In 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked at an MTV Global Discussion how it felt to represent the global “great Satan.” Powell, a retired four-star general, pointed out the noble example that the U.S. had set for a world where, in the first half of the 20th century, the lust for conquest had killed over 100 million people. “We saved Europe in World War I and World War II,” he said. “And did we ask for any land? No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead.”
President-elect Donald Trump has tarnished that American nobility by asking for Greenland, a self-governing, ice-covered Danish territory three times the size of Texas. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” Trump wrote in a social media post nominating venture capitalist Ken Howery as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
No one knows if Trump is serious, but the best time to kill a bad idea is in the brainstorming phase. Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede flatly rejected even the idea of negotiating — “we are not for sale and will never be for sale” — just as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had in 2019 when Trump first proposed buying the territory. Trump appears to want Greenland badly enough that, as crazy as it sounds, he might start an economic war, or worse, to get it.
Such a war would violate the commitment that the U.S. (and dozens of other countries, including Denmark and the Soviet Union) made in the Helsinki Accords of 1975, which settled the post-World War II boundaries of Europe. That agreement obligates its signatories to refrain from “any demand for, or act of, seizure and usurpation of part or all of the territory of any participating State.”
Vladimir Putin, who has made no secret of his desire to assert Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe, would relish seeing Trump put those boundaries back in play. Already, commentators on Russian state television have applauded Trump’s proposal as heralding the imminent carve-up of the world into “spheres of influence.”
A Trumpian grab for Greenland over the objection of Denmark, a NATO member, would be the end of NATO, since no alliance can survive when its leading power violates the territorial integrity of another member. Since “might makes right” is a two-way street, China could use a Greenland power play as further justification for invading Taiwan by pointing out that the U.S. has as much claim to Greenland as it does to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, while Taiwan once was part of the Chinese Empire. In the modern era, the only country to violate Denmark’s sovereignty has been Hitler’s Germany, which is not a state that America should ever want to be grouped with.
When Trump first proposed buying Greenland, some Greenlanders thought it was a joke, while others angrily regarded it as a threat to their sovereignty. If Trump implements a “might makes right” foreign policy and forces Denmark to relinquish sovereign territory, Americans should be angry as well. Those American cemeteries in Europe are there because we fought against an aggressive war of conquest in World War II.
To quote from the resignation letter that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley wrote in 2020, but never sent to Trump, “You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against.”
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”
