Exclusive | Why does Donald Trump want Greenland? Behind the strong, deliberate message to China
President-elect Donald Trump revealed Tuesday that he would not rule out using military force to annex Greenland, leaving many Americans asking: “But why?”In fact, the ice-covered Danish territory, the largest island in the world, has long been a hot topic among strategists in Washington and elsewhere — despite Copenhagen’s insistence it is not for sale — due to its location along vital shipping routes and the presence of key raw materials that are rarely found anywhere else.“Why? A few critical reasons,” a source close to the Trump transition efforts told The Post on Tuesday when asked about the president-elect’s goal.
“Sending a strong, deliberate message to Beijing.Not just talk.
Action.Making America Ambitious Again.“And the president-elect is laying out the early framework of the ‘Trump Doctrine.'”The US is currently locked in a three-cornered fight with China as well as Russia over the Arctic region’s natural resources — such as lithium, cobalt and graphite, according to the Wilson Center, a foreign policy-focused think tank in Washington.“There are two main reasons [to annex Greenland].
The first is the large deposits of rare earth elements needed for critical defense and electronics manufacturing,” Atlantic Council nonresident fellow Alex Plitsas told The Post.“Second, Greenland has a legitimately large claim to the Arctic and that would provide the US with a stronger position as competition there heats up for navigation and resources.”The US has been in a quiet contest with China and Russia over access to the Arctic for years, deploying military ice-breaker ships to the region on missions to explore the resource-rich frozen tundra.
Washington has traditionally been over-reliant on China for rare earth minerals, which are most frequently found in the Arctic in addition to Asia — and used in everything from cell phones to weapons of mass destruction.According to Plitsas, this dependency on Beijing is “not sustainabl...