UniteStates interests and Greenland's Dilemmas

Abstract

In December 2024, Donald Trump, without having yet taken office as President of the United States, expressed his interest in buying Greenland. This statement has generated a strong reaction on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and has been clearly rejected by the Danish Prime Minister and other European leaders. Greenland is an island, the largest in the world, located in the Arctic, which is mostly populated by indigenous Inuit and belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenland also has numerous resources, including rare earth elements, which are highly coveted by China, the United States and the European Union, crucial for the manufacture of batteries, wind turbines and solar panels, and indispensable in the energy transition. Furthermore, Greenland is a crucial point in the navigation of two of the three Arctic routes —the Northwest Passage and the still impracticable Transpolar Route—. Added to this is its privileged strategic location in an Arctic that is deeply tense following the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine. It is in this context that Washington’s initiative arises. This article analyses the different aspects of the proposal and the reasons behind it, but also the dilemmas faced by the Greenlandic population, which longs for independence from Denmark in an extraordinarily complex context.