Under a little-known Cold War agreement, the United States already enjoys sweeping military access in Greenland. Right now, the United States has one base in a very remote corner of the island. But the agreement allows it to “construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases across Greenland, “house personnel” and “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and waterborne craft.”
It was signed in 1951 by the United States and Denmark, which colonized Greenland more than 300 years ago and still controls some of its affairs.
“The U.S. has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants,” said Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen.
“I have a very hard time seeing that the U.S. couldn’t get pretty much everything it wanted,” he said, adding, “if it just asked nicely.”
But buying Greenland — something that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers on Tuesday was Mr. Trump’s latest plan — is a different question.
Greenland does not want to be bought by anyone — especially not the United States. And Denmark does not have the authority to sell it, Dr. Olesen said.
In the past, Denmark would have been the decider. In 1946, it refused the Truman administration’s offer of $100 million in gold.
Today, things are different. Greenlanders now have the right to hold a referendum on independence and Danish officials have said it’s up to the island’s 57,000 inhabitants to decide their future. A poll last year found 85 percent of residents opposed the idea of an American takeover.
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has repeatedly scoffed at the idea of being bought, saying this past week, “Our country is not for sale.”
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