Capitol Hill Gets Greenland Envy

Greenland lately has loomed almost as large in American politics as it does in the Mercator projection.

The potential annexation of the Arctic island has become a fixation of President Donald Trump and a bombastic MAGA rallying cry. The demands have outraged its Danish overseers and alarmed European allies. Already there are multiple bills in Congress focused on making it part of the United States. One would rename the territory “Red, White and Blueland.”

The first congressional hearing to touch on a potential Arctic takeover, on the other hand, was hardly so colorful. Taking place in a drab Senate hearing room on a snowy Wednesday morning, the hearing — titled “Nuuk and Cranny: Looking at the Arctic and Greenland’s Geostrategic Importance to U.S. Interests” — rarely went to jingoistic extremes.

Instead, senators from both parties tried to grapple with the fundamental tension at the heart of the Republican push for Greenland: Is it about owning lithium or just about owning the libs?

The tension was made clear in the opening statements. Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) rhapsodized about the ample precedent for a United States acquisition of territory — noting how the dais was filled with senators from states acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. But he first pointed out Greenland’s crucial strategic resources and the desperate need to build more icebreakers to maintain dominance of Arctic sea lanes.

Call it the geopolitical medicine embedded in the sugar of MAGA neoimperialism — something Cruz heavily caveated by noting that a takeover would require both mutual agreement with Denmark and the support of Greenlanders in a referendum, neither of which currently seem likely.

Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Commerce Democrat, skipped the sugar entirely and devoted no more than a sentence to the idea of annexation. For her, the hearing was entirely about icebreakers, minerals and the need to ensure U.S. dominance in the Arctic.

American efforts to acquire Greenland date back to the 1860s, but the current momentum towards the project dates back to 2019 when Trump privately floated the idea during his first administration. It was quickly followed by a New York Times op-ed by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton titled “We Should Buy Greenland.”

The topic then faded from national attention as Trump’s first impeachment and then the Covid pandemic took center stage. Now it has come roaring back with Trump’s re-election and his rekindled interest in a new northern land acquisition. In a sign of the president’s seriousness, or maybe his unseriousness, son Donald Trump Jr. took a day trip to the Arctic last month, complete with a photo op with MAGA-hat-wearing Greenlanders.

Back inside the Russell Senate Office Building, the proceedings fluctuated between silly and serious moments. Some Democratic senators prefaced their remarks about just how ridiculous the idea of buying Greenland would be before jumping right into the need to build more icebreakers.

Others seemed to fully embrace the absurdity. The otherwise stoic Danish reporters present couldn’t help but laugh when GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio asked a witness, “If you were a Greenlander, would you rather be part of America, a $27 trillion economy, or part of Denmark?”

The answer is “obvious,” said the witness, Alex Gray, a former Trump National Security Council staffer and unsuccessful Senate candidate in Oklahoma.

Talk of annexation isn’t “clickbait” or “distraction,” Gray later added when Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) asked him about criticism from Democrats that annexation was simply Trumpian wild talk that should be taken neither seriously nor literally at a moment when his administration is making drastic cuts to the federal government.

The senators also heard from a mining CEO and Arctic experts from the National Science Foundation and the Wilson Center. In other words, for all of Trump’s imperialist bluster, the hearing was more about how to get Greenland’s resources out of the ground than about how to put a 51st star on the flag.

One perspective that was missing was Greenland’s. The self-governing island is moving towards independence, and there are real questions about whether Greenlanders have any desire to simply swap Copenhagen for Washington.

Cruz at one point touted the benefits of annexation by noting that “the people of Puerto Rico enjoy a considerable upside from their current status as an American territory.” He did not mention though that the people of Puerto Rico have voted repeatedly since 2012 to become a state and have yet to see Congress take action.

No one, to be clear, suggested the Marine Corps should land on the beach outside Nuuk and raise Old Glory in conquest. But the hearing made clear there is no desire to leave the many questions about Greenland’s future on ice.