In a Thursday press conference with Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod and Greenland’s premier, Mute Egede, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed the United States is not interested in purchasing Greenland, Reuters reported.
In the face of reporter queries, Blinken said it was “correct” that the U.S. did not wish to buy Greenland. The U.S.’s top diplomat was in Greenland as part of a larger trip, which included Iceland and Denmark, aimed at strengthening ties with “our Arctic partners, Greenland and Denmark.” Remarks from Kofod indicated he and Blinken discussed a range of issues while in Denmark, in particular the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
In 2019, then-President Donald Trump floated the possibility of the United States buying the island, causing a diplomatic fallout with Denmark, which flatly refused to discuss the matter. Trump abruptly canceled a diplomatic visit to the country after Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen dismissed the purchase as “absurd.”
The idea to purchase Greenland gained traction among some Trump supporters. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) revealed in August 2019 he had previously advocated the land buy to Trump and had met with a Danish diplomat to discuss the matter. Online advocates — and satirists — turned the diplomatic episode into a worldwide meme, which has demonstrated some longevity.
Technically a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland is the largest European territory in the Western Hemisphere. The island is autonomous in its government, but any purchase of the island would require the approval of Copenhagen.
Norse settlers under Erik the Red first allegedly reached the island in 982 A.D., though that population disappeared by 1500 A.D. The island fell under the sway of a Scandinavian power once again in later centuries, eventually becoming part of the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway and remaining part of Denmark to this day.
Amid and after the Napoleonic Wars, many of the European colonies in the Western Hemisphere declared independence from their colonial overlords, though Greenland did not do so. In 1823, the United States adopted the Monroe Doctrine, declaring the Americas closed to further colonization, with the primary aim of preventing the return of European mercantilism in the former Spanish and French colonies and keeping them open to American merchants.
The United States intervened in several European colonies after that, most notably Spanish-American War (1898), in which it invaded Spain’s colonial holdings in the Caribbean. Greenland, however, did not become a recent target for U.S. expansion until the Trump administration.
Editor’s Note: The Truman Administration in 1946 made a $100 million offer to purchase Greenland, which was rejected.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.