Buy Greenland, and You May Get More Than You Bargained for

President-elect Donald Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland is certainly understandable. The “gateway to the Arctic” and location of the Thule Air Base—now Pituffic Space Base—has great strategic value from a U.S. national security standpoint. It may also have prodigious untapped mineral reserves.

This led Rep. Andy Ogles, Tennessee Republican, to introduce the “Make Greenland Great Again” bill, which would give Mr. Trump the authority to negotiate with Denmark. But if the U.S. were to actually acquire Greenland, which has fiercely resisted the idea, we would want to ensure it does not automatically become a state in the process.

Why? Because making Greenland a state would actually impede the sort of cooperation that would benefit both the world’s largest island and the United States. Plus, it would provide an advantage to only one side of the political aisle, which may well try to introduce this provision as the price of their support for any deal.

It would be the same as making Washington, D.C. a state. Greenland as a state would guarantee the addition of two Democrats to the Senate and at least one Democrat to the House, and they would almost certainly be European-style socialists. Take the most left-wing members of Congress today and keep swinging to the left to see who might be elected from Greenland.

Add Washington, D.C. to the statehood mix, as Democrats have been pushing to do for years, and with the addition of Greenland, you would get four new Democrat seats in the Senate, plus at least three Democrat House seats, despite the relatively small populations of Washington, D.C. and Greenland. That’s because no matter how small a state’s population, it is guaranteed two Senate seats and at least one House seat under Section 2 of Article I of the Constitution.

The politics of Greenland, and who the voters there choose to represent them, illustrate this point. Greenland was granted home rule by Denmark in 1979 and has a unicameral parliament, the Inatsisartut, representing the almost 60,000 residents of the island. The last election was held in 2021, and there will be another election this year.

Five political parties control the 31 seats in the parliament:

• Inuit Community Party (Inuit Ataqatigiit) – 12 seats

• Forward Party (Siumut) – 10 seats

• Signpost Party (Naleraq) – 4 seats

• Democrats Party (Demokraatit) – 3 seats

• Fellowship Party (Atassut) – 2 seats

The common factors among these parties seem to be varying support for socialism and unions. Their main point of contention is separatism—that is, whether they want to become independent or remain part of Denmark, although a majority of the seats in the parliament—80%—are held by separatists who want independence.

The largest party, the Inuit Party, is a socialist, pro-independence party, and one of its members, Mute B. Egede, is the prime minister of Greenland. As a 2021 article in Nationalia pointed out after the election, the island’s two main political parties are left-wing. There seems little doubt that those parties would ferociously fight against becoming part of the U.S.

And if Greenland actually became a state, the liberal, socialist politics that dominate Greenland (and Denmark itself) would provide the Democratic Party in the U.S. with its best gift in years: guaranteed seats in Congress.

All of which would be unnecessary, as there are two better options for cooperation with Greenland.

The first is the type of relationship we have with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau in the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. has a compact with these strategic islands as part of the “Freely Associated States,” which gives the U.S. the ability to maintain military bases and make decisions on their external security. In exchange, the U.S. provides the island nations with security guarantees and financial assistance, a commitment that was renewed by Congress in 2024 for another 20 years.

The second would be to offer territorial status to Greenland, as we have done with Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. At the moment, this seems unlikely to happen given the island’s pervasive separatist movement and the Danish government’s opposition. But since it might provide a very useful strategic and natural resource advantage to the United States, the possibility should be kept on the table during any negotiations in case these positions prove to be less intractable than they now seem.

Mr. Trump has correctly identified Greenland as a national security priority for the United States in the Atlantic, and with congressional support negotiations to explore possibilities should proceed—just not at the risk of the republic and the freedoms we hold dear. The last thing we need is more socialists in Congress.

Originally published by The Washington Times.

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