OPINION:
President Trump is right to be interested in securing Greenland, but he should adjust his tactics and broaden his objectives.
Greenland is strategically located along the Northwest Passage and other vital Arctic Sea routes that are now navigable for longer summer periods because of climate change.
It’s strategically located for U.S. air defenses and for Russian submarine access to the North Atlantic, and it has significant but undeveloped deposits of rare earth minerals.
Denmark is a small nation incapable of defending itself alone.
Only after Mr. Trump threatened tariffs on Denmark and seven other European nations and made veiled threats of military action did Britain seek to organize a credible European defense of Greenland and the broader Arctic region.
Unfortunately, such threats, even if bluffs, alienate Europe.
Russia is beefing up its Arctic military presence.
In 2018, China declared itself a near-Arctic state and has made numerous efforts to gain a commercial foothold in Greenland.
It’s China that Americans should be mostly, but not solely, concerned about.
Since World War II, Denmark has allowed the United States virtually whatever military presence it desires, but Greenland, unlike Iceland, isn’t certain to remain tethered to Europe and NATO.
In 1985, Greenland withdrew from the European Communities, the predecessor of the European Union, to ensure control over its fishing waters. Its longer-term commercial loyalties could be on the auction block with important strategic implications.
Greenland as a sovereign state wouldn’t add up.
With a population of just 57,000 on a landmass bigger than California, Texas and Montana, it cannot reasonably finance itself without continuing outside support or foreign investment that generates equivalent royalties.
It has a respectable per capita income of more than $58,000, but with such a small population, it can’t finance all the domestic infrastructure and international overhead required of a sovereign state.
Denmark provides large annual grants of about $10,000 per capita, but those would likely disappear if the island voted for independence.
With Greenland’s political parties fermenting for some form of sovereignty, it’s easy to see an eventually independent Greenland playing the United States and Europe off against China and Russia to solve its financial challenges.
It could access China’s Belt and Road Initiative to help finance seaports and airports and perhaps develop its rare earth and other mineral resources.
The latter are difficult to cost-competitively exploit, but Beijing could subsidize production to gain political influence.
Consider what a sizable Chinese stake in Greenland’s seaports and airports would mean for the integrity of U.S. conventional air, missile and space satellite defenses.
China’s efforts to gain a commercial foothold in Greenland have so far been rebuked, but a sovereign Greenland strapped for cash could become more receptive.
Mr. Trump’s initial impulse was to buy or annex Greenland, but now he may be willing to settle for ownership of — sovereignty over — the land under U.S. bases in Greenland. Officials in Nuuk have indicated that’s a red line it will not cross.
However, its financial challenges, strategic location and security vulnerability to Russia and, eventually, China may ultimately motivate it to compromise on that issue.
Given that a sovereign Greenland could one day fall into China’s or Russia’s commercial orbit, the United States should seek something more comprehensive but not so offensive to Greenlanders’ sovereignty sensibilities.
The United States has free association agreements with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau in the Pacific.
These give the United States full military access to the region and the right to deny third countries access. In exchange, their citizens can serve in the U.S. military, live and work in the United States, and receive access to certain federal programs and services, as well as economic assistance, analogous to the Danish block grants to Greenland.
Annexing Greenland doesn’t make sense.
For a territory to become part of the United States, its residents must want to join, and the majority of Greenlanders are not interested.
Threatening Denmark makes the United States look little better than Russia and China, which are intimidating their neighbors.
It’s an intemperate tactic and unlikely to succeed.
In any case, we should be seeking something less intrusive on Greenlanders’ national aspirations and more responsive to their practical challenges.
We need a joint free association compact with Denmark and the United States. It should provide the U.S. with the kind of strategic monopoly it enjoys through its agreements with the above-mentioned Pacific states in exchange for U.S. support to replace the Danish grants.
The United States and Denmark must be able to veto outside commercial projects that could compromise the security interests of the United States and other NATO nations (i.e., investments from China, Russia and their allies).
With only 57,000 residents, granting immigration rights such as those afforded the free association states in the Pacific would hardly pose a threat of hordes of homeless Greenlanders crowding city shelters in Manhattan.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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