Denmark ramps up security in Greenland after Trump threatens takeover

Denmark has bolstered Greenland’s defences including teams of sled dogs after Trump threatened to take over the Arctic island in a massive acquisition.

Denmark’s not rolling over.

The Nordic nation announced Tuesday that it will bolster Greenland’s defences with a US$1.5 billion in new resources, including two elite sled dog teams, days after President-elect Donald Trump signalled renewed interest in purchasing the Arctic island.

“It is ironic that it coincides with the announcement from the United States,” Danish Minister of Defense Troels Lund Poulsen told Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten about the new defence package, dismissing that it had anything to do with Trump’s Sunday Truth Social post.

“For many years we have not invested enough in the Arctic, now we are planning a stronger presence,” he added.

Poulsen noted that the massive defence package would fund the purchase of two new patrol boats, two new long-range drones and allow two additional sled dog teams to be deployed to the barren, icy island.

In addition to more sled dog patrols, Denmark also plans to increase staffing at its Greenland command post and upgrade the island’s airports to handle F-35 fighter jets, according to the BBC.

Poulsen noted that Denmark – a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – is willing to “work with the US” to secure Greenland.

It comes as US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to buy Greenland would be the US’s largest territorial addition in history — topping even the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, which nearly doubled America’s size at the time.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump posted to social media that owning Greenland is an “absolute necessity.” Picture: Getty Images via AFP

Trump, 78, added steam to his push to acquire the Arctic island when he announced PayPal co-founder Ken Howery as his pick to be the US ambassador to Denmark, which has controlled the mammoth territory 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 wrote.

Greenland’s 836,330 square miles (2,200,000 km sq) slightly exceed the 827,987 square miles that America gained with the Louisiana Purchase, a deal struck between then-President Thomas Jefferson and France.

Trump’s acquisition also would be more than double the size of President James Polk’s 1845 annexation of the Republic of Texas, which included disputed regions that now are part of neighbouring states.

The proposed Trump administration move would top President Andrew Johnson’s 1867 Alaska purchase’s 591,000 square miles, too.

Most of sparsely populated Greenland’s 56,000 residents are Inuit — related to other indigenous groups along the northernmost fringe of Canada and Alaska — and in principle have been given permission by Copenhagen under a 2009 law to sever ties should they so choose.

Inuit professional bear hunter near the Strait of Scoresby, the world's largest fjord on the east coast of Greenland, on the edge of the Arctic. Picture: AFP

In 2019, then-President Trump floated his interest in buying Greenland, which abuts North Atlantic shipping lanes and hosts important radar and weather installations, but the idea was swiftly shot down by Danish and Greenlandic officials.

A year later, during the final year of Trump’s first term, aides within the White House and Treasury Department took a closer look at how to make a purchase happen — even identifying financial resources that could be used for the early phase of the project and crafting a blueprint for a diplomatic charm offensive, sources told The Post.

“We were moving quickly on these things up until the final days,” former Treasury Department official Thomas Dans said. “Our hope was the Biden administration would pick up on this. We were poised to do something.”

Trump’s aides who previously worked on the plan determined that the people of Greenland held the key and would need to be persuaded that joining the US was in their best interests.

Currently, the relatively poor residents depend heavily on an annual block grant from Denmark’s government. The roughly half-billion-dollar grant contributes about 20% of Greenland’s GDP and half of the public budget, according to the International Trade Administration.

Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Picture: Supplied

“It’s almost like an indenture of old, where the Greenlanders remain reliant on an economic subsidy that Denmark sends them and essentially have to bootstrap their way to a new future,” Dans said. “They’re asset-rich and cash-poor — kind of frozen in place.”

Dans, whose grandfather was deployed to Greenland during World War II, has played a continuing role in helping win over residents — including by bringing one of the island’s top social media influencers, Jørgen Boassen, to the president-elect’s Election Day watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida, on November 5.

An Air Greenland flight takes off at the new airport in Nuuk, Greenland as locals brave the cold to watch. Donald Trump has said buying the territory is a “necessity”. Picture: Supplied.

In theory, Greenlanders would be presented with a Trump administration plan to improve their economic standing and also ensure their continued self-government, followed by a vote on whether to accept that plan, which would then be ratified by Copenhagen’s parliament ahead of a handover.

But the 47th president will face an uphill climb, with Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede writing this week that “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” the PM said.

Dans said it’s most likely that Greenland would have to be acquired through a compact of free association — similar to what the United States already has with the nominally independent Pacific Islands of Palau, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, which each have United Nations seats but rely heavily upon the US.

It’s unclear if Greenland would be considered independent — as is the case with those three Pacific countries — or if the special set-up would denote a closer integration. Other sparsely populated territories, such as the Pacific territories of Niue and the Cook Islands, are associated with New Zealand and aren’t internationally considered to be independent.

“All of these compacts of free association are custom-crafted,” Dans said.

Demonstrators burn a banner with the image of US President-elect Donald Trump during a protest outside the US embassy in Panama City on December 24, 2024. Picture: AFP

Trump has floated other possible US acquisitions, too — saying over the weekend that the US may try to retake the Panama Canal Zone, which was given to Panama in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter.

Trump said he is incensed over the Central American country’s high fees on US shipping in the region and worried about the waterway if its neutrality is threatened by China.

Panama’s president has already publicly voiced his fierce opposition to the notion.

The United States hasn’t added substantial amounts of territory in nearly a century.

US President Woodrow Wilson presided over the purchase of the 136-square-mile US Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917 for US$25 million and the United States assumed trusteeship over four Pacific territories formerly ruled by Japan at the end of World War II, with only the Northern Mariana Islands remaining a US territory.

Trump aides and allies say he is not kidding about adding Greenland and potentially retaking the Panama Canal.

“The president is 100% serious,” a source close to Trump said.

Another source close to the camp said, “Trump is of the belief that empires that don’t grow start to fail. He is a student of history, and this is one of the schools of thought.

“He really favours past presidents who were expansionist on the continent. He knows it’s a legacy item that cannot be distorted or taken away by political opposition.”

This story was first published in the New York Post.