The United States could have to pay as much as $700 billion, or about Rs 58.1 lakh crore, if it were to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of buying Greenland, according to three people familiar with the cost estimate.
The estimate was generated by scholars and former US officials as part of planning around Trump’s aspiration to acquire the 800,000-square-mile island as a strategic buffer in the Arctic against America’s top adversaries, these people told NBC news.
It attached a price tag of more than half the Defence Department’s annual budget to Trump’s national security priority, which stoked anxiety across Europe and on Capitol Hill amid his rhetoric about seizing Greenland since he ordered a US military raid to capture Venezuela’s president and his wife.
Greenland, the semi-autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark, was not for sale. Officials from Denmark and Greenland rejected Trump’s claims that the US will acquire Greenland “one way or the other.” A senior White House official, however, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was directed to come up with a proposal in the coming weeks to purchase Greenland, describing such a plan as a “high priority” for Trump.
On Wednesday, Rubio and Vice President JD Vance were scheduled to meet with officials from Denmark and Greenland, who travelled to Washington seeking a better understanding of Trump’s intentions and proposals. The meeting followed lower-level discussions last week between officials from Denmark and Greenland and the White House National Security Council.
“I’d love to make a deal with them,” Trump told reporters Sunday when he was asked whether there is a deal Greenland could offer. “It’s easier. But one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”
In the hours before Wednesday’s meetings, the message from Greenland’s government was consistent.
Greenland chose Denmark over US“Greenland does not want to be owned by, governed by or part of the United States,” Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt said as she arrived in Washington on Tuesday. “We choose the Greenland we know today — as part of the Kingdom of Denmark.”
Greenland’s minister for business and mineral resources, Naaja Nathanielsen, said Tuesday that the messages from the US were causing such concern for Greenlanders that they were having trouble sleeping.
“This is really filling the agenda and the discussions around the households,” Nathanielsen said at a news conference in London. “So it’s a massive pressure that we are under, and people are feeling the effects of it.”
Despite the anxiety, Nathanielsen said, “we have no intentions of becoming American.”
The US could already put more troops in Greenland and expand its military and security capabilities there under the current agreement between the two govts, a US official familiar with the issue said.
“Why invade the cow when they’ll sell you the milk at relatively good prices?” the official said.
While some Trump administration officials said the US could use military force to take the island of 57,000 residents, some administration officials and outside White House allies viewed a US attempt to purchase or form a new alliance with it as the likelier outcome.
Can Trump chose option other than buying Arctic islandAnother option under consideration included forming what is known as a compact of free association with Greenland, an agreement that would include US financial assistance in exchange for allowing it to have security presence there, NBC News reported.
The US had similar agreements with the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau. Adding Greenland to the mix could satisfy part of Trump’s broader vision for American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and could be less costly than the purchase price estimate for Greenland of $500 billion to $700 billion.
The US in 1916 agreed to buy islands in the Caribbean from Denmark and, in turn, acknowledged that the US “will not object” to the Danish govt’s holding political and economic interests to all of Greenland, according to the agreement at the time.
Trump said he wanted to acquire Greenland to have more rights to the land, comparing it to owning versus leasing a property. Ownership could make Greenland akin to a US territory such as Guam, American Samoa or Puerto Rico and solidify Washington’s strategic relationship with the island for the long term.
Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland stemmed in part from concerns that its residents could seek independence and that, if they were successful, the island’s 27,000 miles of coastline could fall into the hands of adversaries such as Russia or China, according to some experts on the issue and congressional testimony from former US officials.
Greenlanders rejected the idea of becoming part of the US by a large margin. An independent poll last year concluded that about 85% rejected the idea.
Trump's "love" for GreenlandTrump, a former real estate magnate, long had his sights on Greenland, saying the US needed it for national security in the Arctic Circle and would look at acquiring it. When Trump expressed interest in buying the island during his first administration, the idea was not treated as a serious top priority, even by some of his closest aides.
That dramatically changed in his second term, as his designs on Greenland were taken far more seriously both inside his administration and among America’s allies. Trump began making public overtures soon after he took office last January. In December, he appointed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as a special envoy to Greenland, reigniting concerns among Danish and Greenland officials.
Now, there was a growing sense of inevitability in Europe and the US that Trump will gain some ground in his Greenland aspirations as he sought to expand American influence in the Western Hemisphere. The question was how — economic coercion, diplomacy, military force — and how much.
Trump’s threat to take over Greenland, including leaving the prospect of doing it through military force on the table, could be aimed at pressuring Greenland and Denmark to come to the table to talk about how the US could be better positioned there, said Ian Lesser, a fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a nonpartisan think tank. “I still think the prospects of the use of force over this issue is still very small,” he said.
“It’s unnecessary,” he added. “What would be the point? It would stir up unbelievable tensions within the NATO alliance and maybe even spell the end of the NATO alliance, and I don’t think the president would have support [from] Capitol Hill for any of that.”
Republicans against Trump?Trump’s saber-rattling toward Greenland met with resistance on Capitol Hill, including among some Republican allies who lauded his administration’s military operation in Venezuela.
On Tuesday, a bipartisan duo of senators introduced legislation that would prohibit the defence department from using funds to assert control over the sovereign territory of a Nato member state without that state’s authorisation or approval by the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s principal political decision-making body, a clear message of opposition to Trump’s rhetoric about acquiring Greenland.
Greenland, which Veep Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, visited last year, hosted a small US military footprint at Pituffik Space Base. The base included a contingent of US Space Force and other military personnel who staffed radar systems that served as an early warning system for any attacks from Russia. The US and Denmark also shared intelligence regularly about what the military saw in the region.
Greenland long was receptive to hosting more US military assets or to negotiating over its strategic resources, which included rare earth minerals.
“It is possible to find a way to ensure stronger footprints in Greenland” for the US military, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said last year. The US, Frederiksen said, was “already there, and they can have more possibilities.” Frederiksen more recently expressed concern that any effort by Trump to take Greenland by force would unravel NATO, because Denmark and the US were both members.
And last week, America’s European allies, including Denmark, said in a joint statement that they would “not stop defending” the values of sovereignty and Greenland’s territorial integrity.
“Greenland belongs to its people,” they said.