, the Trump administration’s demands include (a) an expanded military presence; (b) an agreement that U.S. troops will stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if it becomes independent; (c) access to the island’s mineral wealth; (d) a veto over investment by other countries. Meanwhile, the leaders of Greenland and Denmark are saying that U.S. officials have basically not moved from their position earlier this year, which indicates that they are still threatening to take the island over if their demands are not met.

So coercive diplomacy is alive and well in this case, and it’s probably only the war in Iran that has prevented Trump from becoming more focused on this and pushing harder. The transatlantic crisis that erupted earlier this year could easily erupt again in a few weeks or months - all it takes is for Trump to send a few tweets.

It’s also plausible that, given his troubles with Iran, Trump might come to see Greenland as a quick and easy win - something he can conquer much more easily than the Strait of Hormuz. But that would be foolish, because he should not forget that a large part of why he backed down earlier this year was European political and economic pressure. The spat over Greenland earlier this year was genuinely scary, but it was also heartening to see European countries actually getting tough with the president and using leverage against him. Trump tends to bully the weak but begrudgingly respect the strong.

The naked imperialism of Trump’s asks aren’t doing him any favors, either. Demanding exclusive access to Greenland’s mineral wealth basically means turning it into an imperial protectorate of the United States, one designed with wealth extraction in mind.

It’s also disturbing to consider the fact that the reason the administration gives for asking for this new level of control over Greenland is that it fears that in the future, investment opportunities and security cooperation might be denied to it. In the past, both would have been guaranteed by friendly relations between the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland, as well as Europe as a whole.

Why does the administration feel the need to move relations from the realm of cooperation to the realm of coercion? Is it because it realizes that its larger foreign policy of trying to subordinate Europe is going to destroy European goodwill and require it to use other means to get its way? If so, that’s a scary future for the transatlantic alliance as a whole.