‘Multi-Layered Bullshit’: Trump’s Push for Greenland Makes No Sense

Donald Trump has caught the imperialist bug, and after hyping himself up as the “Acting President” of Venezuela, the president is escalating his threats to take Greenland by force. As America’s European allies hold crisis meetings over the potential implosion of NATO and the destabilization of the global geopolitical order, Trump’s supposed adversaries are looking on with glee. 

On Monday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre confirmed that he received a letter from Trump directly linking his efforts to forcibly annex Greenland — which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark — to his unfulfilled desire for a Nobel Prize. 

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump wrote in the message to Støre. 

“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway?” Trump continued. “There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

A couple things:The government of Norway is not responsible for the Nobel Peace Prize. The winner is decided by an independent five-person committee whose members are appointed by the Norwegian parliament. Støre confirmed as much in a statement released Monday about the letter he received from Trump, noting that he has “clearly explained” to Trump how the awarding of the prize works. Støre also wrote that he received the letter as a text message from Trump on Sunday, and that it was Trump’s decision to share the message with other NATO leaders.

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Trump attributed Denmark’s control of Greenland to a boat landing there “hundreds of years ago,” but Denmark and Greenland do have constitutional and legislative agreements in place designating the former as an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, with the right to self governance, home rule, and its own parliament. While experts have raised concerns regarding Russia and China’s proximity to Greenland, the United States has had an established military presence in the country for decades, and there is no active threat of foreign incursion. 

What Trump is directly threatening in his letter, and has been threatening for some time now, is a willingness to break with Europe over the desire to play conquest over a territory the United States already had broad access to, under the guise of international security concerns that are undermined by virtually every other action taken by his administration. 

“It’s bullshit, multi-layered bullshit,” Nicholas Grossman, political science professor at the University of Illinois and editor of the Arc Digital newsletter, tells Rolling Stone. 

“Russia and China — especially China — are not threatening Greenland,” he adds. “The thing that has successfully protected Greenland, including U.S. interests there, for now about 80 years, has been the NATO alliance. … Greenland was secure. U.S. interests there were secure. And the only thing that is actually threatening that is Donald Trump, not another country.” 

Grossman explains that “breaking up NATO has been Russia’s top foreign policy goal for many years, and something that has been a personal goal of Putin’s.” Trump’s attack on the alliance from within “goes decently beyond anything that Russia could do to NATO by itself.” 
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In Russia, government officials and state-controlled news outlets are openly gloating over the United States’ antagonistic approach toward NATO, which was formed as a cushion against Soviet, and later Russian, expansion and aggression. 

Russia’s Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a government operated newspaper, wrote that “standing in the way of the U.S. president’s historic breakthrough is the stubbornness of Copenhagen and the mock solidarity of intransigent European countries, including so-called friends of America, Britain and France.” 

The paper egged on Trump, adding that “Brussels is counting on ‘drowning’ the U.S. president in the midterm congressional elections, on preventing him from concluding the greatest deal of his life,” and that the territorial expansion would be “on par with such planetary events as the abolition of slavery by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 or the territorial conquests of the Napoleonic Wars.” 

On Russian state television, anchors declared that Trump delivering a “decisive blow,” to NATO, “absolutely benefits us.”  

While a full rupture with Europe has yet to take place, America’s allies are beginning to diversify their political and economic alliances in response to a year of policy schizophrenia from the White House. Canada announced last week that it would enter into a deal with China for low-cost electric vehicles. Separately, the European Union is crafting independent trade deals with South America, and working with China to hammer out agreements on electric vehicles and other products. 

Trump has long harbored fantasies about taking over Greenland, and in his first term repeatedly teased his desire to purchase the country. He brought it up again after retaking office, and the plans have become much more militant in recent weeks. In the aftermath of the successful capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro early this month, the administration made clear that its plans for the South American nation were less oriented towards democratic self-determination, but U.S.-controlled oil extraction — and that it would be coming after other Greenland imminently. The Trump administration has since publicly pressured the Danish government to hand over Greenland, threatening economic sanctions, drawing condemnations from allies, and refusing to rule out the use of military force to get what they want. Domestically, the president’s foreign policy caprices are drawing condemnation from members of his own party. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) went so far as to call Trump’s Greenland plot the “dumbest thing” he’d ever heard. 

Europe has backed Denmark, to which Trump responded by imposing additional tariffs on European allies — and key U.S. trading partners — further fanning tensions between the U.S. and NATO, and further delighting Russia. 

Trump has always been “openly anti-democracy, anti-law, pro aggression, pro-conquest,” Grossman said, recalling how in 2022 — after Russia invaded Ukraine — Trump praised Putin’s offensive as “genius” and “savvy.” 
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Trump’s praise for Putin displayed a “terrible understanding of how war and power work in the world,” Grossman adds. “We can see now, four years later, that merely demanding something and being bigger doesn’t necessarily work out which, granted, Americans should really know from Vietnam and Afghanistan.” 

The Kremlin said on Monday that Trump had invited Putin to join his newly formed “Board of Peace” a committee that will ostensibly oversee the reconstruction of Gaza.