Trump wants Greenland because he is playing the same game as Xi and Putin

Few could have guessed before the November elections in the United States that Donald Trump would begin to acquire land from his close allies even before the start of his second presidential term.

Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” was supposed to be about the US economy and the mental atmosphere of the withering Rust Belt – not the annexation of Canada, the purchase of Greenland, and the grabbing of the Panama Canal as part of the United States, all of which Trump recently proposed.

On Greenland, Trump even said that he is not ready to rule out the use of military or economic force to make the island part of the United States. “We need it because of our national security,” he said of Greenland.

Absurd to listen to from Europe. Trump’s Greenland speeches deservedly received a complete shock from the island’s host country, Denmark, from the parliament of Greenland, which has 56,000 inhabitants, and widely from the rest of the EU, including Finland.

However, Trump’s enthusiasm for the world’s largest island, largely ice-covered Greenland, is not out of the blue. He proposed buying the island already in his previous season in 2019.

In fact, the speeches make a lot of sense as part of the new world order that Trump wants to be building. It includes the great powers competing with each other and their vassal interests, whose opinions do not matter much. So what if the little land of Legos and Ozempics gets upset?

In terms of great power competition, Greenland has enormously valuable natural resources. In addition to moderately large oil reserves, they include, for example, rare earth metals, in the production of which China has built an almost monopoly.

In addition to metals, the rapidly melting ice sheet in the Arctic region is revealing sea routes from Europe and North America to the Far East, which would be considerably shorter than current freight routes. The USA already has a military base in Greenland.

Greenland would be a perfect strategic foothold in the Arctic region, the importance of which is always growing and which China and Russia are also eyeing. Trump is not going to sit around waiting for the mouth-watering leaders to compete Vladimir Putin and especially Xi Jinping strive to expand their own spheres of influence.

However, it is appropriate to ask whether Trump’s neglect of Greenland is any longer very different from, for example, China’s attitude towards Taiwan, which has been widely criticized in Western countries. China considers the island of Taiwan as its own and has declared that it will annex it.

Talks about buying Greenland can be quickly forgotten by Trump if there is no response. From the point of view of Finland and Europe, the bigger question remains that four long years lie ahead in the allied relationship with the United States, and we also have to say no to crazy talk.

We would hardly like to hear demands from a close allied country about selling Åland, for example.