{"id":518,"date":"2026-06-15T10:39:39","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=518"},"modified":"2026-06-15T10:39:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:39:39","slug":"inside-the-ludicrous-deadly-serious-plan-to-take-over-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=518","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Ludicrous, Deadly Serious Plan to Take Over Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On a Saturday afternoon in Nuuk, Greenland, last March, a thousand people walked down toward the harbor, to a small red cabin that bore the Great Seal of the United States\u2014an eagle grasping an olive branch in one foot and thirteen arrows in the other. The air was freezing, and the town was bathed in the crisp Arctic light of a late-winter sun. After almost seven decades with no diplomatic presence in Greenland, the U.S. had opened a tiny consulate in 2020, during the pandemic; now, less than two months into Donald Trump\u2019s second term as President, it was the site of the largest demonstration in Greenlandic history.<\/p>\n

Read more What Marcel Is Selling<\/a><\/p>\n

Even before Trump retook office, he had made clear his intent to annex Greenland. But, from the moment that he was sworn in, his fantasies and provocations became American foreign policy. \u201cOne way or another, we\u2019re gonna get it,\u201d he told a joint session of Congress. So five per cent of Nuuk\u2019s residents stood before the consulate, beating traditional drums and chanting their country\u2019s Inuit name: Kalaallit Nunaat. \u201cEnough is enough,\u201d they shouted. But no one from the State Department drew the blinds. It wasn\u2019t clear that anyone was even there.<\/p>\n

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Across town, in the commercial center, a lone American handed out flyers. He wore a cowhide jacket and pants, mirrored sunglasses, and a black leather vest with a patch that read \u201cBikers for Trump.\u201d He was tall and fit, with gray curls and a short mustache, and presented himself as a kind of unofficial ambassador\u2014not of the U.S. government but of its President, whose cellphone number he claimed to have. \u201cMy name is Chris Cox. I\u2019m from the United States, and I have come here to try to make some friends,\u201d he said to an elderly Inuit man. \u201cWe are not looking at you like a tiger looks at a gazelle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cox had founded Bikers for Trump in 2015, and the group had provided security at campaign rallies and at Trump\u2019s first Inauguration\u2014\u201ca wall of meat,\u201d as he put it, between protesters and the unlikely candidate who became President. When Trump lost the 2020 election, Cox spoke at a rally to call for overturning the result. \u201cI, for one, will take the first bullet,\u201d he said. \u201cIf there\u2019s anybody out there from Antifa or Black Lives Matter, spend your first fuckin\u2019 bullet in my chest.\u201d But in Nuuk he struck a more conciliatory tone. \u201cWe are not biting at the chomps,\u201d he said. \u201cI just plan on doing the best we can to have an influence here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHe wasn\u2019t really breaking any laws,\u201d a senior Greenlandic police official told me later. But Cox\u2019s interactions were inherently provocative. \u201cWithout knowing it, a lot of the Greenlanders are living in the Stone Age,\u201d he told an Italian TV channel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m receiving a lot of death threats as a result of my work here in Greenland,\u201d Cox noted, a few days into his trip. \u201cPeople are looking at me like I\u2019m a Russian with a machine gun right now, when they see the Trump patch.\u201d By that point, Greenlanders had started wearing red caps with white text that read \u201cMake America Go Away.\u201d Nevertheless, Cox considered his mission to be fruitful. \u201cI\u2019ve got some suggestions for how we can clean this up,\u201d he said, in a phone call from Nuuk to the Washington Times<\/em>. \u201cWe need to change the hearts of some of these Greenlanders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cox left Nuuk for Washington, D.C., where he claims to have briefed the White House and Republican lawmakers on his findings. He also did a prime-time interview with One America News Network, portraying Denmark, whose realm includes Greenland and the Faroe Islands, as an illegitimate colonial power that is committing \u201catrocities\u201d against Greenlanders and \u201cweaponizing\u201d anti-Trump propaganda to turn people against the U.S. \u201cUnfortunately, the natives, the Inuits and the Greenlanders, in my opinion, are suffering something we call, here in America, Stockholm syndrome,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to Denmark\u2019s national broadcaster, while Cox was in Nuuk, he made lists of Greenlanders who seemed open to annexation, and of those who obviously were not. He also solicited information on points of tension between Greenland and Denmark\u2014examples of historical injustices that could be exploited for propaganda\u2014and sought to recruit Greenlanders for a separatist movement, to tear apart the Kingdom of Denmark. Three months later, Trump appointed him to an advisory council at the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

In recent months, the United States has kidnapped the President of Venezuela, launched a war with Iran, threatened Colombia, and started to move against Cuba. Trump\u2019s obsession with Greenland has mostly slipped from the news. But Greenlanders worry that the war in Iran is only serving as a temporary reprieve; influence operations are ongoing, at Trump\u2019s direction, and every so often he blurts out the stakes. During a rant about America\u2019s European allies, Trump emphasized that his antipathy toward NATO<\/em>\u201call began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland. We want Greenland. They don\u2019t want to give it to us, and I said, \u2018Bye-bye!\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The transatlantic alliance reflected a world that was designed and largely enforced by American power. Now, as American primacy fades, the U.S. government has embraced the predatory world view of its traditional opponents. Firepower matters more than values or alliances, and everything is in play. In December, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service noted that the U.S. has transformed into a nation that \u201cuses economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will, and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies.\u201d Weeks later, Danish soldiers prepared to blow up Greenlandic runways, in case of a U.S. invasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the United States chooses to attack another NATO<\/em> country militarily, then everything comes to an end\u2014including NATO<\/em> and, with it, the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,\u201d Denmark\u2019s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, warned. She later added, \u201cThe world order as we know it\u2014that we have been fighting for, for eighty years\u2014is over, and I don\u2019t think it will return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around that time, Trump texted the Prime Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re; since he had not received the Nobel Peace Prize, he wrote, \u201cI no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.\u201d He then pivoted to Denmark\u2019s claim to Greenland, which predates the founding of the U.S.: \u201cWhy do they have a \u2018right of ownership\u2019 anyway? There are no written documents, it\u2019s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.\u201d The message concluded, \u201cThe World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s first term, \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d primarily meant that the U.S. would withdraw from the world and shield against what he and his supporters perceived as external threats. But in his second term Trump has looked outward. In his Inaugural Address, he pledged to expand U.S. territory and to carry \u201cour flag into new and beautiful horizons.\u201d It is harder to remake what is already America into Trump\u2019s vision of \u201cgreatness\u201d than it is to make America merely bigger.<\/p>\n

Greenland is the largest island in the world, but it has fewer than fifty-seven thousand residents, who are mostly scattered among settlements and towns along its western coast. Although it belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark, it lies to the west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and is part of North America. The latest articulation of the U.S.\u2019s National Security Strategy, published in November, frames Trump\u2019s imperial ambitions as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, the assertion by President James Monroe, in 1823, that any attempt by European powers to further colonize the Americas would be treated as \u201cdangerous to our peace and safety.\u201d Under Trump\u2019s leadership, the N.S.S. says, \u201cwe will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the elevated language of the N.S.S. obscures the fact that Trump\u2019s pursuit of Greenland has always been in the hands of a few ideologues and opportunists. Along with Cox, the Danish government has identified two other Americans as running private \u201cinfluence operations\u201d in Greenland: a former venture capitalist and pecan farmer named Tom Dans and a former Army Special Forces commander named Drew Horn, who has sought to dominate Greenland\u2019s rare-earth-mining sector. Both men served in Trump\u2019s first Administration\u2014Dans at the Treasury, Horn in the Office of the Vice-President, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Departments of Energy and Defense. But the Danish and Greenlandic governments were unaware that, during Trump\u2019s first term, they had also represented their respective agencies on a secret National Security Council task force whose focus was the acquisition of Greenland.<\/p>\n

A fourth man, J\u00f8rgen Boassen, is one of the very few Greenlanders who loudly support Trump; he spent much of the past year in self-imposed exile, floating between far-right American and European political gatherings, his travel and living expenses covered by American benefactors whom he refuses to identify. And then there is Trump himself, whose stated reasons for coveting Greenland do not stand up to scrutiny\u2014except that he considers it \u201cpsychologically important,\u201d as he recently put it to the New York Times<\/em>, to own the territory rather than merely have military access to it, as the U.S. has had continuously, under a treaty with Denmark, since 1951.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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European officials have been perplexed and outraged in recent months, unsure when or whether Trump will order the U.S. military to annex Greenland. But the reality is that the United States is now a country in which matters of war and peace are decided not among diplomatic or military experts, in the interests of the state, but through informal channels, by people whose personal proximity to the President\u2014through family, business, donations, or flattery\u2014is their principal qualification.<\/p>\n

In January, the Times<\/em> asked Trump if there were any limits to his global powers. \u201cYeah, there is one thing,\u201d he replied. \u201cMy own morality. My own mind. It\u2019s the only thing that can stop me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first time Trump is known to have expressed an interest in Greenland was in late 2018, when he was seventy-two years old. He summoned his national-security adviser, John Bolton, to the Oval Office, and confided that his longtime friend Ronald Lauder had suggested that he buy the island. \u201cHe asked, What did I think of it?\u201d Bolton recalled. \u201cI said, \u2018Well, we do have some security issues in the Arctic.\u2019 And then I went through them and said, \u2018There are probably a lot of ways to handle it. Let me do some research, and I\u2019ll come back to you.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

What followed \u201cwas all done in a slightly clandestine, cloak-and-dagger way,\u201d Fiona Hill, who was serving as the senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council, told me. Bolton summoned her to his office, but he wouldn\u2019t say why. When she arrived, she found him ashen-faced, sitting next to a Coast Guard admiral who was serving as the White House\u2019s homeland-security adviser. \u201cBolton said to us, \u2018Look, Ron Lauder has told Trump he needs to buy Greenland, and we\u2019ve got to head this off before he announces he\u2019s buying Greenland to everybody,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Hill said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want us to let anybody else know, not even within our directorates.\u201d Bolton asked her to discreetly prepare a memo that presented more reasonable alternatives.<\/p>\n

As Bolton saw it, the United States and its allies had been neglecting security in the Arctic region since the end of the Cold War. Although the U.S. had constructed seventeen military bases in Greenland during the Second World War, it started decommissioning them in the early fifties. Now the polar ice cap was melting, opening up potential Arctic sea lanes. Vladimir Putin had revived the Russian Navy, and had access to a large fleet of icebreakers. China was beginning to carry out state-funded scientific missions in the region, which could be useful for its commercial and military ambitions. The government in Beijing was also beginning to refer to China as a \u201cnear-Arctic state,\u201d a designation that it invented and partly attributed to the fact that it borders<\/em> an Arctic state. (The northernmost part of China is more than nine hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle.) One Chinese state-run entity even offered financing for three new runways and airports in Greenland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The financing had come at Greenland\u2019s request; after failing to persuade the Danish government to pay for the new airports, Greenland\u2019s premier travelled to Beijing in 2017 and solicited more than half a billion dollars in funds. When U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis heard about the arrangement, he warned the Danish defense minister that China must not be allowed to gain a foothold on the North American side of the Arctic\u2014especially with infrastructure projects that could be of use to the Chinese military. Denmark stepped in to block the Chinese loans, and pulled together the funds to finance the airports directly. Still, the incident rattled analysts in the White House and the Pentagon. Greenland had achieved self-rule in 2009, and appeared to be on a path toward independence. What would happen when Denmark\u2014which maintained authority over Greenlandic security\u2014could no longer intervene?<\/p>\n

But Hill\u2019s research proved reassuring to Bolton. She and an Arctic specialist at the State Department named Markus Thomi found that the United States, under the 1951 treaty with Denmark, already had de-facto military control of Greenland. The U.S. had taken over the defense of Greenland during the Second World War, and had preserved its military access through negotiations that allowed Denmark to become a founding member of NATO<\/em>. Although the U.S. now maintained only a single base, in the far north, called Pituffik Space Base, for detecting and tracking incoming ballistic missiles from Russia, it could expand its presence in Greenland whenever\u2014and pretty much however\u2014it wanted to. All it had to do was ask.<\/p>\n

Hill and Thomi put together a memo, laying out various options that were already available under the treaty. The idea, Hill said, was \u201cto try to throw Trump off the scent and focus on putting together a broader U.S. Arctic approach.\u201d Bolton told me much the same. \u201cI read the treaty, and it seemed to me that it solved the problem, at least on the military side,\u201d he said. \u201cIn terms of buying it, one thing that became apparent was that, you know, this is not the nineteenth century anymore. There are fifty-seven thousand people in Greenland. They have this feeling that they ought to have a say in their future.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, as more people in the Administration got wind of Trump\u2019s ambitions, \u201cit took off in a direction that Bolton feared it would,\u201d Hill recalled. \u201cIt was like vultures circling a corpse\u2014people going, \u2018Oh, look at this! Maybe there\u2019s a scrap here that I can do something with, for my own interest.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Hill, who had previously worked as the U.S. intelligence community\u2019s lead analyst on Russia and Eurasia, was struck by a horrifying sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. \u201cI was taken aback\u2014although perhaps I shouldn\u2019t have been\u2014by how much this paralleled things I saw in Russia over and over again: people hitching their wagon to a money-making or prestige opportunity, getting some swanky title, to pursue things that were obviously not to anybody\u2019s benefit. I\u2019d seen that in Chechnya, across the Caucasus, and in Donbas and Crimea,\u201d she said. \u201cI kept thinking, We\u2019re even more like the Kremlin than I could have imagined, in terms of hangers-on, because there\u2019s no discipline. It\u2019s top-down, and nobody has power unless it\u2019s derived from Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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After completing the Greenland memo, Hill and Thomi met with the Danish Ambassador and several other Danish officials. As the conversation shifted to the North Atlantic, she recalled \u201ctrying to give them a heads-up by making strange eye movements, body-language signals that something was going to happen.\u201d But the Danes didn\u2019t pick up on it.<\/p>\n

In mid-July, 2019, Hill ended her tenure. She felt that there was no way to continue serving in the Administration without becoming part of the problem. \u201cIt is what it looks like\u2014Trump is a king, and he\u2019s thinking about his empire,\u201d she told me. \u201cIt\u2019s all about acquiring things\u2014staking your claim, and then covering it in bling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around the time that Hill left the White House, a phone rang at the Danish foreign ministry, in Copenhagen. It was the middle of a summer holiday, in 2019, and the sun was streaming into mostly empty offices. The caller was from the American Embassy, relaying a request from Washington: the President and the First Lady of the United States would like to visit Denmark in a little more than a month, and would appreciate a formal invitation from the Queen. (According to Bolton, White House staffers had heard that Melania wanted to see Copenhagen and thought it might be a nice stop for her and Trump on the way home from a state visit to Poland.)<\/p>\n

\u201cDanish diplomats, politicians, and defense officials cut short their summer vacations and threw themselves into the preparations,\u201d the Danish journalist Martin Breum reported. \u201cThere was no room for negotiation on the dates.\u201d On July 31st, the Danish royal family announced that Donald and Melania Trump would pay a state visit \u201cat the invitation of Her Majesty the Queen.\u201d Although Trump was reviled in Copenhagen, Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister, made clear the urgency of a warm reception. \u201cThe USA is Denmark\u2019s most important and strongest ally in NATO,\u201d her office wrote. \u201cOur soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder in the world\u2019s hotspots and in the defense of Europe\u2019s security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, the Wall Street<\/em> Journal<\/em> broke the news that Trump had, \u201cwith varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest\u201d in purchasing Greenland. The story came as a shock to the Danes\u2014and to Bolton, who had spent the preceding weeks trying to figure out how to quietly warn the Danes himself. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine it leaked from the National Security Council, because we were holding it very close,\u201d he told me. \u201cI found out subsequently that, at various occasions down at Mar-a-Lago, Trump would be sitting around his dinner table, saying to the guests, \u2018What would you think if we bought Greenland?\u2019 And the guests would say, \u2018Oh, well, that\u2019s a good idea.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Trump later clarified to reporters that he saw the potential purchase as a real-estate deal for an island with a strategic location and rare-earth minerals. \u201cWhy don\u2019t we have that?\u201d he asked. \u201cI love maps. And I always said, \u2018Look at the size of this. It\u2019s massive. That should be part of the United States.\u2019\u00a0\u201d (Because Greenland is so far north, it appears more than ten times larger on a Mercator projection than it does on a globe.)<\/p>\n

The news of Trump\u2019s territorial ambitions did not land well in Copenhagen or in Nuuk. \u201cAre parts of the US for sale? Alaska?\u201d Rasmus Jarlov, who has served as the chair of the Danish parliament\u2019s defense committee, wrote on Twitter. Frederiksen took a more diplomatic line. \u201cThankfully, the time where you buy and sell other countries and populations is over,\u201d she said. \u201cGreenland belongs to Greenland. I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously.\u201d The prospect of a sale, Frederiksen said, was \u201cabsurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump fixated on Frederiksen\u2019s comment. \u201cI thought that the Prime Minister\u2019s statement that it was absurd\u2014that it was an absurd idea\u2014was nasty,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t talk to the United States that way.\u201d Later that day, while he was in a private meeting with Bolton, Melania called. Trump answered the phone on speaker, and Bolton overheard the exchange. \u201cI don\u2019t know why people keep saying I want to go to Denmark,\u201d Melania said. \u201cIf you<\/em> want to go, I\u2019ll go with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump hung up the phone, then took to Twitter to cancel the trip, blaming it on Frederiksen.<\/p>\n

Bolton says that he resigned three weeks later. Trump announced the departure on Twitter, by claiming to have fired him.<\/p>\n

In the following months, Trump was impeached by the House for withholding military aid from Ukraine while pressuring its President to open an investigation into the Biden family. During that period, the \u201cGreenland question,\u201d as a senior State Department official referred to it during the impeachment inquiry, appeared dormant. In fact, the discussion had simply moved to secure rooms in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where, according to the official, it \u201ctook up a lot of energy\u201d among Trump\u2019s national-security staff. \u201cNot only did he want to purchase Greenland, he actually said he wanted to see if we could sell Puerto Rico,\u201d Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, later said. \u201cCould we swap Puerto Rico for Greenland? Because, in his words, Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Senate acquitted Trump in February, 2020, and his acolytes set about purging the White House and the civil service of career officials and replacing them with loyalists. Among the leaders of this effort was a lawyer named Paul Dans. Around that time, Dans\u2019s twin brother, Tom, the former venture capitalist, who was now running a pecan farm in South Texas, got a call, asking if he\u2019d like to be the Treasury Department\u2019s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tom Dans had first come into contact with Trump in the early nineties; as a junior investment banker, Dans was part of a small team that was brokering the sale of Madison Square Garden, a deal that included not only the arena and various New York sports teams but also the Miss Universe pageant. As Dans remembers it, Trump and his representatives would call his office once a week and ask if he could purchase Miss Universe separately from the rest of the deal. \u201cWe were, like, \u2018No, you gotta buy the whole enchilada,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Dans told me. Trump would \u201chang up, wait a week, and try again.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Washington, Dans learned that there was a task force being run out of the National Security Council in which staffers representing each of the relevant U.S. government agencies were deliberating options for the future of Greenland. \u201cLet me get involved, because I\u2019ve got a family connection,\u201d Dans recalled telling his boss. Although Dans had never been to Greenland, his grandfather had served there as a merchant mariner during the Second World War, and had later helped construct Pituffik Space Base. Dans was appointed to the Greenland Policy Coordination Committee.<\/p>\n

Much of the work of the Greenland P.C.C. was retroactively classified, but it centered on what the group\u2019s members and their superiors regarded as both the threat and the opportunity of Greenlandic independence. \u201cI want to say it\u2019s an opportunity as long as we are willing and able to position ourselves to have a robust security and economic relationship with an independent Greenland,\u201d Alexander Gray, who was serving as the chief of staff of the National Security Council at the time, told me. But Gray worried that Greenlandic independence would throw into question the security arrangements that were already in place: \u201cWhy would a Greenlandic independent government honor a treaty that their colonial masters signed with the United States decades ago?\u201d<\/p>\n

Gray had spent the preceding years observing and seeking ways to counter Chinese influence operations in sparsely populated island nations. \u201cI had the portfolio dealing with the Pacific islands in the N.S.C., and we were dealing with this every day,\u201d he told me. State-owned Chinese entities offered loans to such nations for infrastructure projects; if the nations defaulted, the Chinese could take control. A security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands enabled the deployment of Chinese paramilitary forces. \u201cWatching that in real time prompted a lot of people to really have concerns about where an independent Greenland would ultimately end up,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n

To temper the perceived risks posed by Greenlandic independence, the Trump Administration set about trying to accelerate it in ways that would bring about a greater reliance on the U.S. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing secret about the contours of the thing\u2014if you study Greenland at all, you quickly arrive at the point that, you know, they\u2019re asset rich and cash poor,\u201d Dans told me. A major obstacle to Greenlandic independence is the absence of a self-sufficient economy; each year, Denmark doles out a block grant of around six hundred million dollars. \u201cSo, like, this is not a toughie, if you come from an investment-banking or dealmaking background, to solve,\u201d Dans continued. \u201cI hate to sound glib about it, but, when we\u2019re shovelling trillions of dollars out of the Treasury for COVID<\/em> relief\u2014boom, boom, boom\u2014and you\u2019re looking at a number which is a couple hundred million, it\u2019s, like, \u2018Guys, let\u2019s get serious here. What\u2019s going on? This is not a difficult thing.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The U.S. set out on a \u201ccharm offensive,\u201d as Greenland\u2019s only private national newspaper, Sermitsiaq<\/em>, put it at the time. Trump\u2019s Ambassador to Denmark made numerous trips to Greenland, and courted Greenlandic politicians with promises of American business investment, educational opportunities, and development aid. The U.S. reopened its consulate in Nuuk, which had been shuttered since 1953. During the fall of 2019, a delegation of American diplomats and national-security officials arrived in Nuuk to discuss Greenland\u2019s mineral resources, with a particular focus on mining strategic rare-earth minerals. Left undisclosed was the fact that among them were members of the National Security Council who were working to subvert the Kingdom of Denmark; they belonged to the Greenland P.C.C.<\/p>\n

According to Drew Horn, the senior Administration official who was co-leading the Greenland P.C.C., the group routinely discussed the potential for friction with Denmark, and took \u201cdeliberate efforts meant to appease Danish concerns.\u201d The intention, Horn said, \u201cwas never to vilify Denmark. It was always to do this as a win for everybody.\u201d (Denmark\u2019s win, as he saw it, was that it could cut loose a financial burden, even as it lost ninety-eight per cent of its territory and its relevance to Arctic geopolitics.) But the Danes were neither informed about the existence of the Greenland P.C.C. nor aware of its plans.<\/p>\n

For the final two years of Trump\u2019s first term, the work of the U.S. government in Greenland amounted to overt diplomacy and outreach paired with covert, winking assurances to Greenlandic officials that the U.S. would financially support their pursuit of independence in exchange for total military sovereignty over the island. The concept was hardly different from what Gray had cast as the Chinese approach\u2014only the U.S. was now doing it first.<\/p>\n

Still, military annexation was not on the table. The United States military continued to regard its allies and the \u201crules-based order\u201d as the cornerstone of its Arctic strategy. On the sidelines of the NATO<\/em> Leaders\u2019 Meeting that winter, Bolton\u2019s replacement, Robert O\u2019Brien, urged his Danish counterparts to make a show of their commitment to Greenland\u2019s security. O\u2019Brien advised them to build a large, permanent air-force base, and to keep frigates on rotation in the Nuuk harbor, as a deterrent to the Russian and Chinese navies. The Danes \u201cwanted to talk about plans and white papers, and that sort of thing,\u201d he told me. \u201cWhereas I\u2019m the kind of guy who\u2014well, I\u2019d just take over a hotel in Nuuk and send a hundred Danish special operators there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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To the Danes, it was as if the Americans had lost track of their own fantasy. The American argument, O\u2019Brien said, was that \u201cguys with dogsleds aren\u2019t going to stop a naval infantry regiment of the Chinese or the Russians coming on board from an icebreaker.\u201d But neither country had ever threatened Greenland, and the prospect of an imminent invasion made no strategic or tactical sense. After Denmark stepped in to finance the three Greenlandic airports, Chinese investment ground to a halt. Besides, Greenland was NATO<\/em> territory; any attack would, at least in principle, invoke the possibility of nuclear Armageddon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the Danes had gotten used to business as usual,\u201d O\u2019Brien told me. \u201cThey liked it much better when the U.S. provided all their security, and it didn\u2019t cost them anything, and they could spend their money on social programs and worker programs.\u201d He continued, \u201cIn other words, we were supposed to defend it but not have any say in the governance of Greenland, and potentially even have how<\/em> we defended it questioned by the Danes.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked whether he felt that the Danes had grasped the depth of Trump\u2019s desire to take over the island.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think they took it seriously,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cThey did when he came back.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Trump lost the 2020 election, Tom Dans went back to pecan farming. \u201cWe did have a period of exile,\u201d he told me, of the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection. (He was unaware of the attack in real time; he\u2019d spent much of the day inside a secure facility, working with members of the Greenland P.C.C.) But, in the lead-up to Trump\u2019s third run for office, Dans visited Washington as a non-resident fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where his brother, Paul, was leading the effort to draft a blitz of executive actions and policies that became known as Project 2025. As the election approached, Dans spoke with the Greenlandic diplomatic representative in Washington, who mentioned that he knew of a Greenlander who supported Trump: a bricklayer named J\u00f8rgen Boassen.<\/p>\n

Boassen had been a Trump fan since 2016. \u201cI was so tired of the \u00e9lites, and of politically correct politicians,\u201d he told me. By reading the news on social media, he had come to believe that Europe was sleepwalking into civil war, owing to the influx of Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East. \u201cDenmark cannot even protect Denmark,\u201d he said. \u201cHow can they protect us?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2024, Dans wrote to Boassen on Facebook, and invited him to the U.S. They spent a week campaigning for Trump door to door in Pittsburgh, then travelled to West Palm Beach for Election Night, where Boassen shook hands with senators, billionaires, and several MAGA<\/em> luminaries. \u201cI also met Don, Jr., there, and I told him, \u2018If you want to come to Greenland, just contact me,\u2019\u00a0\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

After the election, Boassen returned to Nuuk; Dans spent the following weeks pushing his Greenland agenda, in conversations with people he knew on Trump\u2019s transition team, until it became one of Trump\u2019s central fixations. \u201cYou have to get meetings with people, you have to coach an idea, and you have to work it and sell it and help people understand why it makes sense,\u201d Dans told me. \u201cUltimately, it has to become their idea, not yours. There\u2019s no end to what you can accomplish in D.C. if you are willing to give other people the credit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In early January, 2025, the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk texted Boassen and asked for help arranging a visit to Nuuk, for himself and Don, Jr. A few days later, the Trump family\u2019s Boeing 757 landed on Nuuk\u2019s new runway. Boassen was there to receive them. \u201cThat\u2019s the great irony here,\u201d Dans said, laughing. \u201cThe Chinese were the ones who, ten years ago, came and said, \u2018Let us build your airports and walk into your mineral deposits.\u2019 And then they got read the riot act by the U.S. side, and the Danes stepped up and found the money and built the airport\u2014and that allowed the 757 to land and get the visuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

An advance team came to Nuuk with a stack of MAGA<\/em> hats. Boassen assembled a small group of people to cheer Don, Jr.,\u2019s arrival, and to join him for lunch at Nuuk\u2019s most expensive hotel. It was only after the plane left, that evening, that local journalists discovered the supporters included homeless people who had been recruited with the promise of a free meal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told us that they would welcome us as part of the United States,\u201d a high-school student named Malik Dollerup-Scheibel, who ran into Don, Jr., and Kirk at a pool bar called Daddy\u2019s, told me. \u201cAnd we were just, like, \u2018Yeah, well, it would be really strange to say that we\u2019re not welcome, since you just came here<\/em>.\u2019\u00a0\u201d He was handed a MAGA<\/em> hat and photographed with Kirk and Don, Jr. \u201cBut what we didn\u2019t know was that, at the same time as we were being photographed, Donald Trump, Sr., was saying that he would take Greenland by force,\u201d Dollerup-Scheibel said. \u201cSo we were kind of manipulated. When they posted the pictures, it looked like there were so many people who liked him. But we were just friendly, and people got free beer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the U.S., Kirk went to his broadcast studio and gave an account of his few hours in Greenland. \u201cThere\u2019s polar bears that walk around Nuuk,\u201d he said. (There are no polar bears walking around Nuuk.) He recounted a tale of a young boy coming to him and telling him about rubies the size of baseballs. \u201cAnd he says, \u2018The Danes don\u2019t let us mine our rubies, our gold, our lithium, or our gas,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Kirk claimed. (Greenland has total autonomy and ownership over its natural resources.) \u201cHe said, \u2018It\u2019s time for a rebellion against the Danes.\u2019 The younger people of Nuuk, the younger people of Greenland\u2014they want to be rich, and, oh, my goodness, do they have wealth in Greenland. Incomprehensible amounts of wealth. We are talking that Greenland could be the new Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, Permian Basin, Marcellus Shale, and the Balkan, all mixed into one. America should want those resources for our country, and Greenland should want them for their country. We\u2019d be far more willing and able to develop them than Denmark and the socialist Greta Thunberg environmentalists from Copenhagen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kirk framed the question of annexation as a matter of dignity. \u201cThey want to be part of a country that respects them, that gives them human rights,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is the return of Manifest Destiny. Gulf of America. We\u2019re taking back the Panama Canal, and we\u2019re gonna do whatever it takes to have Greenland be part of the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the next week or so, several Trump-friendly influencers began arriving in Nuuk. Nick Shirley asked Greenlanders what they thought about annexation on camera; the Nelk Boys handed out hundred-dollar bills to children, prompting locals to call the police. When Chris Cox showed up, Boassen served as his fixer.<\/p>\n

Most of the propaganda wasn\u2019t aimed at persuading Greenlanders to call for closer ties with the United States\u2014it was focussed on convincing conservative Americans that the Greenlanders would welcome U.S. forces as liberators. An organization called Patriot Polling reported that fifty-seven per cent of Greenlanders supported joining the United States; Kirk shared the poll on X. But a Danish-Greenlandic poll found that the figure was around six per cent.<\/p>\n

Read more Laverne Cox Wants to \u201cRehumanize Everybody\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cCharlie Kirk said that there were a hundred people waiting for him at the airport with MAGA<\/em> hats on,\u201d Dollerup-Scheibel recalled. \u201cI have seen pictures from the airport. There were three.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s territorial ambitions emboldened those of America\u2019s adversaries. Days after Don, Jr., returned from Greenland, a Russian lawmaker and former senior military officer argued on state television that, for defensive reasons, Russia should now annex Norway\u2019s Svalbard archipelago, where it has maintained two coal-mining settlements for almost a century. \u201cA war has begun in the Arctic,\u201d he said. \u201cTrump is declaring his claims to Greenland. Why shouldn\u2019t we look at Greenland? We need Greenland! This is not a joke. We absolutely need it!\u201d But it was impossible to tell whether he was serious, trolling, or just revelling in the end of the rules-based international order. There was no point in dealing with the Greenlandic or Danish authorities, he said; the best way forward was to \u201creach an agreement with Trump, and divide Greenland into a couple of parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Greenlandic politicians also saw the MAGA<\/em> incursion as an opportunity for leverage. \u201cPeople are beginning to understand that independence is not a question of the block grant,\u201d Pele Broberg, the chairman of the hard-line-nationalist Naleraq Party, said. \u201cIt is only a question of whether we want<\/em> independence.\u201d He brushed off Trump\u2019s annexation rhetoric as a negotiating tactic. \u201cThey are showing good will by saying, \u2018Forget the economic side. We will figure that out,\u2019\u00a0\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A young Greenlandic parliamentarian named Kuno Fencker announced his openness to entering into a defense pact with the United States, cutting Denmark out of the picture. He had read about the concept in an essay published shortly before the 2024 U.S. election, unaware that two of its authors\u2014Tom Dans and Alexander Gray\u2014had previously worked on covert plans for Greenland at the National Security Council. Dans seized upon Fencker\u2019s interest, and invited him to Trump\u2019s Inauguration. Kirk arranged tickets for Fencker and Boassen to attend the Turning Point USA Inauguration ball.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe met many people there\u2014Kid Rock, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Trump\u2019s lawyer,\u201d Boassen recalled. By then, Boassen had started introducing himself as \u201cTrump\u2019s Greenlandic son.\u201d Fencker met with White House lawyers and other Administration officials, and candidly discussed his grievances with Denmark and possible paths forward for Greenland and the United States. Although he was travelling as a private citizen, he was apparently received and treated as a representative of the Greenlandic legislature. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to meet people in the government or State Department or whatever,\u201d he told me. \u201cI met with almost three hundred people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the days before the Inauguration, a group of Republican lawmakers had introduced a bill to authorize the acquisition of Greenland. \u201cWe are, quite frankly, the dominant predator,\u201d its lead author, Representative Andy Ogles, of Tennessee, said on Fox News. Dans arranged for Fencker and Boassen to join Ogles for an interview on his social-media channels. The two Greenlanders sat in silence on either side of Ogles as he rejoiced in the prospect of more deportations and fewer rights for transgender people. \u201cThe liberal crazies are crying, and the righteous Republicans are rejoicing,\u201d Ogles said. Then he turned to the Greenlanders and cited the dubious poll that said a majority of their compatriots supported their country being acquired by the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur philosophy here is very American. We want to be independent,\u201d Fencker said. But Ogles framed the affiliation with the U.S. as a foregone conclusion, and his guests did not disagree. Once Greenland joined the U.S., Ogles said, they could expect \u201ca new tourism industry from Americans who suddenly see this as part of their homeland, as part of our territory.\u201d Fencker shifted uncomfortably. When I met him in his office, in Nuuk, last fall, he defended his appearance as an act of unofficial diplomacy. \u201cIf you listen closely to what I say and try to have a legal hat on, you will realize that I am saying that Greenland wants to be a sovereign country,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut we are on a diplomatic mission. How do you think that attacking the greatest power on earth, military-wise, and having a bad relationship with them\u2014how would that go down?\u201d<\/p>\n

Before leaving Washington, Fencker posed for photographs with Dans and Boassen on the White House grounds. I asked him whether he was using Trump\u2019s desire for Greenland as a cudgel against Denmark, to extract more concessions. \u201cOf course,\u201d he said. He added that he doesn\u2019t necessarily want Greenland to fully break from the Kingdom of Denmark\u2014only to be an equal partner in shaping all aspects of its future. \u201cMy visit to the White House was just a stunt. It was just to make Denmark afraid,\u201d he said. \u201cI was just there as a visitor, sitting in the West Wing to get a picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after Fencker and Boassen left, a congressman from Georgia introduced a bill to change Greenland\u2019s name on all federal documents and maps to \u201cRed, White, and Blueland.\u201d Alexander Gray, meanwhile, made it clear in a congressional hearing titled \u201cNuuk and Cranny\u201d that he had no interest in Greenlandic self-determination on its own terms. \u201cThe security stakes are simply too high to allow Greenland to obtain independence without a plan in place for the U.S. to insure our core strategic interests are assured,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Drew Horn\u2014the former Special Forces commander who had co-led the Greenland P.C.C.\u2014set out to become a conduit between American financing and struggling Greenlandic businesses. He had left the public sector in early 2021, after Trump failed to overturn the election, and had formed a strategic-minerals advisory firm with the intermittent backing and guidance of former senior defense and intelligence officials, as well as from Trump\u2019s former head of security and one of Trump\u2019s lawyers. Horn announced that he would travel to Greenland on behalf of his investors, and that he planned to \u201csupport the country\u2019s pursuit of independence.\u201d \u201cIf Greenland wants independence and inclusion in North America, the private funding exists to make it a reality,\u201d he wrote on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

In Nuuk, Horn dined multiple times with Pele Broberg, the head of the Naleraq Party. Horn\u2014whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 notes his training and expertise in \u201cUnconventional Warfare\u201d\u2014insisted that he was just acting as a businessman. But his background aroused suspicion in Nuuk, though Danish and Greenlandic officials were still unaware of the Greenland P.C.C.\u2019s existence, and of his role as its leader. \u201cWe call him Rambo,\u201d a senior Greenlandic official told me. In 2024, a documentary about a botched mercenary coup in Venezuela revealed that, while serving in Trump\u2019s first Administration, Horn had dined with the leader of the operation\u2014a fellow former U.S. Special Forces soldier\u2014and remained abreast of its progress. In messages with the lead mercenary, Horn repeatedly claimed to be engaging U.S. government departments on the man\u2019s behalf. The coup ended with the slaughter or imprisonment of most of its participants. (Horn declined to comment about this.)<\/p>\n

In Nuuk, Horn appeared to be positioning himself to profit in the event of an American annexation. \u201cHe is trying to make himself the center of whatever happens,\u201d the senior Greenlandic official told me. \u201cEverybody is trying to find out what he is doing, what he is saying. And then he just changes the subject.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, 2025, as Greenlanders prepared to vote in their parliamentary elections, Horn\u2019s firm put out a press release for \u201cstakeholders\u201d that laid out a path to Greenlandic independence. \u201cThe majority of the Greenlandic Parliament today is controlled by pro-independence parties,\u201d the press release noted. Horn anticipated a landslide for those parties, followed by a rapid break from Denmark, with an initial referendum triggered within a month. Trump assured Greenlanders that, if they became independent, his government stood \u201cready to INVEST BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to create new jobs and MAKE YOU RICH.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horn\u2019s assessment wasn\u2019t unreasonable; it was based on recent statements by Greenlandic politicians. But he had misjudged the effects of Trump\u2019s rhetoric, and perhaps of his own. When Greenlanders went to the polls, a plurality of the votes went to a center-right party that had never previously won a Greenlandic election and, in light of ongoing threats, favored the status quo. In the following weeks, it formed a coalition government whose organizing principle was its opposition to American aggression. Only Naleraq, whose leadership wanted to initiate the independence process immediately, was excluded from the coalition. \u201cWe shall choose our partners ourselves,\u201d the coalition agreement read. \u201cIt is we who dictate the pace.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In MAGA<\/em> circles, the elections were falsely framed as a victory for Trump. \u201cThe pro-Denmark party got first, but the pro-United States party got its best-ever result,\u201d Charlie Kirk said on his broadcast, the following day. \u201cThis election shows that the pro-American forces are ascendant in Greenland, and it should be partnered with America, not the Old World,\u201d Kirk added. \u201cThis would be nothing but upside for the great people of Greenland.\u201d Like Trump, he focussed on money: \u201cYou will be wealthier. You will be richer. You will have the U.S. dollar. You will have more purchasing power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each spring, Greenland\u2019s dogsledding association hosts a national race. \u201cThis is somewhere between Nascar\u2019s Daytona 500 and Super Bowl Sunday,\u201d Tom Dans told me. \u201cIt\u2019s a massive logistical undertaking. You\u2019ve got three hundred-plus dogs, you\u2019ve got mushers, and you\u2019ve got their support people coming in from nineteen remote locations in northern Greenland, all in the dead of winter. So we thought, Why don\u2019t we make a little Arctic exercise out of this, and get some Chinooks, and help them bring the dogs in?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dans pitched his idea to the White House and the Pentagon: part influence operation, part military exercise. \u201cNobody was saying no,\u201d he told me. The plan was to deploy Chinook helicopters from the Army\u2019s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the top airborne unit for high-risk Special Operations Forces raids. The use of the Night Stalkers, as the unit is known, to shuttle dogsleds around Greenland would demonstrate, as Dans put it, \u201cthe capability that the U.S. had to really help this, in a kind of exciting, peacetime format.\u201d Dans suggested that the dogsledding association invite the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to the race. But to Mikkel Jeremiassen, the head of the association, the invitation seemed like a condition that would \u201cgrant us access,\u201d as he later put it, to helicopter support from the Night Stalkers. Jeremiassen drafted a letter to Hegseth, and sought assistance from the Greenlandic ministry of culture in getting it to Hegseth through official channels. But the ministry declined the request on technical grounds, since the island\u2019s political parties had not yet formed their coalition.<\/p>\n

Instead, the White House announced that Usha Vance, Vice-President J.\u00a0D. Vance\u2019s wife, would attend the dogsled race with one of her sons, and visit Nuuk as a tourist. \u201cShe\u2019s a very nice woman, and she loves the concept of Greenland, so she is going there,\u201d Trump said. Two U.S. military-transport planes delivered an advance security team, which drove around Nuuk in armored black S.U.V.s, and Denmark deployed around seventy police officers to maintain public order. But the Second Lady\u2019s visit was abruptly cancelled. \u201cAmerican representatives have been walking around, practically knocking on one door after another in the past few days, to ask if people might be interested in a visit from the Vice-President\u2019s wife,\u201d a Danish TV correspondent in Nuuk reported. \u201cEverywhere, the answer was the same: \u2018No, thanks.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Administration framed it differently. \u201cThere was so much excitement around Usha\u2019s visit to Greenland this Friday that I decided that I didn\u2019t want her to have all that fun by herself,\u201d J.\u00a0D. Vance said, in a video announcing the change of plans. He added that he and Usha would visit Pituffik Space Base, alongside Trump\u2019s national-security adviser and the U.S. Energy Secretary. (Usha\u2019s touristic visits were cancelled.) \u201cA lot of other countries have threatened Greenland, have threatened to use its territories and its waterways to threaten the United States, to threaten Canada, and, of course, to threaten the people of Greenland, so we\u2019re going to check out how things are going there,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n

By then, European leaders were losing faith in the transatlantic alliance. No other countries were threatening to take over Greenland\u2014only the United States. Jarlov, who was serving as the head of the Danish parliament\u2019s defense committee, raised concerns about Europe\u2019s reliance on U.S.-manufactured weapons systems and fighter jets. \u201cI don\u2019t know if there is a kill switch in the F35\u2019s or not,\u201d he wrote on X, in response to the Pentagon\u2019s claim that there was no such thing. \u201cWe obviously can not take your word for it. As one of the decision makers behind Denmark\u2019s purchase of F35\u2019s, I regret it.\u201d He added, \u201cI can easily imagine a situation where the USA will demand Greenland from Denmark and will threaten to deactivate our weapons and let Russia attack us when we refuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 28, 2025, Vance landed at Pituffik Space Base, where he repeated the fantasy that Russia and China were attempting \u201ca lot of very aggressive incursions\u201d in Greenland. He also berated Denmark. \u201cThe President said we have to have Greenland,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can\u2019t just ignore<\/em> the President\u2019s desires!\u201d<\/p>\n

Spring turned to summer. The White House appeared to focus on other matters, and the ice began to melt. But, for a former senior Danish defense-intelligence officer named Jacob Kaarsbo, the good weather carried with it a deeper concern: the easiest time to annex Greenland would be in the summer.<\/p>\n

In May, 2025, I met Kaarsbo for a walk along a pier near Copenhagen. A few days earlier, the Wall Street<\/em> Journal<\/em> had reported that Trump\u2019s director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had tasked America\u2019s spy agencies\u2014including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency\u2014with identifying people in Greenland and Denmark who supported Trump\u2019s aims. The staff of Sermitsiaq<\/em> had taken to leaving their phones outside editorial meetings, for fear of eavesdropping by the United States. A recent survey by the Center for Public Health in Greenland noted a more than fourfold increase, in the past year, in the percentage of Greenlanders who show symptoms of psychological distress. Eighty-two per cent of respondents reported that Trump\u2019s annexation rhetoric negatively affects their everyday lives. One in four said that they have difficulty sleeping.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Most Danish and Greenlandic contacts I met with were reluctant to speak publicly. Some asked me to leave my phone at my hotel. A prominent Danish historian told me his thoughts, then asked me to not report them, lest he be perceived as speaking for Greenlanders. One of his Greenlandic colleagues offered his own thoughts, then similarly retracted, lest his assertions affect Greenland\u2019s new position of leverage.<\/p>\n

Kaarsbo\u2014who had spent fifteen years working alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan\u2014was not too concerned about professional spies. Most Greenlandic political discourse takes place on Facebook, among small groups of people who write in Greenlandic and know one another by family and name; when, in the spring of 2025, a new Facebook account appeared and started polling Greenlanders on their opinions about the United States, it was instantly identified by locals as a likely influence operation. \u201cThe Administration may put pressure on the rank and file, but I would assume that a lot of them will try to do their job to a bare minimum,\u201d Kaarsbo told me. \u201cAnd some of them will just quit. The problem is\u00a0that they will be able to find some idiots who will do anything to get ahead.\u201d Although the U.S. diplomatic mission in Nuuk operated out of the small red cabin that served as the consulate, the American government was preparing to move it to a thirty-thousand-square-foot office space in one of Nuuk\u2019s largest buildings, right in the center of town. \u201cThe new consulate could hold three hundred\u201d staffers, Kaarsbo said. \u201cWhat the fuck is that all about? In a community of fifty-seven thousand people, there should be a maximum of ten.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last spring, Hegseth was asked in a congressional hearing whether the Department of Defense had a plan \u201cto take Greenland and Panama by force, if necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur job at the Defense Department is to have plans for any particular contingency,\u201d Hegseth replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncluding the contingency of basically invading Denmark?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAny contingency you need, we\u2019ve got it.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Kaarsbo, the absurdity was partly reassuring. \u201cPeople just think, Oh, they\u2019ll take it over, there\u2019s nothing we can do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think it\u2019s unlikely that the Trump Administration could carry out a large plan for an amphibious assault without it getting leaked,\u201d and thus becoming a catastrophic political scandal in the United States before the first ships reached Nuuk. Instead, Kaarsbo worried about a \u201cquick-and-dirty takeover,\u201d as he put it\u2014\u201cthe 2 A<\/em>.M<\/em>. version, where a couple of planes with a flight plan that says \u2018Pituffik\u2019 suddenly veer toward Nuuk. A couple of hundred Special Forces take over the capital, take over the airport, take over parliament, and so on.\u201d But such a scenario is not impossible to deter. \u201cIf we get a small European force up there under the pretext of military exercises\u2014and say to Trump, \u2018You\u2019re right, we should take Arctic security very seriously, and so we\u2019ve decided to start these exercises to deter China and Russia\u2019\u2014then, suddenly, the quick-and-dirty annexation is not so easy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was against this backdrop that Drew Horn returned to Nuuk to visit a mining prospect in southern Greenland called Tanbreez. \u201cAs the only shovel ready rare earth project in Greenland, Tanbreez represents a game-changing opportunity for both the Greenlandic economy and the critical minerals supply chain in North America and Europe,\u201d he said, in a press release. But the story didn\u2019t quite add up. Horn named Naaja Nathanielsen, then Greenland\u2019s mining minister, as one of his recent points of contact\u2014but she insists that they have never spoken.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrew Horn came into our office and said that he was representing the Tanbreez mine,\u201d the senior Greenlandic official told me. But, since Horn\u2019s name wasn\u2019t on the license, the official called the mine\u2019s owner at the time, an Australian named Greg Barnes. \u201cAnd Greg Barnes said, \u2018No, he\u2019s got nothing to do with us,\u2019\u00a0\u201d the official recalled.<\/p>\n

Horn has visited Greenland four times since Trump\u2019s second Inauguration. In some ways, he appears highly connected; his former business partner and chief geologist is now the director of the U.S. Geological Survey. But in Nuuk his self-presentation frequently collided with reality. \u201cHe said that he was representing all kinds of people and organizations,\u201d the senior Greenlandic official told me. \u201cWe called the U.S. State Department and said, \u2018We\u2019ve had this guy fooling around here in Greenland, saying this and that,\u2019 and they said that they had nothing to do with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horn told Markus Valentin, a Danish reporter at the Greenlandic public broadcaster, that he and his colleagues in the private sector wanted to invest ten billion dollars in Greenlandic businesses \u201cas soon as possible.\u201d Reuters recently reported that, while pitching a prominent Greenlandic businessman on investment, Horn repeatedly paused \u201cto respond to e-mails he said were from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Lutnick.\u201d Horn denies this, though it\u2019s unclear whether he was inflating his connections to impress the Greenlandic businessman or is now downplaying them to protect senior White House officials. He told me and other journalists that, after each trip, he briefed members of the Administration on what he\u2019d found.<\/p>\n

Greenlandic mining concessions are open to international investment; there is no need to annex the island to pursue its natural resources. The problem is that the costs of logistics, infrastructure, poor weather, and bureaucracy, in this remote Arctic environment, exceed the value of whatever can be pulled from the ground. \u201cWe have looked at Greenland\u2014we have been exploring it for fifteen years,\u201d a mining executive told CNBC last year. \u201cWe have never been able to come up with a profitable project.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I asked Horn whether the Trump Administration sees Greenland\u2019s rare-earth sites like the Russians see their two coal-mining towns in Svalbard: something to maintain at a perpetual loss\u2014the cost of strategic presence. Each unprofitable Greenlandic mining concession that is bought up by an American entity is one that is no longer susceptible to such an investment by the Chinese. \u201cNo, they\u2019re looking to turn a profit,\u201d Horn said. But, in a recent podcast interview, he acknowledged that the United States has more rare-earth minerals than it could ever need. \u201cWe\u2019ve just tied our hands to permitting,\u201d he said. If the United States simply extracted and processed the contents of its own deposits, he added, \u201cwe could be, like, a net exporter for forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

At around 1 A<\/em>.M<\/em>. on January 3, 2026, Chinook helicopters and pilots from the Special Operations aviation regiment that Tom Dans had tried to deploy to Greenland flew Delta Force soldiers into Caracas and kidnapped the Venezuelan President. \u201cHe got bum-rushed so fast,\u201d Trump, who\u2019d watched the raid from Mar-a-Lago, said. He added that the U.S. would now \u201crun the country\u201d and take its oil. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cAmerican dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.\u201d Hours after the strike, Katie Miller\u2014a former White House official who is married to Stephen Miller, Trump\u2019s homeland-security adviser\u2014posted to X a map of Greenland overlaid with the American flag, with a one-word caption: \u201cSOON.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do need Greenland, absolutely,\u201d Trump said the next day. He and his acolytes were practically giddy from the success of the Caracas raid, and started listing other places they\u2019d like to invade: Cuba, Colombia, Iran. \u201cBy what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?\u201d Stephen Miller asked on CNN. \u201cNobody\u2019s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the following days, Denmark and seven other European nations deployed troops to Greenland. The Danes carried live ammunition and explosives, and prepared to blow up Greenland\u2019s runways to slow any possible invasion. They also carried fresh blood packs, in case of casualties, and were operating under standing orders to shoot at any invading forces. There was no concrete evidence of a planned U.S. attack, or any expectation that Denmark and its allies could fend one off for very long. The idea, as one European source involved with the planning told me, was merely \u201cto raise the\u00a0cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenlanders were terrified; some have since moved to Denmark. The Greenlandic government scrambled to reassure locals, informing them that Danish and other European troops would now be a permanent fixture on the island. \u201cIf we have to choose between the United States and Denmark, here and now, we choose Denmark,\u201d the Greenlandic Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said. \u201cWe choose NATO<\/em>. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the E.U.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Later that day, Trump was asked about Nielsen\u2019s remarks. \u201cI don\u2019t know who he is,\u201d Trump said. \u201cDon\u2019t know anything about him. But that\u2019s going to be a big problem for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump understood the message of force, however. He announced that every European nation that had deployed troops to Greenland would face new ten-per-cent tariffs\u2014and that the tariffs would rise to twenty-five per cent on June 1st if the United States had not reached a deal \u201cfor the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland\u201d by that date. \u201cIt is time for Denmark to give back,\u201d he posted on Truth Social. \u201cWorld Peace is at stake!\u201d<\/p>\n

Four days later, at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, Mark Rutte, a Dutch politician who serves as the secretary-general of NATO<\/em>, spoke to Trump and defused the situation. Trump claimed that they had reached a \u201cframework of a future deal.\u201d Greenlandic and Danish politicians noted that Rutte has no authority to negotiate on their behalf. But, whatever Rutte said to Trump, the President dropped the tariffs and the threatening rhetoric, for the time being, and then tied up the U.S. military by going to war with Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreenland is behind us,\u201d Senator Lindsey Graham said, at the Munich Security Conference, in mid-February. \u201cWho gives a shit who owns Greenland? I don\u2019t. So, the point is, Greenland is going to be more fortified, because Donald Trump\u2014once he feels like it\u2019s his brand, or he has some buy-in\u2014is going to go big.\u201d The next day, in a bizarre closed-door meeting with the Danish and Greenlandic premiers, Graham addressed Mette Frederiksen, Denmark\u2019s Prime Minister, as \u201clittle lady,\u201d and loudly yawned in Nielsen\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

Chris Cox, the founder of Bikers for Trump, has not returned to Greenland since his visit last March. But he has made a couple of appearances as a Greenland expert on One America News Network, where he spews inaccurate anti-Danish propaganda and has been falsely presented to viewers as having lived in Nuuk for most of last year.<\/p>\n

Drew Horn returned to Greenland in February\u2014just after the talk of invasion died down. He appears to have shelved his interest in mining there, and is now hoping to build a large data center in the sparsely populated settlement of Kangerlussuaq, where there is a Danish military station and the longest commercial runway in Greenland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tom Dans was appointed by Trump as the chair of the United States Arctic Research Commission in December. When I met him for lunch in Washington, earlier this year, he declined to speak further on the record, except to articulate a narrow, symbiotic vision for the future: \u201cMy view is that the United States could take all the seafood Greenland could produce, and cut out the middleman, and keep it from China\u2014and you could bring back all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster.\u201d<\/p>\n

J\u00f8rgen Boassen joined us a few minutes later. He had left Greenland for the U.S. last fall, his life style funded by anonymous American benefactors. When I was in Nuuk, I was told by several people that Boassen was known for groping women and getting into drunken fights. (Boassen denies any such acts.) He has been banned from several venues, including a swimming pool, a martial-arts club, and the hotel where he\u2019d brought Don, Jr. \u201cI am the last revolutionary fighter,\u201d Boassen told me. While Danish troops were preparing to defend Greenland, he attended a gathering at the Kennedy Center, at which Andy Ogles and other Republican lawmakers sliced into a Greenland-shaped cake.<\/p>\n

In Washington, the Danish and Greenlandic governments are quietly engaged in a process of negotiation with the White House. The U.S. plans to reopen some of its long-abandoned bases in Greenland\u2014an outcome that would have been welcomed by both Greenland and Denmark until recently, and that could have been achieved under the existing 1951 treaty. But there are new points of contention. According to the Times<\/em>, the Americans want veto power over foreign investment interest in Greenland. Another disagreement appears to be over the matter of territorial sovereignty. \u201cWe can\u2019t be constrained by notions of leasing bases and that sort of thing,\u201d Robert O\u2019Brien, the former national-security adviser, told me. \u201cWe can\u2019t have a situation like we\u2019ve seen during this Iran operation, where certain governments aren\u2019t giving permission to use bases. We can\u2019t have that in Greenland. It\u2019s just too essential to the defense of the homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

I pointed out that no one in Greenland owns land: individuals merely apply for permission to build homes and businesses. If the United States took sovereignty over its bases, its military would be the only entity that owns land in the country, a matter that Jens-Frederik Nielsen has called a red line. \u201cTo give up territory, to give up self-determination, to give up the right to one\u2019s own land\u2014whether it is only the size of a postage stamp or more\u2014we cannot do that,\u201d Nielsen said. \u201cWe will not do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But O\u2019Brien, like his former boss, was unconcerned by the opinions of the people who live in Greenland. \u201cThey may understand the cycle of life better,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut the lawyers will work out how the territory gets titled.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February, Boassen travelled to Louisiana, where he was hosted by the governor, Jeff Landry, whom Trump had recently named on Truth Social as his special envoy to Greenland. (Landry\u2019s appointment came as a surprise to Denmark, Greenland, and the State Department, and circumvented congressional confirmation requirements.) At dinner, Boassen complained to Landry about the state of the Greenlandic health-care system. \u201cIt is a death sentence to get sick in Greenland,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the following days, Landry dined with Trump, who took to Truth Social to announce that he was sending \u201ca great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there.\u201d The post was accompanied by an illustration of a U.S. Navy hospital ship, the Mercy. \u201cIt\u2019s on the way!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

Danish and Greenlandic officials quickly rejected the offer. \u201cWe have a public health-care system where treatment is free for citizens,\u201d Nielsen said. \u201cPlease talk to us instead of just making more\u00a0or less random statements on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landry was incensed. \u201cShame on Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen!\u201d he wrote on X. \u201cPresident @realDonaldTrump and America care.\u201d But the Navy didn\u2019t deploy the Mercy; the ship was undergoing scheduled maintenance, alongside the Navy\u2019s only other hospital ship, at an Alabama shipyard.<\/p>\n

Last month, Landry showed up at a business conference in Nuuk. Upon his arrival, he shared with reporters his instructions from the President: \u201cHe said, \u2018Go over there and make a bunch of friends\u2014as many friends as we can.\u2019\u00a0\u201d He also brought along a doctor who claimed to have come to \u201cassess the medical needs\u201d in Greenland\u2014though this doctor had not reached out to the health ministry.<\/p>\n

For the next three days, Landry wandered around Nuuk, with Boassen as his fixer, and tried to hand out MAGA<\/em> hats. \u201cIf you come to Louisiana and you come to the governor\u2019s mansion? All the chocolate-chip cookies you could eat,\u201d he told a group of boys. Another boy apparently asked if Landry was famous.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019s famous, but he\u2019s the governor of Louisiana,\u201d Landry\u2019s wife, Sharon, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you want to take a picture?\u201d Landry asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d the boy replied.<\/p>\n

Landry abandoned the business conference within half an hour of its start. \u201cWe have our red lines,\u201d Nielsen, who looked exhausted, told the Danish national broadcaster. \u201cNo matter how many chocolate cookies we get, we are not going to change them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after Landry left Greenland, the new U.S. consulate opened in the center of Nuuk. American officials and businessmen ate musk-ox hot dogs and discussed their ambitions for Greenland\u2019s future. Hundreds of Greenlanders protested outside.<\/p>\n

Rasmus Jarlov, whose term in parliament had just ended, called for the consulate to be shut down immediately. \u201cIt is utterly insane that we allow their presence,\u201d he wrote on X. \u201cThe new, very large American consulate in Nuuk has one clear mission and task, and that is to pave the way for an American takeover.\u201d The policy of treating the United States as the ally it once was has merely paved the way for more subversion. \u201cThe only thing that has worked,\u201d Jarlov emphasized, \u201cwas when we, along with our allies, made it clear that we would rather go to war with the United States than let them have Greenland.\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet\u2019s \u201cAfter the Comeback\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe want Greenland,\u201d Trump said. Four men sprang into action to make fantasy a reality. Ben Taub reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-reporter-at-large"],"yoast_head":"\nInside the Ludicrous, Deadly Serious Plan to Take Over Greenland - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=518\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inside the Ludicrous, Deadly Serious Plan to Take Over Greenland - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cWe want Greenland,\u201d Trump said. 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