There are no transcripts available, and the shocked people in the room were obliged to diplomatic discreetness. But insiders nevertheless described Trump’s telephone call with Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen as “horrendous”.
Knowing Trump, his antics and his contempt for women (which he shares with his recently confirmed pick as secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth), I can imagine how it went.
“Hey babe. We will take over Greenland. This is definite. You better roll over. As a piece of real estate the place sucks. But I like it. My son likes it too. They have our military base, our radar installation, you know, radar. And they have lots of this rare earth stuff, rare, which now that the ice melts is ready to be taken by us.”
“What do you mean, ‘not for sale’? Everything is for sale, honey. But I am not talking real money here. If you try to be difficult, I’ll send the boys over. No, not the Proud Boys. The army, the army, you know? And your country will be smothered with tariffs. Tariffs, you know. No business for your little country anymore. Nada. You get it?”
Frederiksen claims to have emphasised to Trump that it was for the Greenlanders to decide their future. This sounds measured, if a tad insincere. If Denmark cared for the opinion of the island’s 57,000 inhabitants, she could have offered a referendum already. Greenland ‒ first occupied by Vikings in the ninth century and later by Inuit, who migrated from North America in the 13th century ‒ has been semi-independent since 1979, when home rule was introduced.
The relationship is difficult for both sides. The Greenlanders, at least those who bother to opine, are resentfully remembering colonial cruelties, while the Danish criticise the fiscal cost of supporting a minuscule population living under harsh conditions. Transfers of almost €1 billion per annum translate into approximately €15,000 per Greenlander each year.
I have been to Greenland a few years back, staying for a week in Kangaamiut, a settlement of a few dozen gaudily coloured container houses in green, red, blue and yellow, with whitewashed window frames. It sported a small hospital and a large community centre. A doctor was in residence, taking shifts with others out of Denmark. Many of the houses were empty, as people, like everywhere in the world, would move to the city ‒ the capital Nuuk.
I stayed in one of the empty houses, and my host, a family next door, would cater for me. They were, like all Greenlanders, Inuit. The Vikings of lore never settled. We became friendly. One day they showed me their native garb: polar bear pants, boots made from dog’s fur and colourful blouses covered in elaborate cross-stitch, sewn in the long months of darkness.
What is new is America’s now brazen disregard for alliances, the unashamed flouting of its own rules without even attempting to justify this on ethical grounds- Andreas Weitzer
The villagers were less aggrieved by Danish overbearing than by the loss of their Inuit way of life. For many years the sea had not frozen anymore, making hunting and fishing on ice impossible. Traditional dog sledges were becoming useless. Their husky populace, difficult to feed, had to be put down. Narwhale and seal, their main protein input, is now hunted, if at all, by boat. Inuit traditions, their tales and their myths have become meaningless. Alcoholism is rife, and so is suicide. The idea of mineral riches, the lure of Chinese or American investment, the idea of getting rich is of interest to a small group of elites in the “capital” only. Think of Malta in a nutshell.
President Trump’s attempted landgrab does not make economic sense. The raw material riches he stresses are minuscule when compared to untapped deposits in the States, where they are certainly easier and more cost-efficient to mine. Greenland is, after all, 80 per cent covered by massive glaciers. When they melt, rare earth deposits will be our least concern. Any mining prospect in Greenland can be bought on the cheap; neither Denmark nor Greenlanders would protest.
From a military-strategic standpoint, the US army has been in Greenland since WWII. There was a time when they packed up, but not because Greenland or Denmark had asked for it. Their presence is welcome, as is the US’s continued membership in NATO. Trump’s threats are a manifestation of territorial expansion dreams, like Russia’s. But other than in Putin’s case, they make neither strategic nor economic sense.
Trump made his brutal threats not because it was the only tool available to secure critical, legitimate US security interests, but because he can. For good or bad, Pax Americana, the supposedly rule-based, international order imposed by the US after WWII, is gone. It started to crumble much earlier. Wars of choice, never authorised by the international community (i.e. the UN) and military interference in other countries, happened before Trump. The weaponisation of trade, the hijacking of global payment systems and the violation of property rights were authorised by other presidents before him.
What is new is America’s now brazen disregard for alliances, the unashamed flouting of its own rules without even attempting to justify this on ethical grounds. This is unique. Rulebreakers from Mussolini to Putin have always tried to justify their wars morally, to sway opinion at home and abroad. Before Trump, nobody walked onto the world stage to blandly declare: “I do this because I can”.
It is worth considering what this means for international security, as well as for the prospects of our retail investments. The UN and the body of international law as it has evolved after WWII was aimed at maintaining peace between big powers. Small countries never had decisive power. They lack economic and military strength. But their opinion was listened to, and their allegiance sought. To that aim and to avoid nuclear disaster, big powers took rules and world opinion very seriously.
Not anymore. The US is now listening to Putin, to Xi Jinping and to Elon Musk. Not to Mette Frederiksen. The idea that Europe should be not more than a loose association of sovereign nations, only bound by some shared economic principles, is therefore not fit for the 21st century. As long as the EU is not a federation and thus capable of pooled economic and military heft to match China and the US, its future is precarious and its freedom brittle.
Rules will be made for Europe, not by Europeans. Its territorial integrity will be decided by others. As investors we should seek out possible safe havens, spread geographical risk, look at defence stock and seek investment in climate adaptation rather than climate mitigation. We can no longer expect the world to cooperate, even in matters as pressing as climate change.
Andreas Weitzer is an independent journalist based in Malta.