Why is Vladimir Putin Encouraging Donald Trump’s Greenland Ambitions?
The Russian president’s message is clear: suck it up. Just as Russia has an inherent right to Ukraine, so America is entitled to Greenland.
In May 1958, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, together with his wife Pat, visited Caracas, Venezuela. President Dwight Eisenhower had dispatched Nixon to Central America as part of a goodwill tour. But Nixon found little of it in Caracas. The country was in revolutionary ferment. Its president had recently fled to Miami. A mob attacked the American motorcade and showered the Nixons with rotten fruit. Their entourage ended up taking refuge in the American embassy. By that standard, Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha’s visit to Greenland is fairly tame. However, the visit encountered a frosty reception (the locals planned to stage a protest in the capital city of Nuuk), forcing the Vances to confine it to the remote and solitary American military base called Pituffik.
Vance offered fairly cautious remarks: “What we think is going to happen is that the Greenlanders are going to choose through self-determination to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there. So I think talking about anything too far in the future is way too premature. We do not think that military force is ever going to be necessary. We think this makes sense. And because we think the people of Greenland are rational and good, we think we’re going to be able to cut a deal, Donald Trump style, to ensure the security of this territory but also the United States of America.”
President Trump has declared that America will “get it—one way or the other.” He seems to view it the same way that Russian president Vladimir Putin views the Donbas region of Ukraine—a tempting morsel. Indeed, Putin himself has averred that he understands Trump’s avidity for Greenland.
Speaking in Murmansk on Thursday, Putin, as is his wont, delivered a history lesson. He explained why it made perfect sense for America to covet Greenland. America, he said, had already tried to procure it in 1910. Then it shielded the territory from a Nazi invasion during the Second World War. Putin observed that Trump’s designs “may surprise someone only at first glance, and it is a deep mistake to believe that this is some kind of extravagant talk by the new American administration. Nothing of the sort.” The message is clear: suck it up. Just as Russia has an inherent right to Ukraine, so America is entitled to Greenland.
Whether publicly championing this kind of naked spheres of influence thinking will boost Trump’s ability to “get” Greenland is an open question. Trump seems intent on expanding American power and influence in the Western Hemisphere. He clearly would like to partner or, if you prefer, collude with Putin to carve up a good chunk of the globe. He might even be receptive to forfeiting Taiwan to China.
However, the last time an American administration flirted with the idea of such cold-eyed deals was none other than the Nixon administration in the early 1970s. The result was to trigger a revolt in the GOP. It led directly to the rise of the neoconservative movement.
Now the neocons have been exiled. For now, Trump reigns largely unchallenged in the GOP. However, as Putin oozes sympathy for Trump’s territorial ambitions, disquiet is mounting. As his vice president visits Greenland and Canada unites against America, Trump may be triggering a backlash not only abroad but also at home against his predatory approach to foreign affairs.
Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, TheWashington Post, TheWall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and TheWeekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel.
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