Is Greenland the only territory US wanted from Denmark? Trump's bold plans resemble past annexation tactics
Just like Trump's recent declaration that “We'll get Greenland,” private WH communications under the 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, show a dark resolve.
Amidst the ongoing uproar over the US plans to take over Greenland, President Donald Trump declared that “one way or another we’re gonna get” the world's largest island from Denmark. The POTUS has not even ruled out sending American troops to the island to fulfil his desire.
Trump's actions and remarks have drawn international backlash, with some political leaders calling out his “bullying” techniques. However, his assertiveness is not unprecedented in the history of the White House.
Know about the first territory US wanted from Denmark
A different US government used the same strategies over a century ago to effectively annex Denmark's former colonial territory – the Danish West Indies, which is now popularly known as the US Virgin Islands.
Greenland contains the second-largest ice sheet in the world, and the Virgin Islands are home to beaches and pirate coves.
What the current Trump administration is looking into Greenland is something that the top US officials spotted in the Virgin Islands over a hundred years ago: strategic military locations off American coastlines and a prime location along expanding commerce routes.
Just like Trump's recent declaration that “We'll get Greenland,” private White House communications under the 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, show a dark resolve.
Then-secretary of state Robert Lansing wrote to Wilson in 1915 to inform him of a Danish diplomat's “embarrassing question.”
The envoy wanted to know whether the American military would forcibly seize the Islands if Denmark failed to reach an agreement to sell them.
“I told the Minister that while I had not had in mind such action,” Lansing tells Wilson, adding that he could think of situations that would require such an act.
While the Danes acted swiftly to finalize the deal, the Danish Minister claimed that losing St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix would “be felt as a great national loss.”
Similarities between Virgin Islands take over and Trump's Greenland plan
According to Christopher Nichols, a Woodrow Wilson scholar at Ohio State University, “there are plenty of moments of the U.S. purchase of the Virgin Islands which have close parallels to the quizzical ways Trump and the Trump administration have been talking about the U.S. relationship with Greenland,” USA TODAY reported.
The Danish West Indies were purchased for $25 million in gold to become the US Virgin Islands, and on March 31, 1917, the American flag was raised over the islands in lieu of the Dannebrog, marking the start of a celebration that is now known as Transfer Day on the islands.
Importance of Greenland
American personnel are already deployed in Pituffik Space Base, where US VP JD Vance visited last month with Second Lady Usha Vance. In addition to housing missile defense detection radar systems, the site is ideally situated over Canadian NORAD radar installations that are intended to identify missile launches against North America that traverse the Arctic.
Moreover, Greenland provides a wealth of rare earth materials, of which the US was a leading producer until China superseded it. According to estimates, the island contains the eighth-largest rare earth resource. Although the Chinese have already contributed to mining operations in Greenland, obtaining access to them would lessen American dependency on China.
