President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday shared the name of his chosen ambassador to Denmark. Compared to other high-profile appointments, Ken Hoiri’s naming won’t raise too many eyebrows. What raised those eyebrows was Trump’s statement announcing Hoyri, in which Trump revived his rhetoric Previous interest in seizing Greenland Far from the proverbial hands of the Danes.
“For the purposes of national security and freedom around the world, the United States of America feels that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in his statement. He was unwelcome Returning to his first term When policy making was subject to the whims of the president and the recognition that this time there would be fewer people able to dissuade him from his most fanciful projects.
But what can we make of Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland in the first place?
Perhaps we should have seen his resurgence this week given how long he continued to push for American ownership of Greenland before this news became public. The Wall Street Journal first reported in 2019 That Trump has an interest in buying the huge ice-covered island. As the diplomatic dispute between the United States and Denmark increased, The New York Times reported this While Mr. Trump has long mocked nation-building, his flirtation with nation-buying has turned out to be more serious than many initially thought. He has been talking privately about buying Greenland for more than a year, and even briefed National Security Council staff to study the idea.
But what can we make of Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland in the first place? There was a concerted effort to make sense of the energy flowing through his unfinished imagination. Maybe it’s about control Rare earth metals Which Greenland possesses are crucial to high-tech manufacturing? Maybe it’s about ensuring Americans continue to have access to… Petovic Space BaseThe Pentagon’s military outpost in the far north? Or is Trump interested in that? Countering Chinese influence In the Arctic as more waterways open due to climate change?
As is often the case with Trump, the real answer is all about the brand and very strange. In their book “The Divider,” Peter Becker of The New York Times and Susan Glaser of The New Yorker reported that the suggestion originally came from his old friend Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune. like Baker wrote for The New York Times in 2022:
Mr. Trump later claimed that the idea was a personal inspiration to him. “I said, ‘Why don’t we have that?’” he recalled in an interview last year for the book. “You can look at a map. I’m a real estate developer. I look at the corner and say, ‘I should get this store for the building I’m building,’ etc. It’s no different.”
He added: “I love maps. And I always said: Look at the size of this. It’s huge. “It should be part of the United States.”
But in fact, Mr. Lauder discussed the matter with him from the first days of the presidency and offered himself as a back channel for the Danish government to negotiate. Commissioned by John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, was helped by Fiona Hill to form a small team to brainstorm ideas. They held secret talks with the Danish ambassador and produced an options memorandum.
We can infer three things from the Baker and Glaser report. First, even if Trump did come up with the idea of buying Greenland himself as he claimed, the “it’s huge” motive does not pay homage to his strategic vision for the United States — or his business sense as a developer. Trump will ultimately ignore the options presented to him in his favor Insisting that Denmark put Greenland up for sale. When the Danes insisted that this matter was not on the table, he criticized Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, saying: She described her refusal as “dirty.” He canceled an official trip.
It is especially appropriate for a real estate developer whose properties It declared bankruptcy Many times fascinated by this particular landmass. Greenland is one of the oldest bait-and-switch real estate cons in the book, Named to encourage settlement On an area mostly barren of ice. As any cartographer will tell you, the way Greenland looks on most popular maps is very misleading thanks to the distortion needed to make the globe flat. Instead, the island – while still huge – is not quite as huge as Trump thinks.
It’s especially fitting that a real estate developer whose properties have declared bankruptcy several times would be enamored with this particular space.
Secondly, Lauder’s proposal, which has become an obsession for Trump, highlights a habit that the president-elect has recently become more inclined towards. Trump seems to be more accessible than ever Influenced by his fellow billionaires From people with actual experience. In his first term, he turned to former Marvel Entertainment president Isaac Perlmutter to talk to him Serving as Shadow Minister for Veterans Affairs. This time, he tapped Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to co-lead a glorious cost-cutting committee. according to The Wall Street JournalThe idea came during a breakfast between Musk and Trump at the home of another billionaire, investor Nelson Peltz.
Finally, the entire issue points to Trump’s inability to take “no” for an answer. The Danish government was very firm in 2019 that Greenland was not for sale. His national security staff were frustrated by the incivility that seemed to thwart any chance of deeper Danish-American security arrangements regarding Greenlandic territory. Greenland itself Demanding complete independence From Denmark, not to trade one master for another. And yet, here we are, five years later, seeing Trump making the same demands again, much to Greenland’s dismay.
One mystery remains: why return all of Greenland now? While it’s not clear where Lauder first got the idea or why he was interested, he likely wasn’t the one who replanted the seed in Trump’s head. Lauder said in 2022 that despite his long relationship with Trump, he… He will not donate to the former president’s election campaign. Federal Election Commission filings This year seems to indicate that he has kept his word, focusing instead on electing Republicans to Congress.
As with Trump’s threat to take back the Panama Canal, there may be something darker in his Greenland obsession — a desire to see the American territory expand under his watch, a neocolonial bent that fits all too uncomfortably with his mercantilist vision of the world. But it is also possible that Trump, having previously clung to an idea, is now unwilling to abandon it, no matter how much people around him try to correct him. It’s unseemly stubbornness for most kids, let alone one in the Oval Office. Now it has the potential to wreak havoc once it returns to the seat of power on the world stage.
