The current American interest through Greenland it’s not something new. Far from what it may seem, the plans that Donald Trump is promoting today are the last link in a long history of offers, secret memoranda and strategic pressure that the United States has exerted on Denmark. for years.
What today is presented as a personal move by Trump actually fits into a constant: Washington’s obsession with controlling the Arctic island.
The American drive for Greenland starts almost at the same time as the country buys Alaska to the Russian Empire, 1867.
In parallel to that operation, Secretary of State William H. Seward is quietly exploring the possibility of acquiring Greenland and Iceland from Denmark for 5.5 million dollars in gold, a negotiation that several newspapers of the time considered “almost closed.”
However, the operation is shipwrecked in Washington before setting sail from Copenhagen. Congress, confronted by President Andrew Johnson and suspicious after the purchase of Alaska, is reluctant to sign another large check for distant territories, and Greenland is, for the first time, off the political map but within the strategic radar of the United States.
The Second World War turns Greenland into an ice aircraft carrier for the allies. With Denmark occupied by Nazi Germany, Copenhagen authorized the United States to build and operate military bases on the island to protect the Western Hemisphere, and at the end of the conflict Washington accumulated up to 15 facilities, veritable air bridges to Europe.
This deployment fuels an idea: if Greenland is already defended, why not own it? In 1946the president Harry S. Truman sign the first formal offer: 100 million dollars in gold bars in exchange for the island, presented to Danish Minister Gustav Rasmussen in a memorandum that remained classified for decades.
For the United States, the purchase was not a colonial whim, but “a military necessity” at the dawn of the Cold War, where Greenland became an advance radar against the Soviet Union.
The island is located on the shortest polar route between Washington and Moscow, and approximately halfway between the two cities.
Although Denmark reject the check of Truman, agrees to preserve the American military footprint in his Arctic colony.
El ejército danés es más pequeño que el Departamento de Policía de Nueva York. Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Dinamarca no era capaz de defender a Groenlandia.
Por eso, Estados Unidos “aceptó la obligación legal de defender de cualquier ataque” a Groenlandia en un tratado de 1951 con Dinamarca.
El acuerdo permitió a Estados Unidos mantener sus bases militares en Groenlandia y establecer nuevas bases o “zonas de defensa” si la OTAN lo consideraba necesario.
De esa arquitectura surge el símbolo más visible del poder de Washington en el Ártico: la base aérea de Thule, rebautizada décadas después como Pituffik Space Base, instalada en la costa noroeste en plena Guerra Fría.
Desde allí se teje una red de radares de alerta temprana y sistemas de seguimiento de misiles que hacen de Groenlandia un eslabón irrenunciable en el escudo antimisiles estadounidense, mientras experimentos como el secreto Proyecto Iceworm exploran incluso la idea de ocultar misiles bajo el hielo, un plan abandonado, pero revelador de la profundidad de esa presencia.
Durante la década de 1970, el entonces vicepresidente estadounidense Nelson Rockefeller planteó la posibilidad de adquirir Groenlandia con fines mineros. La existencia de esta propuesta se conoció públicamente por primera vez en 1982, cuando su redactor de discursos, Joseph E. Persico, la reveló en su libro The Imperial Rockefeller.
Manifestación de este sábado en Nuuk, capital de Groenlandia.
A comienzos del siglo XXI, Estados Unidos, Rusia y China comenzaron a prestar una atención creciente a la dinámica geopolítica del Ártico y de Groenlandia.
En 2010, la secretaria de Estado estadounidense Hillary Clinton y el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores ruso Serguéi Lavrov participaron en la reunión de los Cinco del Ártico, donde se abordaron los intereses estratégicos de las principales potencias en la región.
En 2019, el investigador Rasmus Nielsen, de la Universidad de Groenlandia, señaló que en los últimos años se había percibido un aumento del interés y la implicación de Estados Unidos en los asuntos árticos.
Según Nielsen, Washington “está despertando a la realidad del Ártico”, impulsado tanto por la presencia rusa como por el creciente papel de China en la zona.
Trump’s plan
The name of Donald Trump is associated for the first time with Greenland in 2019during his first term, when he asks his advisors if Denmark would be willing to sell the island.
The Danish response is blunt —“Greenland is not for sale”— and the president responds with a diplomatic gesture: he cancels an official visit to Copenhagen, elevating what seemed like an extravagance to an international incident.
It was that same year when Greenland asked the United States to carry out a aerial reconnaissance using aerial photogrammetry techniques.
In it, the US Navy captured hyperspectral images over the Garðar area, which were later analyzed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to identify possible mineral deposits.
Furthermore, in December 2019Denmark authorized the reopening of a consulate American in Greenland, which had operated during World War II and closed in 1953.
In April 2020Greenland accepted a American economic aid of 12.1 million dollars.
The new consulate resumed its activities in June 2020, just one day after Washington announced the construction of a new fleet of icebreakers.
Today, back in the White House, Trump has turned that idea into a real political objective.
The president has requested updated studies on the cost of buying Greenland, has considered alternatives such as a free association agreement – similar to the pacts with the Marshall Islands or Micronesia – and his entourage places the value of the operation around 700 billion dollarsalmost half of the Pentagon’s annual budget.
Trump’s fixation also has a personal dimension: Close allies, such as businessman Ronald Lauder, have insisted on Greenland’s potential in critical minerals and Arctic routes, and the president himself aspires to leave his historical mark just as other leaders did with Alaska or Puerto Rico.
However, any purchase attempt runs into a triple political wall: the rejection of Denmark, the growing autonomy and national assertion of Greenland and the need for approval from the US Congress, where voices abound that question the price and diplomatic impact of the maneuver.
Meanwhile, the reality prevails over ambition: The United States already has a consolidated military presence on the island, with the Pituffik base as the spearhead and agreements that give it strategic access to the Arctic without the need to raise a new flag.
Between checks that were never signed and plans that are drawn up in the shadows, Greenland continues to be, for Washington, the great “frozen prize” that refuses to change hands.