Cómo Estados Unidos podría hacerse con el control de Groenlandia y los posibles desafíos – Chicago Tribune
By EMMA BURROWS and BEN FINLEY
US President Donald Trump wants to join Greenlandia. He has repeatedly said that Washington must take control of the island, which has a strategic, mineral-rich location and a semi-autonomous region that is part of Dinamarque, aka NATO.
Officials from Dinamarca, Greenlandia and the United States are gathering the young people in Washington and will travel next week to discuss a new Casa Blanca initiative, which considers a series of options, including the use of military force, to acquire the island.
Trump said he was going to do “something with Greenlandia, tastes or not.”
If we’re not doing it “the easy way, we’re doing it the hard way,” he said without elaborating on what that might mean. In an interview with young people, the New York Times said that Greenlandia wanted to establish “ownership of things and elements that cannot be obtained by a document alone.”
Dinamarca Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced that Greenlandia’s toma estadounidense supported the end of NATO, and Greenlanders maintained that they did not want to be part of the United States.
Next, a view of some forms in which the United States can take control of Greenlandia and the possible challenges.
Military action could alter global relations
Trump and his officials have demonstrated that they want to control Greenland to improve national security and explore trade and mining. But Imran Bayoumi, associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the pent-up interest in the island is also the result of decades of neglect by various presidents who have taken Washington’s position in the Arctic.
The current decision must be partly about “realizing that we need to increase our presence in the Arctic, and we don’t have the right strategy or vision to do that,” he said.
If the United States is expanding with control of Greenland for strength, that looks like NATO in a crisis, perhaps an existential one.
Even though Greenlandia is the largest island in the world, it has a population of almost 57,000 and does not have a island of its own. Defense is the responsibility of Dinamarca, if the expelled is very inferior to the unitary state.
It is not clear whether the response from NATO’s largest members will be work from Casa Blanca or help from Dinamarca.
“If the United States attacks another NATO country militarily, then everything fits,” Frederiksen said.
Trump argues that controlling territory is necessary to ensure your country’s security, citing the threat from Russian and Chinese barcos in the region, but “it’s not brilliant,” said Lin Mortensgaard, an expert in international art policy at the Danish Institute for International Studies, or DIIS.
It is likely that there are Russian submarines, as happens throughout the Arctic region, but there are none on the surface, Mortensgaard added. China has undertaken a survey in the central Arctic Ocean, and even Chinese and Russian flights have carried out joint military maneuvers in the Arctic, the flights were carried out closer to Alaska, he said.
Bayoumi, of the Atlantic Council, said Trump will confront Greenlandia by force because it is unpopular among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, and likely “fundamentally alter” the United States’ relations with its aliases around the world.
The United States gained access to Greenland through a 1951 defense plan, and Dinamarca and Greenland became “very happy” to host an American military mayor, Mortensgaard said.
Therefore, “raising the NATO alliance” for something Trump has, has no opinion, said Ulrik Pram Gad, Greenland expert at DIIS.
Bilateral issues can help
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a select group of US lawmakers this week that the Republican government’s intention would be to buy Greenlandia, instead of using its military power. Danish and Greenlandic officials have reported that the island is not for sale.
It is not clear whether you can buy the island or whether the United States acquires Dinamarque or Greenlandia.
Washington could also increase its military presence in Greenland “through cooperation and diplomacy” without exercising control, Bayoumi said.
One option could be for Washington to gain veto power over security decisions made by the Greenland government, as they occur in the Pacific islands, Gad said.
Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands have a Compact of Free Association, or COFA, with the United States.
This is how Casa Blanca has the right to operate military bases and make decisions about the security of the islands by changing U.S. security guarantees and totaling $7,000 million in annual economic aid, according to the Congressional Investigative Service.
It is not clear that there is any improvement in Washington’s current security strategy. The United States operates remotely from the Pituffik Espacial Base in northeastern Greenlandia, and, under the existing acquis, it can raise as many troops as we want.
You hope the pressure operations break
Greenland policy Aaja Chemnitz told the Associated Press that the island’s residents wanted more rights, including independence, but did not want to go through part of the United States.
I suggested that pressure operations would help persuade the Greenlanders that they were likely to clash with the United States. This must be because the community is small and its language is “inaccessible,” he says.
Denmark’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, summoned the main estadounidense representative in Dinamarca in August to find out that “foreign actors” could influence the future of the country. The Danish press reported that some three people were defeated by Trump in the ongoing influence operations in Greenland.
Including some United States that have control of the territory, it is a big gas, Gad said. This is because Greenlanders have Danish citizenship and access the Danish welfare system, which includes free medical attention and education.
For example, “Trump tends to build a welfare state for the Greenlanders that our own citizens do not want,” Gad said.
Disacuerdo is unlikely to be resolved
Since 1945, the national military presence in Greenlandia has grown from kilometers of soldiers at more than 17 bases and installations, to 200 at the remote space base Pituffik in the northeast of the island, due to data provided by Rasmussen last year. The base provides missile warning, air defense and space surveillance operations for both the United States and NATO.
The Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, told Fox News that the Dinamarca had discovered its missile defense obligations in Greenlandia, but Mortensgaard reported that “he did not have a critical feeling towards the Dinamarca”, because the main reason for which Washington operates the base on Pituffik Island is to provide early detection of missiles.
The best outcome for Copenhagen will be to update the defense plan, which allows Casa Blanca to have a military presence on the island, and for Trump to make it a “golden undertaking,” Gad said.
But this is unlikely because, as suggested, Greenland is “useful” to the estadounidense proxy.
When Trump wants to change the information agenda, including to draw attention to internal political problems, “he can just say the word ‘Greenlandia’ and call it all to the emperor,” Gad said.
___
This story was translated into English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
