“So we’ll, I think, we’ll go as far as we have to go,” he continued. “We need Greenland. And the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark. Denmark has to have us have Greenland. And, you know, we’ll see what happens. But if we don’t have Greenland, we can’t have great international security.”
“I view it from a security standpoint, we have to be there,” Trump added.
Greenland relies heavily on welfare from Denmark, which currently contributes around half of its annual budget, amounting to around $700 million per year.
In January, in response to Trump’s stated ambitions, Denmark announced it would spend another $2 billion to bolster defenses on the island.
The Trump administration has dangled billions for Greenland to invest in developing its natural resources – rare Earth minerals and oil and gas reserves.
However, mining Greenland has proven notoriously difficult given that 80% of the island is covered in a sheet of ice.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede earlier this week called the upcoming Vance visit “very aggressive American pressure against the Greenlandic community” and called on European leaders to stand against it.
Trump established the Space Force in 2019 as a way to defend against encroachment on America’s interests in Earth’s orbit. In recent years, China and Russia have stepped up their Arctic presence, investing in icebreakers, new nuclear submarines and rare Earth minerals.
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