On Monday, when asked whether the U.S. would use force to seize Greenland, President Trump replied, “No comment”. He has previously promised to take the world’s largest island “the nice way [through purchase] or the more difficult way [by force]”.

Though the notion seems to have sprung on the world ‘out of the blue’, John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Adviser, tells that it was Ron Lauder, an 81-year-old New York billionaire and heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, who first sowed the seed of U.S. ownership of Greenland in the President’s mind in 2018, during his first term in office. Trump unsuccessfully tried to buy Greenland in 2019, during his first term. President Harry Truman also offered to buy it for $100m in gold in 1946 – but was turned down.

Historically, notes the Telegraph, “the U.S. has been averse to conquering land, but not to acquiring territory with cash. In the 1803 Louisiana purchase, it bought huge amounts of land from France for the equivalent of an estimated $430m today. The Alaska purchase in 1867 saw the U.S. pay Russia the modern equivalent of $160m for what became the 49th state. It purchased the U.S. Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917 for gold coins worth the equivalent of more than $600m today”.

Wolfgang Munchau, a veteran European commentator, says, “dismayed European officials describe Trump’s rush to annex the sovereign Danish territory as “crazy” and “mad,” asking if he is caught up in his “warrior mode” after his Venezuela adventure — and saying he deserves Europe’s toughest retaliation for what many see as a clear and unprovoked attack against allies on the other side of the Atlantic”. 

One Brussels official has suggested that America can no longer be viewed as a reliable trade partner — and that the U.S. has shifted to such a degree under Trump that this metamorphosis should be taken as permanent.

European support for America, polls indicate, has evaporated: A new poll published in Germany shows less than 17% of Europeans now trust America.

Michael McNair argues however, that it was not Lauder that prompted a Greenland grab, but rather Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, Elbridge Colby, who in fact outlined his vision for this manoeuvre in his 2021 book, The Strategy of Denial: American Defence in an Age of Great Power Conflict.

Colby’s core claim is that U.S. strategy in the 21st century should aim to deny China from achieving area hegemony over Asia. The rest of Colby’s framework follows from that simple proposition. Securing........

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