WSJ What’s News - Things Are Heating Up in the Arctic: Why Trump Wants to Get Greenland

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

President Trump has repeatedly said he wants to buy Greenland for economic and national security reasons. WSJ reporter Max Colchester tells us how realistic that goal is and how citizens of that self-ruling part of Denmark feel about it. And WSJ reporter Thomas Grove explains the significance of Greenland as Arctic ice melts and geopolitical heat turns up in the region. Alex Ossola hosts.  Further Reading Why Trump Wants Greenland  Donald Trump Jr. Visited Greenland. Then Things Got Weird.  Why Getting Greenland’s Mineral Riches Won’t Be Easy     The Steps Trump Would Need to Take to Actually Buy Greenland   See How Russia Is Winning the Race to Dominate the Arctic  Trump’s Arctic Goals Demand Icebreakers, but U.S. Struggles to Build Them  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Street Journal. This is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions around the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world. This week, President Trump has repeatedly talked about buying Greenland. He said it's necessary to shore up the US's national and economic security. But how realistic is this goal? And how does it fit into the rising geopolitical heat in the Arctic region? Let's get into it.

It's not the first time a politician has floated the idea of making Greenland a U.S. territory. But with Trump as president again, it's getting new attention. WSJUK correspondent Max Kolchester recently visited that self-ruling part of Denmark and joins me now to explain what makes the place so special and so desirable for a country like the U.S. So Max, what's interesting to me is that Trump said that acquiring Greenland, and I'm using the word acquire kind of loosely here, is necessary for national security. What does that mean and what makes Greenland important?

Well, Greenland's important because really of where it's located. It is right at the top of the North American continent and it is a vast expanse of mainly frozen land, very, very large amount of land. And it is a buffer between the US and Russia in some way. And as the Greenlandic ice melts, as the climate warms, new trade paths are going to open up between East and West, which will speed trade dramatically. So it's really in America's interest to have eyes and a degree of control over this part of the world.

Doesn't the US already have a stake in the Arctic? Like, what about Alaska? It does. And it also already has quite a big influence on Greenland. There's a treaty that was signed in the 1950s between Greenland's owner, Denmark, and the US, which essentially allows the US to place whatever military resources it desires on Greenland. No one's quite sure of this, but it seems that Trump feels that if he's going to place all this money and military resource at Greenland's disposal, then maybe the US should benefit from some other advantages, be it geographic territorial control or access to a lot of the minerals that are frozen under the ice on Greenland's territory. What is the deal with those minerals? I mean, how accessible are they?

They're not very accessible, is the truth. They are often in very remote places, which are extremely inhospitable and under a lot of ice and would cost a lot of money to take out of the ground. But there is a school of thought that obviously has the ice thaws, they will become more accessible. And as technology improves, there could be ways to try and access this in a more cost effective way in the coming years, much in the same way in the coming years.

Much in the same way when the US bought Alaska, it was seen as a sort of nothing zone on the edge of the world, while actually it turned out to be full of natural resources that were later tapped. So one gets the feeling that the US is hoping it can do a similar play with Greenland. For years, not much thought was given to Greenland. After the Cold War subsided, military defense in the region really dropped off, especially from Denmark. So I think they had a sort of quiet existence, which suited them fine actually. And now this has been thrown onto the world's news agenda. And Nuke, the capital of Greenland, has been inundated by journalists all trying to find

out what is happening in this place and why Trump cares about it so much. Including you, right? Exactly. I mean, it's quite an extraordinary place. It's unbelievably wild and empty. I've never been to a place with so few people in such a large expanse. Yeah. How are the people of Greenland reacting to all of this hullabaloo?

Well, I think it's quite interesting when you go to Newt because obviously it's a very remote place. It's a capital city, of course, but it's got only maybe 20,000 people living there. The sense I definitely got when I was there was not that anybody was keen to be part of America, that the mainly Inuit population say that they have no desire to become American and actually they'd much rather become independent of Denmark and be their own country. But equally, they are excited at the prospect potentially of more American investment or closer commercial ties to America.

It's more that they saw America as a way of enabling their move towards greater independence and financial independence from Denmark. Is this kind of an opening bid for President Trump? Like, could he just be wanting to put some pressure on Denmark to improve the U.S.'s stake in Greenland? Yes. And that's what the Danes are hoping is the case. They hope that if they spend a bit more on defense and put a few more ships around Greenland

and improve surveillance on Greenland and give America the comfort that they are taking the security of Greenland seriously, then Trump will back down. And they announced a package of around $2 billion to upgrade a bunch of frigates they have sailing around Greenland. And it didn't seem to move the needle with Trump, who sort of dismissed it during a recent trip on Air Force One. But who knows? Who knows how Trump could force this? At this point, it seems to be some sort of opening gambit. But unlike Panama, where Trump has said, look, I want a better deal for U.S. ships

sailing through the canal, you can sort of see there's a transaction to be done there. With Greenland, it's not quite sure what Trump wants. And so I think that's what the Danes are hoping is clarified in the coming weeks and months. That was reporter Max Kolchester. Coming up, it's not just Greenland. Tensions are rising between countries all over the Arctic.

We get into why relations are heating up after the break. Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments. Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. The credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply.

Ice is melting all over the world, and according to a 2022 study published in Nature Communications, it's melting nearly four times as quickly in the Arctic. In the process, that melting ice is exposing valuable minerals like gold and silver, as well as nickel and copper, which are critical for batteries and power grids. It's also opening up shipping routes that could change the game for international trade and the geopolitical dynamics that hang in the balance. Reporter Tom Grove joins me now to help navigate these rapidly changing waters. Tom, what are these shipping routes and are they already in use? The one shipping route that is kind of light years ahead of the others in the Arctic is the Northern Sea Route.

This is a route that Russia has been trying to develop for well over 10 or 15 years. It's been one of Putin's major goals to turn it into a waterway that would basically connect Europe and Asia, not through the Suez Canal and not around the Cape of Good Hope, but across Arctic waters. So there's been lots of investment that's been put into this route, and that means investment into ports, investment into icebreakers, and investment into communication networks as well that's that far north. And they've been doing quite a bit up there. Let's go back for a second. Why do you need icebreakers if the ice is melting?

Whenever it comes to the far north, if you want to be shipping in the Arctic anywhere, you only have about two to three months of potentially ice-free waters. After that, you're dealing with small and large ice flows, and in some cases, just complete polar ice that you're cutting across. And basically, one thing that Russia wants to be able to do is make sure that the northern sea route can function year-round. And that means basically by pushing icebreakers through there back and forth almost with pretty much any voyage of any ship through there. But it's not just a Northern Sea Route that countries are looking at for shipping through the Arctic, right? No. So Canada also has the

Northwest Passage. And this is a little bit more complicated because where as the Northern Sea Route kind of cuts across a very wide swath of open water, if you look at a map, the Northwest Passage, it cuts and dodges around these various islands that make up the Northern Archipelago of Canada. And so from a logistical point of view, it's much more difficult to really make that work. How important are these routes for trade? So the shipping routes are important because they basically provide an entirely different way of moving goods between East and West, Europe and Asia, that has nothing to do with

generally accepted shipping routes. What this allows is for ships in some cases to shave up to two weeks off their travel time. You get to see faster delivery times and you get to see potentially, and particularly in China's case here, you're seeing uncontested waters. I mean, as much as there have been tensions arising in various spots around major shipping routes, the Northern Sea Route just basically gives them wide open, clear waters in a friendly country. So it sounds like there are a lot of players potentially that are touching these roots.

Can you just break down who are some of the players in the Arctic game? Obviously you have the Arctic countries themselves, right? So you have Norway, you have Denmark, the agreement, you have Canada and Russia. And so all of these countries are in the mix here whenever it comes to developing Arctic policy, deciding how we're going to exploit the resources there. And by and large, the region was kind of an arena for international cooperation for quite a while up until the Ukraine War. And that's when Russia kind of hived off, or rather the rest of the Arctic Council decided not to cooperate with Russia. And since then, Russia has been working more and more with China.

And so China has had a bigger and bigger foothold in the Arctic because Russia's basically given the opportunity to do that. And where does the U S fit into this? So the U S obviously with Alaska, they certainly have a claim on the Arctic under president Trump, at least in his first administration, there was a big push to create more icebreakers. There was somewhat of an icebreaker gap that people talked about because Russia had so many and the United States had so few. And so I think the United States is trying to up its game quite a bit. In the Arctic, it does have a base in Greenland already that it uses,

and that is one asset that does help the United States tremendously in the Arctic. But in terms of being more present logistically, more present scientifically, militarily, it has a long way to go. The US doesn't necessarily want to create its own shipping routes in the Arctic, but I think what it does want is greater freedom of navigation in the North so that it could potentially project power across the Bering Straits, towards Russia, or at least in the Sea of Ahotsk further south. It's not looking to necessarily control any of these sea routes, but it just wants to be able to make sure that it can go where it wants to, whenever it wants to. It sounds like both economic and geopolitical issues are at play here.

Which one seems to be predominant? It depends on which side you're looking at it from. The Russians see melting ice, and with that, they have a sense that there's going to be greater competition in the North. That's what they say whenever they try to explain why they've opened up new bases in the Arctic or why they're militarizing different parts of the Arctic. For the United States, it's a much more straightforward economic proposal. It's about potentially gaining access, gaining territory that does hold these minerals that

perhaps we could use or exploit at some point. We're talking today because of Trump's stated intention to acquire Greenland. How would Greenland change that calculus of power in the Arctic? We're still going to be talking a lot in terms of potentials here, potentially being able to dig up rare earths, potentially being able to gain other minerals that Greenland is supposed to hold. From a strategic point of view, Greenland is important because that ice cap that covers the northern part of the island basically blocks Russian ships from entering North American

waters across the Arctic. And if that does melt, you know, to the point where ships can pass through there on a regular basis, then the United States would want to be there just from a purely strategic point of view. That was WSJ reporter Tom Grove. Tom, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And that's it for What's New Sunday for February 9th. Today's show is produced by Charlotte Kartenberg with supervising producer Michael Kosmitis. We got help from Deputy

Editors Scott Saloway and Chris Zinsley. I'm Alex Oslo. We'll be back on Monday morning with a new show. Thanks for listening.