On "Forbes Newsroom," Mike Albertus, Professor at the University of Chicago, discussed President Trump's ongoing push to acquire Greenland for the U.S.
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00:00President Trump has made clear his desire to acquire Greenland. It's an interesting proposition,
00:10but what does it mean for geopolitical relationships, natural mining, and so much
00:16more? I'm Maggie McGrath, a senior editor at Forbes, and joining me now to discuss
00:21what it could mean, and if it's even possible, for the U.S. to acquire Greenland is Mike
00:27Albertus. He is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Mike,
00:32thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:36You are also the author of a book called Land Power, where you argue that land is power. So I
00:42want to start with a somewhat obvious question. As President Trump in his second term has talked
00:47about Greenland, he has made it very clear that he wants this territory, which is part of Denmark.
00:52Is this just a power grab? Is this just to make the geographic reach of the U.S. bigger?
00:59I think it's far more than that. It is in some sense a power grab, but it's more than just making
01:04the United States bigger because there are other, you know, perhaps more complicated or difficult
01:11ways of doing that. But Greenland is a very specific way. You know, the proposal to expand
01:17the United States through the acquisition of Greenland is a rather specific proposal. And so
01:21it's about more than that. It's about, you know, geostrategic interest and minerals and the like as
01:27well. Geostrategic interest and minerals. Let's start with that latter group. We have a resource
01:35rich country here in the U.S., but is Greenland more resource rich when it comes to minerals and
01:42even rare minerals? Well, so one thing that's, I think, really important to understand is that
01:47China is now the world's biggest, you know, source and processor of rare earth minerals. And as the
01:55tariff, you know, battle with China and strategic competition with China is heating up, it's becoming
02:01more difficult for the United States to access critical rare earth minerals for several things,
02:07for the transition to, you know, greener tech, things like EVs for, you know, for electric vehicles,
02:14batteries for EVs, as well as, you know, advanced military technology, you know, satellite technology,
02:20semiconductors and the like. So that is a really critical part of this. And there has been a lot
02:27of prospecting on Greenland. And it looks like Greenland is a potential source for some of these
02:32really, really critical minerals that the U.S. and many other advanced economies depend on, but that
02:37the U.S. has a difficult time, you know, acquiring or processing in the continental U.S.
02:43So perhaps, I know it's hard to entirely discern what is going on in any one president's mind,
02:51but perhaps the corollary to what we're seeing with the China tariff policy is,
02:56let's go to Greenland and get some of these materials. Part of this proposal that he's put
03:02out there includes a $10,000 annual payment to Greenland's residents. The people who live there,
03:10it's roughly 57,000, 60,000 people, give or take, on a given year. Is the economic value that the U.S.
03:20could derive from Greenland greater than the sum of those payments?
03:25Definitely. It seems like the answer to that is definitely yes. And, you know, again, there are
03:30sort of short-term, medium-term, and longer-term benefits, you know, were the United States actually
03:37to acquire it. If you strictly look at sort of the financial flows, separate from, you know,
03:41what this might cost to some of our alliances and the like. But if you think about not only access to
03:47minerals, which are becoming more available as ice melts on Greenland, but also things like access to
03:53strategic shipping lanes that are increasingly going to be used as, you know, the Arctic ice melts and,
04:01you know, new shipping routes, particularly at the northern part of Canada and Russia open up. So
04:07those are very valuable kind of, you know, longer-term plays. You know, $10,000 a year to
04:13Greenlanders is something, but it's not that much. And frankly, it's not that much compared to
04:19what they currently get from being in the, as part of Denmark, in the EU, right? So, you know,
04:26they are part of a bigger, broader kind of welfare state as well. And people derive considerable
04:33benefits from that. You've written that Arctic shipping has increased 37% over the last decade.
04:41And you were just talking about that Northwest passage. Can you talk a little bit more about
04:46these shipping lanes and how it currently works? Because can the U.S. currently get around Greenland,
04:51or is it blocked? Like, what would open up if Greenland were part of the U.S.?
04:57All right. So, so currently, you know, you can drive ships to Greenland and around Greenland and
05:04the like, but there's a seasonality, of course, to Arctic ice. And that season is getting shorter
05:10for, in terms of ice coverage, particularly at the northern fringes of Canada and Russia, because,
05:16you know, doing loops around Greenland doesn't get you so much. But if you can connect very different
05:21markets in different parts of the world and avoid places like having to, you know, ship through the
05:27Suez Canal or ship around, you know, the Asian subcontinent and things like that, you can start
05:32to unlock a lot of value through those very different shipping routes. And so that's what's
05:38really critical here. And why, why Greenland? Well, Greenland is a potential waypoint along both of
05:43these shipping routes, the ones that run north of Canada and north of Russia. It's reasonable to think
05:48of Greenland as a, as a, as an important waypoint on those shipping routes. And those are long
05:53shipping routes too, right? So there would probably be many waypoints along those routes. But if one
05:58is going to try and impact, you know, the flow of goods through those areas, then having a longer
06:05chain of influence or control is going to be very important. Prior presidents, including President
06:12Truman, have tried and failed to acquire Greenland. Is President Trump in his second term better
06:19positioned than these past efforts, in your opinion? Well, that's a difficult question. It depends a lot
06:25on what the Trump administration is willing to do. Because after all, Denmark has indicated very clearly
06:31that it's not interested in selling Greenland. And Greenlanders themselves have indicated, you know,
06:37the Prime Minister of Greenland has indicated that this is an aggressive, you know, position from the
06:43United States is, that the United States is taking, and that also it is not interested, it is not up for
06:48sale. And so it would require either a very attractive deal on the part of the administration, but also
06:56probably some degree of military, you know, projection of military force, which is, is hard to
07:04countenance when one thinks of, you know, the current, or what has been for a long time since
07:09the end of World War Two, sort of global norms around use of force, as well as things like, you know,
07:15the NATO alliance and the like, that this would be a huge departure from a lot of that and would
07:21sacrifice, I think, a lot of, you know, alliances and goodwill across all of Europe. So it would be a
07:27very bold move to do something like this.
07:29It does feel like a huge threat to the NATO alliance. But in his first term, and in campaigning
07:37for his second, President Trump has made it clear that he's not quite a fan of NATO. What would the
07:43ramifications be? Are there specific things that you have in mind as you talk about a shift to the
07:48geopolitical world order here?
07:51Well, I think that, you know, you're right in saying that, you know, Trump is not a fan of NATO,
07:57but the United States was, of course, a critical architect of NATO, and in many ways, has, you
08:04know, has supported NATO materially, to a quite substantial degree over the course of decades.
08:10And that underpins a lot of how we think about the strategic sort of positioning of Europe and the
08:17United States, vis-a-vis other powers, particularly Russia, but also other powers more globally.
08:23And so, you know, rewiring that alliance would be just a very big departure, be a very big
08:29departure from the world order that the United States helped to create in the aftermath of World
08:33War II. And it would hark back to, I think, you know, the attempt to acquire Greenland would
08:39certainly tear NATO to shreds. And beyond that, it would yield the beginning, I think, and we're
08:46already seeing the hints of this, of a new era of territorial competition, where the, you know,
08:53threats to acquire territory and actual acts to acquire territory are going to become much more
08:58common, like they were in, let's say, the 1800s or the like, right? So it will become, you know,
09:03it'll be sort of a, you know, back to the future in that front.
09:06So back to the future. I saw one commentator say that an American aggressive stance towards
09:14acquiring Greenland could change the tenor of the conversation around Russia and Ukraine and China
09:22and Taiwan. Would it effectively hasten what you just described, the back to the future,
09:28if the U.S. were to aggressively acquire Greenland?
09:31I think that's definitely true. I mean, it's hard to imagine a U.S. that both aggressively
09:37acquires Greenland and that is serious about Ukraine's territorial integrity or, you know,
09:42Taiwan's sovereignty or the like. And the Trump administration has already made it, I think,
09:47crystal clear when it comes to, you know, Ukraine's position against Russia, where the United States
09:52stands. It's certainly not squarely on the Ukrainian side, as it has been for the first several years of
09:58the war. There's much more of a hands-off position and, you know, let the chips fall where they may
10:06to a considerable degree, right? You know, the same is true. I think, you know, China would,
10:11I don't see how they could read those sorts of activities in a different way other than that
10:16the United States is not, is attempting to, you know, project its authority in ways that are
10:22consequential for other global powers and that it doesn't, you know, is not so interested in protecting,
10:28you know, smaller states, smaller powers, you know, and that Taiwan included in that list.
10:33Now, Mike, you talked about how Denmark has said Greenland is not for sale. Greenlanders have said
10:38Greenland is not for sale. Is this perhaps a unifying moment for Greenlanders and could they
10:45make a play for complete and total independence? Definitely. They, you know, in many ways, I think
10:51this helps to unify Greenlanders around the cause of certainly defending their own territorial
10:57integrity and their own autonomy as not only as, you know, being part, not simply as being part of
11:03Denmark, but also being Greenlanders themselves, right? And so, you know, I think public opinion
11:09polls have indicated that, you know, less than 10% of Greenlanders would consider entertaining a plan
11:14to join the United States. So there's quite substantial support for, you know, Greenlanders
11:21remaining independent, right? It becomes a little bit more of a tricky question, I think, as to
11:25whether Greenlanders would prefer full independence from Denmark versus staying with Denmark. On the one
11:32hand, it might depend in part on whether you think you might have a greater sort of security shield
11:37when you're, you know, part of Denmark and part of the EU still, right? A Greenland going it alone
11:42might be a weaker Greenland. So I think that, you know, and that was reflected in the recent vote,
11:48the recent elections on Greenland as well. I think Greenlanders themselves are still debating
11:52and struggling through what's the best position, what's the best footing we can take forward in
11:58thinking about this new world in which we have come under a threat. Now, we've had a very serious
12:03conversation about the prospect of the U.S. acquiring Greenland, which I have to say during
12:09President Trump's first administration, first term, it was more of a punchline when he brought
12:16it up then. And he did bring it up in his first term. Obviously, a lot has happened between his
12:22first term and second term, including a whole pandemic. But from a geopolitical lens and from
12:27your expert lens, what has changed between that first term and now that suddenly the U.S.
12:34acquiring Greenland isn't a joke as much as it is a policy discussion that you and I are having?
12:42I think part of it is this race, this global race for accessing and securing rare earth minerals. So
12:50that's something that's really critical, you know, with the transition to AI and with the transition to,
12:56you know, greener technology and the minerals that go into all that are really quite,
13:03there's quite a substantial requirement in terms of the minerals front for those technologies. And
13:09it's becoming, you know, and like I said, China has sort of cornered the market in that. And it's
13:13done so over the course of the last decade or so. And so certainly the United States is at a position
13:19now where it's kind of scrambling to access a lot of those minerals. So that is one thing I think that
13:25has changed. Another thing that has changed is, you know, you mentioned that statistic earlier that,
13:29you know, Arctic shipping has increased 37% over the last decade, right? So that is a trend that is
13:36anticipated to increase and an accelerating rate as well, right? So climate change is real. And
13:44whether you want to talk about it or not, the realities, you know, whether on the ground or in
13:49the sea are actually changing. And I think, you know, states are starting to act in their own self
13:54interests around that as they see opportunities, challenges, and the like. And so I think that
14:00that's another critical element that's changed. I guess there is also one third one, which is that,
14:04you know, it's hard to entirely dismiss the role of folks like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and the like,
14:12and tech more generally within the Trump administration. And there is definitely a considerable
14:17portion of, you know, of tech billionaires that are advocates of building, you know, sort of a
14:25libertarian kind of zone where they can set up business and do things as they like. And Greenland
14:32is in that discussion for them as well. And so that's also something that's different.
14:37So, Mike, what will you be watching going forward? There's a lot of geopolitical news right now,
14:42including with the tariffs. But when it comes to the Greenland issue specifically, are there signals
14:48you're going to be looking for from the administration? Or what do the next few weeks or
14:52years look like? Right. So I think that there are, you know, the administration now is taking
14:58concrete steps to try and make this something closer to a reality, right? So, you know, there is an
15:07ambassador who has been nominated for Denmark, Ken Howery, who is, again, you know, close to,
15:13you know, people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, whose portfolio is dedicated to the acquisition of
15:20Greenland. And so as, you know, watching how that develops and how that, you know, the relationship
15:26through him to Denmark and the EU develops over the course of the next several months, weeks and months
15:32is going to be critical, I think, to seeing where this goes, as well as, you know, what happens with
15:38some of the, you know, some of the tariff issues, right? And some of the difficulties, again, in the
15:43acquisition of rare earth minerals. And so if that becomes, you know, if the spillovers from the tariff
15:49spat with China have implications for, you know, and create shortages of rare earth minerals, then that
15:58might again advance this agenda, right? So I think that we're going to see step after step after step
16:04that's taken towards this greater goal of Greenland acquisition, and we'll see whether it ultimately
16:10gets to that. Mike Albertus, author of Land Power and a professor of political science at the University
16:17of Chicago. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about the United States and Greenland and
16:23geopolitical strategy. We so appreciate your time and insight. Thanks. It was a pleasure to be here.