What is happening with America and Greenland?
By: Cecilia Fountain
Trump wants Greenland, and is willing to use military force to take it. This has come after Denmark refused to sell Greenland to the U.S. To understand the reasoning behind this we have to understand what it means for the U.S. to own Greenland.
Greenland is a vast, sparsely populated, self-governing territory of the Dutch. It lies between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. The area is very mineral rich and contains iron ore, zinc, lead, and gold; All rare earth metals that are currently controlled by mostly China. Rare earth metals are 17 minerals that are crucial for modern technology. To have control over supplies of rare earth metals means to have the most amount of said mineral being extracted, refined, and produced. These metals are turned into electronics, cars, and most renewable projects like wind turbines, and weapons.
At the moment, the U.S. does not have a strong standing in this supply change of rare earth metals, and currently, they are not on friendly terms with China. This creates lots of concern for the U.S., if they don’t have the materials to make items to advance their markets and weapon industry, their economy could fall onto itself. So that is why the U.S. is trying to take Greenland, so they can have options outside of China to get these minerals. Though they try to argue that it’s for national security, even with Trump stating, “Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.” This is simply not true. There has been no sighting of Russian or Chinese military ships of any kind near the area.
This also poses an even greater issue. Because Greenland is owned by Denmark, it makes them a NATO member (because Denmark is a NATO member). The U.S. is also a NATO member, meaning if they were to attack it would be a NATO on NATO conflict. For some background knowledge, NATO is a group of countries from Europe and North America that came together to form a defensive military alliance. Some of the countries apart of the group include the U.S., France, Turkey, Poland, and the U.K. This military alliance means that if one of them goes to war or needs help with a national crisis, they will try to support one another. However, if two nations go against each other, it means that the rest of the members would have to pick a side, or not pick any, leaving the other countries neutral to the conflict. This could put an enormous strain on the alliance and result in the US getting kicked out (Leaving the U.S with little external military protection from other powerhouses like Russia and China) or worse, destroying NATO altogether.
So what’s going to happen? Denmark and the U.S. officials are meeting to discuss the situation. Recently, the Trump administration has come forward to say that it was all a “big misunderstanding”, and that they do not want to have to take military action, which they have not clarified further. So until more gets reported on and more is disused between the U.S and Denmark, it’s mostly up in the air.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q4w1xnv35
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/7/do-russia-and-china-pose-a-national-security-threat-to-the-us-in-greenland#:~:text=Are%20Chinese%20and%20Russian%20ships
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/07/why-trump-wants-greenland-and-what-makes-it-so-important-for-security.html
https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/collective-defence-and-article-5#:~:text=Collective%20defence%20is%20NATO’s%20most,into%20a%20mutual%20assistance%20obligation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyg1jg8xkmo
https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/lifestyle/top-10-strongest-nato-countries/h30lxes
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