Why Donald Trump has been interested in Greenland since 2019

Revealed on August 15, 2019 by The Wall Street JournalDonald Trump's interest in acquiring Greenland was confirmed three days later by the president himself. The refusal of the Greenlandic government and the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, pushed Donald Trump to delay his visit to Denmark, scheduled for September, leading to a diplomatic incident between the two countries.

The attitude of the American president, accustomed to provocative outings, has been widely criticized. However, it owes nothing to chance.

Race to the Arctic

Donald Trump's comments are part of a broader context in which the Arctic Ocean is becoming the site of increasing investment by the Russians and Chinese, as global warming melts the ice cap. The Arctic territories are rich in materials essential to industry (gold, zinc, copper, graphite, nickel, platinum, uranium) and hydrocarbons.

In this race to exploit the vast underground resources of the Arctic, Russia and China have outstripped the Americans. According to the financial consulting firm Guggenheim Partners, several hundred infrastructure projects representing more than $860 billion in investments are emerging in the northernmost ocean on the globe.

Russia has already planned 186 billion dollars in investments, compared to just over 100 for the United States. Russian oil company Rosneft has started drilling on a field with an estimated potential of half a billion barrels, and is discovering new potential fields regularly. Gazprom already extracts large quantities of gas from its operations in the Pechora sea.

Norway has also embarked on the extraction of oil resources in the Barents Sea, to the north of its coasts, with a first exploitation in the Goliat field, commissioned in 2016. A second exploitation should see the light of day in 2022.

But in addition to the eight countries in the zone, China plays the (more or less) surprise guests in the race for resources. Because, although it has no coast on the Arctic Ocean nor any territorial claim, the second largest economy in the world intends to weigh and has declared itself as a “almost arctic power”. It has been part of the Arctic Council as an observer country since 2013, and has acquired a stake in Russian gas exploitation joint ventures.

China has also increased investments in European Arctic countries, particularly in Greenland, in exchange for access to the island's mineral resources, which allows the territory to depend less on its Danish supervision.

A strategic issue for the United States

These Chinese initiatives are perceived by the United States as a direct threat to their influence over a region that they consider to be a geographical extension of the American continent, like Alaska, acquired in 1867.

Faced with these Sino-Russian advances, the American authorities are now trying to react. Thus, the Trump administration announced in January 2018 the opening of American Arctic waters to drilling, particularly off the coast of Alaska, but the decision was deemed illegal by a judge in the District of Alaska on March 31, because only Congress has the power to add areas open to hydrocarbon exploitation. This setback challenges the ambitions of the Trump administration, which now considers the Arctic as a central issue. The strategy published by the Pentagon in June 2019 clearly presents this area as a new big competition between them, the Russians and the Chinese.

Beyond geopolitics, Donald Trump's remarks also have a very political connotation: it is also a question of adopting a more aggressive and direct rhetoric, like the muscular strategy adopted by Moscow. Donald Trump, since his election, has worked to “shake up” a diplomatic game that is usually subdued and very codified, which is proving popular with his electorate, fond of this image of a “tough” but realistic negotiator (or “deal maker”). ), capable of moving the lines.

A purchase that seems unlikely

Despite American desires, the purchase of this 2.16 million square kilometer island remains very unlikely, due to numerous obstacles. Because such a purchase must go through a treaty, it must be ratified by the three parties: the United States, Denmark and Greenland, whose consent is obligatory. However, the Greenlanders do not want a takeover or a new tutelage, but on the contrary – and have been asking for a long time – more autonomy, if not real independence, in Copenhagen.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the ratification of a purchase treaty necessarily requires the approval of Congress, that is to say both the Senate (which must ratify), controlled by the Republicans, and of the House of Representatives (which must give its budgetary authorization). If the ratification of the senators is not inconceivable, the House of Representatives, returned to the Democratic flag in the mid-term elections of November 2018, makes the conclusion of a treaty uncertain at best, and impossible at worst.

Finally, on the Danish side, a sale is also completely excluded, Copenhagen having no interest in losing its historical influence over this territory that it has claimed since 1775, especially since it has already declined an offer from the United States in the past. Indeed, after having considered acquiring the island in 1867 (just after having bought Alaska from the Russians), the Americans submitted an offer in 1946 to the Danes, offering them 100 million dollars in gold, which the latter had denied. The proposal, which remained secret, was only revealed in 1991, when a Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Postenstudied the now declassified documents.

Updated August 28, 2019, 4:40 p.m.: Following clarifications made by Mikaa Mered, professor of geopolitics at Ileri and specialist in the Arctic, we have removed the mention of the 2008 USGS study (whose figures are obsolete) as well as the investment figures Americans in the Arctic.