This figure was produced by scholars and former U.S. officials as part of planning for Trump’s ambition to acquire the 800,000-square-mile island as a strategic buffer in the Arctic against America’s main adversaries, the sources said, News.Az reports, citing NBC News.
The estimated cost amounts to more than half of the Defense Department’s annual budget and highlights the scale of Trump’s national security priority.
The prospect of buying Greenland has generated concern across Europe and on Capitol Hill, particularly in light of Trump’s rhetoric about seizing the island, which intensified after he ordered a U.S. military raid to capture Venezuela’s president and his wife.
Greenland, the autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, is not for sale. Officials from Denmark and Greenland have rejected Trump’s claims that the U.S. will acquire Greenland “one way or the other.”
A senior White House official, however, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been directed to come up with a proposal in the coming weeks to purchase Greenland, describing such a plan as a “high priority” for Trump.
On Wednesday, Rubio and Vice President JD Vance are scheduled to meet with officials from Denmark and Greenland, who traveled to Washington seeking a better understanding of Trump’s intentions and proposals. The meeting follows lower-level discussions last week between officials from Denmark and Greenland and the White House National Security Council.
“I’d love to make a deal with them,” Trump told reporters Sunday when he was asked whether there is a deal Greenland could offer. “It’s easier. But one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”
In the hours before Wednesday’s meetings, the message from Greenland’s government was consistent.
“Greenland does not want to be owned by, governed by or part of the United States,” Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt said as she arrived in Washington on Tuesday. “We choose the Greenland we know today — as part of the Kingdom of Denmark.”
Greenland’s minister for business and mineral resources, Naaja Nathanielsen, said Tuesday that the messages from the U.S. are causing such concern for Greenlanders that they are having trouble sleeping.
“This is really filling the agenda and the discussions around the households,” Nathanielsen said at a news conference in London. “So it’s a massive pressure that we are under, and people are feeling the effects of it.”
Despite the anxiety, Nathanielsen said, “we have no intentions of becoming American.”
The U.S. can already put more troops in Greenland and expand its military and security capabilities there under the current agreement between the two governments, said a U.S. official familiar with the issue.
“Why invade the cow when they’ll sell you the milk at relatively good prices?” the official said.
While some Trump administration officials have said the U.S. could use military force to take the island of 57,000 residents, some administration officials and outside White House allies view a U.S. attempt to purchase or form a new alliance with it as the likelier outcome.
Another option under consideration includes forming what is known as a compact of free association with Greenland, an agreement that would include U.S. financial assistance in exchange for allowing the U.S. to have security presence there, NBC News has reported. The U.S. has similar agreements with the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau. Adding Greenland to the mix could satisfy part of Trump’s broader vision for American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere — and could be less costly than the purchase price estimate for Greenland of $500 billion to $700 billion.
The U.S. in 1916 agreed to buy islands in the Caribbean from Denmark and in turn acknowledged that the U.S. “will not object” to the Danish government’s holding political and economic interests to all of Greenland, according to the agreement at the time.
Trump has said he wants to acquire Greenland to have more rights to the land, comparing it to owning versus leasing a property. Ownership could make Greenland akin to a U.S. territory like Guam, American Samoa or Puerto Rico and solidify Washington’s strategic relationship with the island for the long term.
Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland stems in part from concerns that its residents could seek independence and that, if they are successful, the island’s 27,000 miles of coastline could fall into the hands of adversaries like Russia or China, according to some experts on the issue and congressional testimony from former U.S. officials.
Greenlanders reject the idea of becoming part of the U.S. by a large margin. An independent poll last year concluded that about 85% rejected the idea.
