Making Greenland Great Again (and Again)
Greenland has recently come to Donald Trump’s attention, along with Canada. Perhaps he’s been reading William Seward’s memoirs. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State (who was nearly assassinated the same night Lincoln died) stayed on in his post long enough to purchase Alaska (and be ridiculed for it) in 1867, and (fun fact) to entertain a plan to acquire Greenland.
He hoped that if the United States obtained both Alaska and Greenland, Canada could be persuaded by this pincer movement to join the United States as well. His Greenland scheme reads like a blockbuster NBA trade: The US would ship two islands in the Philippines to Germany, Germany would give Schleswig-Holstein back to Denmark, and a grateful Denmark would transfer Greenland to the United States. Swashbuckling days in the State Department!
Nobody bit on the plan on the time, but now here’s Donald Trump expressing a desire to “have” Greenland and Canada, leaving out the parts where Germany gets part of the Philippines and Denmark gets Schleswig-Holstein.
Greenland today sits at the center of a thorny set of issues that are not likely to go away just because our President is bombing elsewhere. Greenland has spent most of human history on the margins, but it sits squarely in the middle of emerging geopolitical competition across the Arctic, contains coveted reserves of mineral resources, and is ground zero for the climate crisis.
https://www.postalley.org/2025/06/27/making-greenland-great-again-and-again/