The burning question on the geopolitical stage is, has Trump crossed the red line with his aggressive demands to seize a sovereign nation from a loyal ally? I want to open this piece by pointing out that the Danish people sacrificed more military personnel per capita than the United States in the war on terror, in which the US government knowingly fabricated intelligence to justify sending those troops to their deaths. This is the brutal truth I wrestle with as I even begin to consider the implications of Trump’s arrogant, reckless, and unprovoked move to steal the sovereignty of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.
It goes without saying that as a proud European citizen, I am sickened by this attempt to do to the people of Greenland what the European settlers did to the indigenous people of the land they stole and broke treaty after treaty to exploit the resources of their lands. To this day, many of these reservation lands still lack access to clean, safe drinking water due to systematic underinvestment. This is a direct result of colonialism and disregard for the rights of the indigenous people. There are now numerous examples of native Americans being caught up in clear racial profiling incidents, which have subsequently led to detention by Trump’s ICE thugs.
There is no evidence that the Trump regime has any respect for anyone not of white European appearance when it comes to mass deportation. It has long been an unspoken crime to be caught in possession of a black or brown face; this has now been expanded by Trump to include a failure to speak English, even though he often struggles to speak in joined-up sentences himself. Given the lawless behaviour of his regime, why would any free nation, let alone one whose people have a striking resemblance to native Americans, want to become part of a klepto-theocratic dictatorship?
The majority of Greenlanders are indigenous Inuit people, specifically Kalaallit, who are descendants of the Thule Inuit that arrived between the 9th and 13th Centuries, although Inuits have lived in Greenland for around 4,500 years. The island has been under Danish rule for just 300 years, and became part of the kingdom of Denmark in 1953, after which it secured home rule in 1979. Greenland became self-governing in 2009 and aims to secure independence in the years ahead. It is a familiar story for many indigenous communities, not dissimilar to those of the UK's Commonwealth nations. If you’re looking for a very brief and amusing potted history of Greenland, I highly recommend a piece by Paul Dallison in Politico from January 16th 2025, the title of which reads:
From Erik the Red to Donald the Orange: A brief history of Greenland
A fact I found interesting from the article was:
400 years after settling in Greenland, the Vikings abandoned the island in part, according to researchers from Harvard and Penn State universities, because of rising sea levels caused by climatic shift. Yes, the vikings were worried about climate change. Woke!
Which brings us nicely (if skipping more than 1,000 years) to the present day, when Donald the Orange has his sights set firmly on Greenland.
Let’s be very clear, this predatory behaviour has little to do with US national security. Greenland has much more to offer, particularly its vast natural resources. Nobody is doubting Greenland's strategic positioning, which has long been recognised by the US, dating back to before World War II. In the spring of 1941, a treaty was signed with Denmark allowing the US to deploy troops to protect the island from an expansionist Nazi Germany. This treaty remains in force today.
Following the war, the focus shifted to Russia during the Cold War and by 1952, the US had 10,000 troops and sprawling military facilities to house nuclear missiles to protect against the Soviet threat. This involved the construction in 1959 of a huge secret underground nuclear-powered facility (Camp Century) with rail lines to transport nuclear missiles to launch sites. (Project Iceworm). What engineers failed to account for was the shifting ice shelf, which rendered the rail tracks inoperable as the moving ice buckled them.
The US abandoned the project in 1967, but any sense that they would behave responsibly in the site's decommissioning soon proved illusory as the facility was simply buried under the ice, leaving behind an environmental time bomb from gallons of diesel fuel, sewage, and radioactive coolant. As the ice now recedes due to climate change, the fuse on this ecological disaster has already begun to burn; it’s sadly a familiar pattern of behaviour.
The US has long had a presence in Greenland, but it has done NOTHING to clean up the mess it created before scaling back from 10,000 personnel in the Cold War era to the 150 people who now man the Pituffik Space Force Base.
Might I be so bold as to suggest that, if this were about US national security, Trump might want a few more people securing the base? While I’m sure those in the image above are lovely people, I’m not sure they reflect the crack military force Trump often boasts of, although I’m sure they could deter the odd rogue arctic fox. If the US wanted to deploy a large military presence in Greenland, there is a treaty in place to facilitate such a deployment. There’s no need to annex Greenland if that’s the objective. As a fellow NATO member, Denmark has always been happy to work with the US to build a shield against the threats from Russia and China.
Putting aside the military presence for a moment and focusing on the real reason Trump wants to own Greenland: rare-earth minerals. I’ve linked geological surveys below as PDFs to give you some idea of the huge resources that Trump and his wealthy friends are seeking to exploit without oversight or regulation.
He’s been eyeing this opportunity since his first term because he knows the extraordinary wealth that can be extracted from the island. This has nothing to do with creating a better life for Greenlanders; it's about an economic rape and pillage operation, and rest assured, he has no intention of leaving a tip on the nightstand when he’s done.
This is not Trump’s idea. As reported by Tom Burgis in The Guardian on 15th January, the opening paragraph reads:
One day during his first term, Donald Trump summoned a top aide to discuss a new idea. “Trump called me down to the Oval Office,” John Bolton, national security adviser in 2018, told the Guardian. “He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland.”
It turns out the businessman Trump spoke of was billionaire Ronald Lauder. Heir to the Estée Lauder fortune. During his first term, rare earth minerals were not the talk of the town, which is probably why China ended up with a monopoly on processing them. In his second term, however, things are very different, and it’s this that has fueled Trump’s ambition to conduct a special military operation to steal Greenland from the Danes. Sound familiar?
The web of wealth involved in this attempted hostile seizure of a NATO ally and sovereign nation is brazen. The tech giants have long had an eye on this resource-rape opportunity. And there are two key elements to this assault, both audacious yet totally predictable. I think it’s pretty clear that the CIA are already on the ground. However, Ronald Lauder has already begun the influence game. The Guardian piece continues:
Lauder has acquired commercial holdings there [Greenland]. Lauder is also part of the consortium whose desire to access Ukrainian minerals appears to have spurred Trump to demand a share of the war-torn country’s resources.
You can see the common thread here is rare earth minerals. Danish newspaper Politiken reported that Lauder has invested in an unprofitable Greenlandic freshwater bottling company co-owned by Jørgen Wæver Johansen, local chair of the governing Siumut party in Nuuk and husband to Greenland’s minister of foreign affairs, Vivian Motzfeldt. This clearly raises concerns about political interference; it appears to simply be about buying influence. The company's owners had been seeking investment for almost a decade to no avail.
It’s not just Lauder investing in Greenland. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and Sam Altman have invested in Kobold Metals, which uses AI to map rare-earth minerals. The company conducted approximately $13.4 million of high-quality exploration activities in 2022. Howard Lutnick (Trump’s Secretary of Commerce), who served as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that had long invested in Critical Metals Corp, has since divested his holdings, but transferred his shares to his adult children. It’s all about keeping it in the family.
The final protagonist in this economic spy movie is my old favourite, Peter Thiel, who in 2021 founded a startup called Praxis, which aims to build a technologically advanced “freedom city” on the island. In an article back in April 2025, by Rachael Levy and Alexandra Ulmer in Reuters, they wrote a piece entitled:
Exclusive: Greenland ‘Freedom City’? Rich donors push Trump for a tech hub up north
‘As the Trump administration intensifies efforts to acquire Greenland from Denmark — or take it by force — some Silicon Valley tech investors are promoting the frozen island as a site for a so-called freedom city, a libertarian utopia with minimal corporate regulation, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The discussions are in early stages, but the idea has been taken seriously by Trump’s pick for Denmark ambassador, Ken Howery, who is expected to be confirmed by Congress in the coming months and lead Greenland-acquisition negotiations…’
This is geopolitical corruption on steroids, and that’s before we talk about the $620 million loan obtained by Don Jr from the Pentagon for Vulcan Elements, a rare earth magnets startup his firm, 1789 Capital, invested in and partnered with. If the US buys Greenland for Trump’s estimated offer of $700billion, the oligarchs effectively benefit from an almost one trillion dollar corporate welfare check, allowing the de-risked socioeconomic and ecological rape to begin in earnest. Greenland will become a giant Corporate private island, completely free of regulation, built on land bought for it by US taxpayers. No doubt the corporate bank accounts will be held in Qatar.
For all the careful planning, this is a roll of the dice by Trump that could backfire if European and regional allies respond correctly. The problem with dealing with a bully stealing your lunch money is that if you pay him, he’ll be back tomorrow for more, and that’s exactly how Trump rolls. Europe stands on the precipice not only of stopping this geopolitical heist but also of inflicting a fatal blow on the regime itself. This, of course, assumes that the US Supreme Court does not rule against Trump on tariffs first, which, for me, remains an open question. It is, however, the case that they have the power to stop this nonsense dead in its tracks.
Let’s assume SCOTUS rules in his favour, then it’s down to Europe or Congress to deal with it. There are indications that if Trump goes ahead with his threat, there are enough Republicans in Congress willing to join with Democrats to impeach, and that’s the last thing Trump needs right now. The other alternative is for Europe to deliver a blow that damages the US economy to such an extent that it triggers massive capital flight, posing a risk to the dollar's security, and causing a recession.
Right now, Xi will be holding a party as he sits back and watches this whole debacle unravel in what will be a win-win for China.
I fear Trump is about to find out just how powerful the EU and its allies can be when faced with the collapse of NATO and with it European security and the rules-based order. I fear he underestimates the bloc's resolve to start dumping US Treasuries in a coordinated assault on the US dollar. The EU and the UK jointly own $2.2 trillion of US debt. Once you have nothing to lose, you view an economic assault through a very different lens. Selling off debt is just one of a series of options open to Europe, Canada and the Nordic Alliance. President Macron is calling on the invocation of the ‘Anti-Coercion Instrument’, a mechanism designed for use on China in response to the 2023 attempted political blackmail of Lithuania by the People’s Republic of China. Trump should not assume Europe is unprepared. Just a simple boycott of European nations from the World Cup would be an economic disaster for the US.
There’s no question that the ‘Anti-Coercion Instrument’ is a nuclear option and would harm both parties, but I think the EU has reached a point where they feel only a severe response will suffice. The US can only project power and reach strategically important parts of the world using European-hosted bases. Each nation-state and the UK have the power to ask the US to leave, and while there is no suggestion that this is on the table, Congress would do well not to underestimate the revived sense of unity in Europe as a result of Trump’s stupidity.
Trade is already shifting, as is military procurement. The German Military is moving at pace to rebuild its powerful military, and the likes of Poland have become a formidable force. Europe is already diminishing the US's role in NATO, recognising that the writing may be on the wall. Trump should remember that the US has NEVER won a war on its own, not even the war of independence. It has been handed its ass by a series of insurgent armies that have proved that fighting for the survival of your homeland is a formidable advantage to overcome.
One can only hope that Congress has the common sense to halt this lunacy, because if not, this is going to get very, very ugly.
Does the world not realize the true principles this nation was founded on? Colonization, rebellion, numerous treaty violations, murder, slavery, genocide. Over 1000 nations once filed these lands, and only 574 nations remain. Where treaty violations occur regularly, and vast unequally in all aspects, the native people's of the America's remain targets of murder and kidnapping, largely by the government and the officials of the United States of America. Do you truly think you are so special to be treated any differently? If so, you are all fools and deserve the fate coming to you. Let my ancestors be the example of the trust you can not give to the government of the United States of America, or your fate will be ours, one way or the other.
DEMOCRACIES AROUND THE WORLD SHOULD NOW DEMAND A CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES