What is behind this extravagant idea that worries Europe?

Donald Trump In recent weeks he expressed several ideas about the decisions he would like to make in foreign policy. They are all extravagant and also potentially generating international conflicts.

The future head of the White House claims to want to annex Canada, launch military operations against drug networks in Mexican territory or take military control of the Panama Canal.

It may be about provocations or real ideas that he intends to put into practice, but one of them, that of buying Greenland from Denmark, would fully affect Europeans.

This Tuesday sent his son, Donald Trump Jr., to the island to convince its leaders to separate from Denmark and join the United States.

Trump already spoke in 2019 about purchasing Greenland, a Danish territory with a special status that makes it not part of the European Union but rather has Danish sovereignty.

Then he said that for the United States it would be “an excellent business” and that it cost Copenhagen 700 million dollars a year, more than 600 million euros. The figure is true, but it is a ridiculous amount in light of the geostrategic importance that the ice island has for Denmark itself and for Europe in general.

The Danish government then said that it was not selling and the Greenland Executive, which functions as an autonomy, said that it did not want to be American, that it was fine as part of Denmark.

Copenhagen now maintains that position, but Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Bourup Egede took advantage of his New Year’s speech last week to ask that the island continue on its path to full independence from Denmark: “It is time for us to give ourselves a step and design our future, also to decide with whom we will cooperate most closely and who will be our business partners.”

Trump sells it as a national security movement rather than an economic or imperialist one. In his post on X in which he said that Canada should be the 51st state of the United States, he added a message “to the people of Greenland” in which he said The island is “necessary for the United States for reasons of national security, and that he wants the United States to have a presence in it, and it will have it.”

The island was already American. The first settlers, who never settled permanently, were Amerindian groups (Inuit from North America) from the third millennium BC. And so it was for four millennia.

In the year 986 after Christ, the first permanent colony was established, which arrived from Iceland led by Erik the Red who had been banished from his land for several murders. In 1261 its rulers, of Icelandic origin, agreed to come under the control of the Norwegian Monarchy.

In the 15th century, Norwegian control was diluted because the original populations in northern Europe abandoned the island in the Little Ice Age. That Norwegian control was not resumed until the 18th century when the Norwegian Lutheran missionary Hans Egede, who is called “the apostle of Greenland,” founded the capital Nuuk.

In 1814 the island came under Danish control. after the political union between the kingdoms of Norway and Denmark was dissolved. Since 1979, the island has had an autonomous regime that grants it all political powers except Foreign Affairs, Defense, Security, Finance and natural resources. Copenhagen transfers more than 600 million euros a year to finance its own skills.

It is not the first time that Washington has looked at the large Danish island. In 1867 he already offered to buy Greenland and Iceland (which at that time was also Danish since its independence did not come until 1918) taking advantage of the fact that it had just purchased Alaska from Russia. He also tried to buy it at the end of World War II.

Greenland has an area of ​​2.1 million square kilometers, equivalent to 75% of Argentina. It is the largest island on the planet since Australia is considered a continent. And it only has 56,000 inhabitants.

Greenland has important deposits of hydrocarbons, uranium and gold. And, above all, the island is the promise of important deposits of rare earths, which Europe lacks and which it needs for the development of the electric car industry or high-capacity batteries. Minerals called “rare earths” (up to 17) are essential in healthcare, optical, military, renewable, computing or civil and military nuclear technology.

Greenland is, furthermore, due to its central position in the Arctic, an essential piece of the geopolitics of the north of the planet and a place from which to control the new Arctic sea routes, which may be used for longer each year due to this climate crisis.

The trip to China from the large European ports is shorter and safer through the Arctic than crossing the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and all of South Asia, and above all much faster than bordering Africa in the south if there are problems in Suez. and, above all, in the Red Sea, where cargo ships had to be diverted to southern Africa last year due to the attacks they received from Yemen by the Houthis, who sought to alter the routes to harm Israel.

Control of this Arctic route could be done cooperatively between the United States, Canada, Denmark and other European countries (with Norway in the lead), Russia and China, but also competitively. And in that case the United States knows, beyond Trump, that control of Greenland (and Iceland) is essential.

Forecasts say that by 2030 the route will be open without problems at least between July and October and that by mid-century it will be possible to navigate for more than six months each year. With the help of nuclear icebreakers it could be done for eight months in the least cold years.

Greenland is key because there are two routes and it is important in both. The one that would pass through northern Russia and the one that would pass through northern Canada. Without Russian participation there is no possibility of developing the first route, but without Greenland and Canada the second would be impossible.

The United States currently has two ways of connecting its Atlantic ports with Asian markets: the Panama Canal (built thanks to American financing, completed in 1914 and which only came under complete control of Panama in 1977) and a very long route that passes near Antarctica, south of Argentina and Chile. In the future he wants a third route, the one that would skirt Canada through the Arctic. And consider that the best way to ensure it is to physically control it. That entails control of Greenland and Canada.

The European Union has been increasing its presence in recent years, with its investments focused above all on improving its educational system. But Brussels aims for more. Last year the first European Union Office was opened in Nuuk and the European Commission points to “investments in environmental preservation, digital and energy transitions” and, of course, “value chains of critical raw materials”, rare earths.