Op-ed: Why Greenland Matters: Trump’s Imperial Pretensions in the Arctic

This is an opinion piece written by external contributors. The views expressed are the authors' own.

Donald Trump wants the world to recognize him as an empire-builder, and his wild ambitions in this regard have resulted in radical proposals to claim Gaza, the Panama Canal, Canada, and Greenland.

Trump’s own Inauguration address made it clear that, “there is no mistaking that Trump is serious about relaunching the United States as an imperial power.” 

But why Trump’s fixation on Greenland? Security concerns aside, Greenland fits the bill precisely because it already serves a similar function for Denmark.

Nothing is more evocative on this point than is the Sirius Patrol, a prime method through which Denmark asserts its sovereignty over Greenland.

A highly competitive and prestigious military posting, the Sirius Patrol is made up of a handful of dogsled teams that range over the most inhospitable reaches of Greenland. This elite unit echoes across the centuries a number of Viking Age sensibilities.

These include Medieval Scandinavian practices of asserting political dominion, as well as Norse notions of establishing and maintaining rights of land-ownership.

Danish investment in this military unit thus represents in concrete and contemporary terms a modern echo of Medieval Scandinavian perspectives concerning—and desire to seize and control—an Arctic colony.

The Sirius Patrol itself is actually an out-growth of an explicitly imperialist American philosophy pertaining to the restriction and control of European colonies in North America.

When Denmark capitulated to a speedy German invasion in early 1940, the status of Greenland became unclear.

The Danish King ordered all of his subjects to submit, but the terms under which Greenland was incorporated into the Kingdom of Denmark seemed to allow for the Greenlanders to act in their own perceived best interest.

The Danish authorities in Greenland acted upon this premise, in concert with a still neutral United States, which—operating under the precepts of the Monroe Doctrine—was unwilling to allow a close North American neighbor to fall under the sway of an aggressive European power clearly dedicated to global dominance.

One result of this partnership was the North-East Greenland Sledge Patrol, a joint Greenland/US Coast Guard operation that was the precursor to what would later become the Sirius Patrol.

After WWII, the Soviet Union became the premier perceived threat, and the Sirius Patrol was reconceived in this context as “an elite Royal Danish Navy unit that continues to ensure Danish sovereignty in northeast Greenland.”

As quaint as the Sirius Patrol may seem today, there seem to be no plans to stand down this unit, perhaps because the assertion of sovereignty represented by it continues to ensure that Denmark remains a major international power in the Arctic, more than a thousand years after the Norse first came to Greenland. 

Such is the mystique of the Sirius Patrol that the then Crown Prince (and now King) of Denmark has been mistakenly thought to have belonged to it. In fact, Frederik X was never a rank-and-file member of the unit.

The confusion stems from the fact that Frederik participated in an expedition to honor the 50^th Anniversary of the Sirius Patrol.

The Crown Prince’s odyssey, called “Expedition Sirius 2000,” celebrated and documented this signature aspect of Danish imperialism and adventuresome Viking heritage.

Thus, the abiding folkloric significance of the Sirius Patrol was reinvigorated for a new generation of Danes at the dawn of a new century by a celebrity royal with credibility as an ersatz New Age Viking explorer.

This “royal imprimatur” serves to help to re-center the Danish concept of Greenland from the geographical periphery into the very mythic heart of the Kingdom, and concurrently reasserts the traditional expeditionary Viking mindset from which the original Scandinavian colonialist ethos emerged. 

Donald Trump wants Greenland for far more than its strategic significance. The Danes have chronically underfunded their defense efforts in Greenland for years, although now there are plans to change that.

In any case, the US already has the only international military presence on the island. Trump certainly has no plans to relinquish that advantage, which recently under Biden had received additional resources.

Greenland, however, also represents the power and glory of Empire, as even Danish popular drama acknowledges. In order to seem Imperial, Trump may act like the dictators and megalomaniacs for whom he has often voiced admiration.

This especially includes those who explicitly embrace imperialism, among whom Vladimir Putin is perhaps the most outspoken, not to mention the most aggressive.

Indeed, Trump has “often wondered aloud why he could not play the same imperial games,” and what better way to make himself seem a King than to wreathe himself in the aura of majesty, by force, if necessary.

Unfortunately, it seems Trump’s loyal sycophants in Congress seem poised to help him to achieve this goal.

Of course, most Greenlanders might well vote for independence from Denmark, a colonial overlord with its own tortured history with the island, but the vast majority of Greenlanders decidedly do not want to be absorbed by the United States.

This doesn’t matter at all to Trump. Furthermore, although American security concerns about Greenland may well be valid, they do not drive Trump’s agenda: Ultimately Donald Trump wants to seize the Arctic jewel from the Danish Crown to bolster his own Imperial pretentions.