President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to acquire Greenland would mark the largest expansion of U.S. territory in its history — surpassing even the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, which nearly doubled the country’s land area at the time.
Trump, 78, on Sunday reinforced his push for acquiring the Arctic island by announcing PayPal cofounder Ken Howery as his choice for U.S. ambassador to Denmark, which has ruled Greenland for more than 300 years.
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump stated.
Trump is pressing forward with the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark.
Greenland covers 836,330 square miles, slightly more territory than the 827,987 square miles added to the U.S. via the Louisiana Purchase, a deal struck between President Thomas Jefferson and France.
Trump’s proposed acquisition would also surpass President James Polk’s 1845 annexation of the Republic of Texas, which included disputed regions now part of various neighboring states.
In addition, the scheme is larger than President Andrew Johnson’s 1867 purchase of Alaska, amounting to 591,000 square miles.
Sparse in population, Greenland is home to roughly 56,000 residents, most of whom are Inuit — related to other Indigenous peoples in northern Canada and Alaska. In principle, a 2009 law granted them permission from Copenhagen to secede if they choose.
In 2019, then-President Trump publicly shared an interest in purchasing Greenland, given its close proximity to North Atlantic sea routes and its strategic radar and weather stations, but Danish and Greenlandic officials immediately rebuffed the idea.
A year later, during his final year in office, Trump’s team at the White House and Treasury Department took a deeper look at the practical steps to finalize such a deal — identifying potential funding resources for the initial phase and drawing up a framework for a diplomatic charm campaign, sources informed The Post.
“We were making real progress on these points up until the final days,” recalled former Treasury Department official Thomas Dans. “We were hoping that the Biden administration would continue with this. We were set to move.”
Aides who worked on the plan for Trump concluded that the people of Greenland held a decisive role and would need to feel convinced that joining the U.S. served their best interests.
At present, the relatively poor residents heavily rely on a Danish government block grant of roughly half a billion dollars each year. That accounts for about 20% of Greenland’s gross domestic product and covers half the public budget, according to the International Trade Administration.
“It’s almost like an old-fashioned indenture, where Greenlanders remain tied to Denmark’s subsidy, and are stuck in a freeze,” Dans said. “They have rich natural resources but lack cash, leaving them in limbo.”
Dans, whose grandfather served in Greenland during World War II, has continued working behind the scenes to win over locals. For instance, he invited one of Greenland’s best-known social media influencers, Jørgen Boassen, to the president-elect’s election night event in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 5.
In principle, Greenlanders would be offered a Trump administration plan to bolster their economy, along with a guarantee of continued self-rule, then vote on whether to adopt that arrangement — which would be confirmed by Denmark’s parliament before any official transition.
Nonetheless, making this happen will prove challenging. Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede wrote this week, “Greenland is ours.
“We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” stated the PM.
Dans thinks the most likely method would be a compact of free association, akin to the existing U.S. agreements with Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia — which have seats in the United Nations but depend extensively on U.S. support.
It’s uncertain whether Greenland would remain nominally independent — as in the case of these Pacific nations — or follow a different model. The Pacific territories of Niue and the Cook Islands similarly associate with New Zealand and do not count as sovereign states globally.
“All these free association compacts are designed uniquely for their circumstances,” Dans explained.
Trump has mentioned the possibility of other U.S. acquisitions too. Over the weekend, he raised the notion of the U.S. reclaiming the Panama Canal Zone, relinquished to Panama in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. Trump has complained about Panama’s costly tolls on U.S. shipping and fears what might happen if China compromises the waterway’s neutrality.
Panama’s leader already publicly lambasted the concept as unacceptable.
America hasn’t significantly expanded its territory for almost a century.
In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson oversaw the deal to buy the 136-square-mile U.S. Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million, and the U.S. assumed trusteeship of four Pacific areas formerly administered by Japan after World War II — though only the Northern Mariana Islands remains a U.S. territory.
Close allies of Trump maintain he truly aims to push for acquiring Greenland and maybe retaking the Panama Canal.
“The president is 100% serious,” said a source close to Trump.
Another person near Trump remarked, “He believes that any empire not enlarging starts to crumble. He’s a student of history, and this is one viewpoint.
“He has a special admiration for presidents who expanded continental America, and he sees this as a lasting achievement that can’t be warped or revoked by political rivals.”
{Matzav.com}