Christian Ulloriaq Jeppesen remembers how this all began.
In 2019, throughout Donald J. Trump’s first time period as president, Mr. Trump floated the thought of the US shopping for the island of Greenland. On the time, most individuals in Greenland (and Denmark, the European nation that controls it) thought his suggestion was a joke.
“Everybody stated, ‘Ha-ha, you possibly can’t simply purchase a rustic, he doesn’t imply it,’” Mr. Jeppesen, a local Greenlander and a radio producer, stated by phone. “Clearly that was the mistaken technique to take it. Have a look at the place we’re right now.”
Now Mr. Trump has doubled down on his insistence that the US must annex Greenland for safety causes. And that has Greenlanders asking the identical questions as everybody else, however with much more urgency.
Is Mr. Trump simply being bombastic once more, floating a fantastic annexation plan that he might know is a stretch?
Or is he severe?
Primarily based on his feedback in the previous couple of weeks, Mr. Trump seems fully severe. By no means thoughts that Denmark’s management has stated the territory isn’t on the market, and its future should be decided by the native inhabitants.
“For functions of nationwide safety and freedom all through the World, the US of America feels that the possession and management of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Mr. Trump wrote in late December in a social media put up asserting his alternative for ambassador to Denmark.
At a information convention on Tuesday, the president-elect took an much more stunning swerve. He refused to rule out utilizing navy pressure to get Greenland. And that very same day Donald Trump Jr. instantly confirmed up on the island.
The president-elect’s son landed Tuesday afternoon in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, toured some sights like a statue of an 18th-century Danish-Norwegian missionary and was hosted by a Danish Trump supporter. He stated the rationale for the journey was private, not official, however the president-elect posted about his son and “numerous representatives” visiting and stated “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN.”
“That is all getting scary,” Mr. Jeppesen stated.
At 836,000 sq. miles, Greenland is the world’s largest island, a few fourth the scale of the US. It elects two representatives to Denmark’s Parliament and 31 to its personal, which is answerable for most points of the island’s authorities, although Denmark retains management in just a few coverage areas, together with protection and parts of worldwide affairs.
Its location and panorama make it fascinating to Mr. Trump on a number of ranges.
It’s strategically positioned on the prime of the world, east of Canada alongside the Arctic Sea, and residential to a big American navy base. It’s loaded with mineral assets akin to cobalt, copper and nickel.
And as local weather change melts the ice, it’s opening up new paths by way of the Arctic Sea, which is changing into a fiercely contested area for delivery, vitality and different pure assets, in addition to navy maneuvering.
Greenland might additionally discover itself in the midst of a cross-Atlantic showdown over its sovereignty. On Wednesday, the French overseas minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, stated that Europe couldn’t permit a nation to assault its sovereign borders — whereas including that he didn’t anticipate the US to invade Greenland.
The blast of consideration falls on Greenland at a sensitive time, with the native independence motion rising. Many Greenlanders really feel more and more resentful towards Denmark, which has performed an overseer function for many years. For its measurement, Greenland has a tiny inhabitants and a lot of the 56,000 Greenlanders are Inuit, a part of a bunch of peoples who additionally reside in Canada and Alaska.
The Greenlandic language is totally completely different from Danish. Many individuals comply with a tradition and perception system fairly other than these in Western Europe. And, like Indigenous individuals in the US and elsewhere, they’ve been handled unequally for a very long time.
The Greenlanders’ disaffection with Denmark was heightened two years in the past with revelations about Danish medical doctors becoming 1000’s of Indigenous girls and ladies with intrauterine contraceptive units within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, typically with out their data.
Danish officers have repeatedly stated that Greenland isn’t on the market, although they’ve emphasised their need for heat relations with the US. Final month, Denmark’s king jumped into the fray by abruptly altering the nation’s coat of arms to extra prominently characteristic symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands (one other territory beneath Denmark’s management) — a polar bear and a sheep.
Amid this debate over id, many individuals are actually puzzling over Mr. Trump’s intentions.
“Is it only a distraction?” requested Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher on the Danish Institute for Worldwide Research. “Or is it threat-based diplomacy?”
In keeping with an settlement in 2009 that granted Greenland expanded self-rule, Greenlanders have the appropriate to carry a referendum on independence. The explanation it has not occurred but, analysts say, is as a result of Greenland remains to be closely depending on Denmark for a lot of skilled companies — together with medical doctors, nurses and academics — in addition to half a billion {dollars} a 12 months in subsidies.
Aaja Chemnitz, one of many two representatives from Greenland within the Danish Parliament, stated she worries that Mr. Trump is making an attempt to pump up Greenland’s independence motion to additional his personal pursuits. In that case, she stated, “We danger changing into a pawn in a sport between Denmark and the US.”
Greenland advantages from the Danish welfare system, she stated, and it might do loads worse if it grew to become a part of the US.
“I’ve seen the American system,” Ms. Chemnitz, who lived in New York whereas working for the United Nations, stated in a phone interview. “I understand how dangerous it may be for equality.”
Mr. Jeppesen, the radio producer, stated Mr. Trump may be misinterpreting the impartial nature of Greenlanders. Greenland is not only a piece of land. It’s a nation, a narrative, a homeland.
“There’s this huge satisfaction you get from being one in every of simply 56,000,” Mr. Jeppesen stated. “Greenland is superb, it’s stunning, it’s essentially the most fantastic nation on the earth.”
“And it’s a nation preventing for independence,” he added. “Not a chunk of property you should buy.”
