The idea of the United States buying Greenland isn’t new. And it’s certainly not new to Donald Trump, who several times during his first term made public statements—jokes and memes included—about wanting to acquire the gigantic landmass in the Arctic that is today part of Denmark.
Since winning the presidential election in November, Trump has resurfaced his intention to pursue an acquisition of Greenland, and added in Canada and the Panama Canal for good measure. Announcing his choice for ambassador to Denmark, Trump said: “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.” A few days later on Truth Social, Trump posted a Christmas greeting “to the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes.” Trump added that Greenlanders “want the U.S. to be there” and that “we will!”
In 2019, when then-President Trump first floated the idea of acquiring Greenland, he tasked his national security adviser, Ambassador John Bolton, with figuring out the specifics. I called up Bolton, 76, to ask him what he thinks about Trump revisiting the idea. (Bolton resigned in September 2019, and had a public falling-out with Trump. A year later, as Bolton published his memoir The Room Where It Happened, Trump lashed out at Bolton, calling him a “disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war,” and reportedly attempted to halt the book’s publication.)
The following is lightly edited for clarity and concision.
Adam Rubenstein: What’s the case for making Greenland part of the United States?
Ambassador John Bolton: You need to make a case to make it part of the United States. That is an option—although given the way it’s been handled by Trump since 2019, not much of an option is left of it.
But the point is Greenland is intimately connected with our security for a lot of reasons and has been visibly since World War II, after the Danish government fell, to protect the North Atlantic convoys and our own interests against the Nazi threat.
