The Trump administration remains firm to acquire Greenland, despite the managers of the island who refuse to give up the vice-president JD Vance and the second Lady Usha Vance going to the country on Friday.
“We need Greenland for national security and international security. So we are going, I think, as far as we have to go,” President Donald Trump told journalists on Wednesday.
Vance has praised the incredible “natural resources” of Greenland in speeches that call for the acquisition of the territory for its wealth in gold, copper and rare earth materials.
President Donald Trump announces prices on automotive imports in the White House Oval Office in Washington on March 26, 2025.
Mandel and / AFP
Trump’s ambitions are not eccentric, according to an international relations expert who told ABC News that there were ways in which the United States could realistically acquire the Danish Autonomous territory.
However, international policy, the economic and political laws and political partnerships of several decades make the wishes of Trump extremely improbable, according to Phillip Lipscy, professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
“This kind of rhetoric is not part of the development of American foreign policies since the Second World War,” he told ABC News. “If the United States advances with it, it would change the situation.”
Lipscy noted that if the acquisition of Greenland would strengthen the security of the United States in the Arctic Circle, such a decision is not necessary because of the strong military and naval presence of NATO countries.
The annexation is not new in the history of the United States, returning to the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, when the United States acquired a large part of what is now the central part of the country has been acquired in an agreement with France.
The last time the United States has received land that has become territories, it was when it has acquired three groups from the Pacific Ocean Island as part of the post-Second World War agreement with the United Nations in 1947, known as the Trust of the Pacific Islands.
This agreement has taken years of negotiation and an agreement of several nations which have drawn up the geopolitical landscape of the post-war Oceania.
Only one of these island groups, the Mariana Islands, remains an American territory.
Lipscy said that these agreements between sovereign nations have decreased in decades in exchange for agreements such as limited military partnerships, trade agreements and other treaties, which take much less time and help maintain the sovereignty of nations.
Vice-president JD Vance is held with his wife Usha Vance while they participate in a visit to the commemorative site of the Dachau concentration camp in Dachau, south of Germany, OFEB. 13, 2025.
Tobias Schwarz / AFP via Getty Images
Trump and the United States are expected to negotiate with the Denmark government for a sale or annexation of Greenland if he had to regain the ground without violating international law or using the military to take the country by force.
Greenland policy already makes such negotiation difficult, according to Lipscy.
Greenland is a self -territory in Denmark with its own elected government, the Parliament of Denmark dealing international issues.
According to Lipscy, a movement within the island has a movement within the island to be independent of Denmark which will be a key factor in the future plans of an American acquisition.
“Admittedly, there can be a diplomatic solution that begins with an independent Greenland … But it is difficult to see this situation,” he said.
During the elections earlier this month, pro independence parties won the most seats in Parliament, but none want to be part of the American Greenland which now trains a coalition government following the elections.
The Groenland government and its residents have protested strong since it started talking about the acquisition in December. He launched the idea earlier in his first mandate in 2019 but did not continue it.
“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders. We are not Americans, we are not Danish because we are Greenlanders. This is what the Americans and their leaders must understand. We cannot be purchased and we cannot be ignored,” said the Prime Minister of Greenland, Mute Bourup Egede, in an article on Facebook earlier this month.
Prime Minister of Greenland, president of the Inuit Attaqatigiigitigiigit Party Mute Bourup Egede arrives at the voting position during the parliamentary elections at Godthaabshallen Sports Hall, in Nuk, Greland, on March 11.
EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
Egede also called on Friday’s visit by Vances and other US officials, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who is part of “very aggressive American pressure against the green community” and called on the international community to reprimand it.
The Danish government has also rejected Trump calls to acquire Greenland and encouraged its residents to denounce.
“They know that Greenland is not for sale. They know that Greenland does not want to be part of the United States,” the Danes Prime Frederiksen said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The attention is overwhelming and the pressure is great. But it is in moments like these that you show which fabric you are made. You are not intimidated.
Frederiksen said that other European nations are also on the side of Denmark in this back and forth with Trump, already hindering links between the United States and its allies since Trump found his duties.
Lipscy said that such a purchase would take a long time and probably extend beyond Trump’s mandate, especially if Greenland and Danish management and their people continue to reject Trump’s calls.
If Trump continued to ignore the wishes of Greenland and Denmark, this would also erase these relations and affect economic security, national security and political alliances that have been in place since the end of the Second World War, said Lipscy.
People participate in a march ending in front of the American consulate, under the slogan, Greenland belongs to the Greenland people, in Nuuk, Greenland, March 15, 2025.
Christian Klindt Soelbeck / Ritzau Scanpix via AP
“This would point out in the United States that the United States can no longer be reliable to be a reliable partner and hold international standards,” he said. “No one would like to do the type of agreement, partnership or negotiation.”
Trump refused to exclude military measures to take control of Greenland, but Lipscy said that a complete military acquisition would not be well sat in the national and international political field and, above all, among the American people.
A survey published by the Wall Street Journal a few days before Trump’s return to the White House revealed that 68% of Americans opposed the idea.
“The idea of territorial expansion comes mainly from the president himself and there is no general agreement on the acquisition of the public or the republican party,” said Lipscy.
The demonstrators hold a banner reading “Yankee returns home” during a walk towards the American consulate during a demonstration, under the slogan “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders”, in Nuuk, Greenland, on March 15, 2025.
Christian Klindt Soelbeck / Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images
He predicted that even if Trump can “strike the table” more to make his goal a reality, that will not exceed the needle beyond his base because the general public knows that such a decision would be expensive and would not contribute to national security.
“I think that even if the ultimate objective of the American government is to guarantee closer links with Greenland, the way in which the administration takes place with its creation of policy is deeply counterproductive and unlikely to obtain the result they are looking for,” he said.
