By Vincent J. Curtis
President Donald Trump stirred international controversy when he renewed his proposal that the United States acquire Greenland. Though many international observers found this proposal outrageous, it is actually consistent with historical American territorial expansion, and is taken seriously in the United States.
President Thomas Jefferson purchased Louisiana from France in 1803. President James Monroe declared in 1823 American opposition to European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere: the Monroe Doctrine. In 1845, under President James K. Polk, it became the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States to expand across the entire continent. ‘Manifest Destiny’ became the justification for the Oregon Boundary dispute with Great Britain, which was settled in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty that demarked the 49th parallel as the boundary between the United States and British North America. The Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845, sparking the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, that also gained the United States the territories of New Mexico and California. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 completed the acquisition of Arizona.
In 1867, under President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, an acquisition called at the time “Seward’s Folly.” When Seward proposed purchasing Greenland and Iceland from Denmark, the proposal went nowhere. In 1910 and 1917, discussions with President Woodrow Wilson concluded with the U.S. acquiring the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands); but Denmark made an agreement with Britain in 1917 to give her the right of first refusal should Greenland be sold, protecting loyal Canada from envelopment.
The United States occupied Greenland in 1941, after Nazi Germany occupied Denmark and the Danish Ambassador signed a treaty of defence. The U.S. used Greenland for bases to protect the Atlantic convoys carrying Lend-Lease aid to Britain.
In 1946, the Truman Administration proposed purchasing Greenland for $100 million, but was turned down. In 1951, the United States signed the Greenland Defense Agreement with Denmark, which permitted the United States to keep the WWII bases and to build new ones. The U.S. promptly built Thule Air Force Base, with a 10,000’ runway, that become a home to the Strategic Air Command, flying B-36s, B-47s, B-52s, and KC-95 tankers. Reconnaissance flights from Thule could keep tabs on Soviet activity in Murmansk, Novaya Zemlya, and Dikson. Thule still handles 3,000 flights a year.
Presently, the United States maintains 45,000 personnel in Greenland, and Thule AFB is now controlled by the U.S. Space Command. BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) radars were first installed in 1961 to detect Soviet ballistic missile launches from Russian territory and from submarines operating in the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans.
Thule people moving eastward from Canada occupied Greenland shortly after the Vikings did during the Medieval Warm Period; but while the Vikings died out, the Thules survived, and today comprise 90 percent of Greenland’s population of 56,000. In 1721, Greenland was claimed it as a Danish colony. In 2009 Denmark granted Greenland self-governance. President Trump has wondered aloud about the legality of Denmark’s claim on Greenland, and there’s talk that an offer of $400 billion would mollify Danish concerns about an American take-over.
Why would America want sovereignty over Greenland when it already has all the control it needs from a NATO ally, Denmark, for defense of North America? One answer may be mineral wealth. Greenland has large deposits of strategically vital rare earth minerals, the global supply of which is controlled by China. Access to these mineral deposits may become viable if shipping routes that are blocked by ice year round open in the event of global warming.
Greenland forms the western boundary of the Denmark Strait, one of the passages from the Arctic Ocean into the North Atlantic.
The proposal that the United States purchase Greenland is consistent with a 200 year history of expanding American control over the Western Hemisphere. The United States presently has all the military control it needs for defense, but the mineral wealth of Greenland might make it worthy of acquisition, as Alaska was.