Writing this piece with the talented @piotrmarczynski.bsky.social

With a Greenland that is more confident in its path to self-determination. Trump has managed to cool Danish-American relations while inadvertently warming Danish-Greenlandic ties.

Yet we can affirm that while perhaps the US does not want Greenland, Trump wants Greenland. Except what he has recieved for the moment is a Denmark that is more invested in its Arctic territory than ever, and more reconciliatory towards its colonial past than ever.

In 2025, an American president is attempting something similar and discovering that Greenland now has the agency, and Denmark the political will, to say no. In 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken had explicitly confirmed that the US was "no longer interested in purchasing Greenland."

The historical irony is considerable. In 1941, the United States occupied Greenland while Denmark was under Nazi control, treating the island as a strategic asset to be managed between great powers.

Denmark and Greenland are issuing joint statements. European allies are conducting Arctic military exercises in Greenlandic territory. And polling suggests that 85% of the island's population opposes the acquisition that Trump insists is essential.

Today, on the 24th of December, the situation is as follows: Greenland remains within the Danish realm. Trump has appointed a special envoy, the Governor of Louisiana, whose stated mission is making Greenland American.