Is China the real target of Trump's Greenland acquisition threat?

As the world is scrambling to understand the rationale behind US President-elect Donald Trump’s obsession with acquiring Greenland, his allies and geopolitical experts have flagged the strategic importance of the island and how it fits into the competition between the United States and the Russia-China combine.

Greenland, the world’s largest island, is an autonomous territory of Denmark. Even though it is part of Denmark, it is much closer to the United States and Canada. It is situated strategically on the sea route connecting Russia and North America.

Trump has said that the US control of Greenland is “absolute necessity”. At a press conference on Tuesday, Trump said that he is open to invading Greenland to bring it under US control.

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Trump’s obsession with Greenland has generated anxieties as well as ridicule. While some quarters have ridiculed that Trump is threatening to invade an ally —Denmark is a fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato)— just to appease his extremist voter bloc, others are anxious as they feel Trump is not joking. They are anxious that Trump’s rhetoric around acquiring Greenland, Canada, and Panama Canal is similar to what Russia used to invade Ukraine and the pretext China uses to threaten Taiwan with an invasion.

There are also fears that Trump, who has long been friendly with Russian leader Vladmir Putin and an admirer of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, has cut a deal with the two autocrats where he gets to control the Western hemisphere by force, they would be free to do as they wish in Europe and Asia and Indo-Pacific regions.

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Greenland acquisition part of ‘Donroe Doctrine’, say allies

Amid such concerns, Trump’s allies have started to make a case for the acquisition of Greenland. The New York Post, a conservative newspaper that supports Trump, has dubbed the rationale behind it as ‘Donroe Doctrine’ — modelled after the Munroe Doctrine of former US President James Munroe (1817-25).

The Munroe Doctrine said that the United States would not interfere in European affairs and European colonial powers of the day would not interfere or attempt to colonise anywhere in the Western hemisphere that would be the US sphere of influence. The Donroe Doctrine —‘Don’ comes from Donald— is the ‘Make America Great Again’ version of Munroe Doctrine.

In the Donroe Doctrine, Trump’s allies and geopolitical experts who say acquiring Greenland is critical to safeguarding the United States from Chinese and Russian designs in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean regions.

A source close to the Trump transition team told The Post that Trump’s pursuit of Greenland is about “sending a strong, deliberate message to Beijing. Not just talk. Action. Making America ambitious again.”

“And the president-elect is laying out the early framework of the ‘Trump Doctrine’," said the source.

The rare mineral deposits in and around Greenland have also been flagged as a reason to control the island and its surrounding waters.

The think tank Wilson Center says that the United States is in a three-way contest with China and Russia over Arctic’s natural resources, such as lithium, cobalt, and graphite.

Separately, Alex Plitsas, a non-resident fellow at Atlantic Council, told The Post that there are two main reasons to annex Greenland.

“The first is the large deposits of rare earth elements needed for critical defense and electronics manufacturing. Second, Greenland has a legitimately large claim to the Arctic and that would provide the US with a stronger position as competition there heats up for navigation and resources,” said Plitsas.

The acquisition of Greenland to secure access to rare earth minerals is all the more important as most of the world’s supplies of rare earth minerals are currently concentrated in China and Plitsas told the newspaper that such a dependency on China is “not sustainable given geopolitical realities”.

“Other major deposits exist in places like Afghanistan, which is also infeasible for a number of reasons,” said Plitsas.

Today, the United States has control over just 1.3 per cent of world’s rare earth minerals compared to nearly 70 per cent control of China. This means that the United States needs to “source those rare earths from somewhere to process at home … which does give Greenland some appeal, because it could be a source of rare earth minerals,” said Gracelin Baskaran, the Director of Critical Minerals Security Program at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), to The Post.