On the latter, he mused, “People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security.”
But, with respect to Greenland, Trump’s proposal has an extended historical past. Right here, he’s responsible much less of territorial ambitions than of claiming the quiet half out loud.
Essential Air Pressure outpost
In 1823, President James Monroe established the precept that European powers have been to defer to america on issues pertaining to the Western Hemisphere. Whereas what got here to be known as the Monroe Doctrine and its corollaries have been employed primarily to say American pursuits and ambitions in Latin America, they clearly utilized to northern neighbors as properly.
After the German invasion of Denmark in April 1940, Secretary of State Cordell Hull made this level clear to his Danish counterpart, asserting that “Greenland is inside the space embraced by the Monroe Doctrine.”
U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull is interviewed on April 9, 1940, after phrase was acquired of the invasion of Denmark and Norway by German troops.
Hulton Archive/Getty Photographs
The 2 international locations signed a “Defense of Greenland” settlement in 1941 that allowed the usto “construct, maintain, and operate … landing fields, seaplane facilities, and radio and meteorological installations.” The U.S. pressed to retain its bases after the battle, a choice that was formalized by treaty in 1951.
For the U.S., which had a considerable army presence in Greenland by the early Nineteen Fifties, the territory was essential as an outpost for the Air Pressure and as a hyperlink within the so-called Distant Early Warning Line that monitored potential Soviet incursions from the north.
In early 1955, nearly 70 years to the day earlier than Trump’s current speech, the Joint Chiefs of Workers proposed a extra radical resolution to preservation of American pursuits within the North Atlantic. In a memorandum for the secretary of protection, titled “Possible Acquisition of Greenland by the United States,” the army leaders reiterated the U.S. place: “Geographically, Greenland is part of the Western Hemisphere and has long been regarded so by the United States.”
“As to whether it would be to the military advantage of the United States to acquire title to Greenland,” the memorandum continued, “the Joint Chiefs of Staff believe it to be axiomatic that sovereignty provides the firmest basis of assuring that a territory and its resources will be available for military use when needed. United States sovereignty over Greenland would remove any doubt as to the unconditional availability of bases.”
A couple of days later, a shorter model landed on President Dwight Eisenhower’s desk, with the abstract evaluation that “it would be to our military advantage to acquire title to Greenland from a military viewpoint.”
Such musings, in 1955 or 2025, casually assume the universality of American pursuits and disrespect the sovereignty of allies. By the identical token, Trump’s proposal is evidently not simply one other of his regularly outlandish ambitions, when it has been a fixture of U.S. nationwide safety for over 70 years.