Will Denmark demand just payment for Greenland?

And will America then be able to exploit the Inuit of Greenland enough to make purchasing the island pay? Really?

One of the more interesting people on the Internet is gwern, who researches topics of interest to him with monk-like dedication to figuring out the truth. He is much better at scholarship than at monetization, he makes me look like like Larry Ellison. So he has been living a life of monk-like austerity for years.

Lately, Donald Trump has been talking about annexing Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal zone, and Gaza. The only one he spoke of during his first Presidency was buying Greenland from Denmark, which seems like the kind of not obviously unreasonable thing than an American President ought to consider, unlike conquering Canada or whatever.

Back during the first Trump Administration, gwern looked into the question of why did Denmark turn down America’s offer in 1946 to buy Greenland for $100 million. He concluded that it was in Denmark’s economic interest to sell, and mostly it was due to their wounded amour propre that they didn’t.

Still, we are talking about the Danes, the people who produced Kierkegaard and Bohr, so maybe they had a better reason?

And gwern’s reasons that Greenland is not terribly valuable to Denmark might also suggest that it wouldn’t be a good deal for the US to acquire it.

gwern marvels over why Denmark wouldn’t sell Greenland to the U.S., but the reasons are also good explanations of why the U.S. should be dubious of buying Greenland from Denmark in 2025. gwern writes:

Reasons of State: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

Exercise in pointing out the obvious: Greenland has been, is, and will be indefinitely, a white elephant. Denmark turned down 100m USD from the USA in 1946; I discuss how this was a bad idea—America got what it needed anyway while Denmark kept control of a loser.

2011-01-01–2019-08-17 finished certainty: possible importance: 2 backlinks

After WWII, the Cold War motivated the USA to offer $100 [1946; $1,419 in 2025] million for ownership of Greenland, which was declined. The USA got the benefit of using Greenland anyway.

I discuss how the island otherwise remained a drain since, the dim prospect it will ever be useful to Denmark, and the forgone benefits of that offer.

I speculate on the real reasons for the refusal.

Looking one day at obscure WP articles on Reddit, I ran into a curious historical trivia:

Following World War II, the United States developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland, and in 1946 the United States offered to buy Greenland from Denmark for $100,000,000 [1946; $1,419,015,295 in 2025], but Denmark refused to sell.

The reason why the US would want to buy Greenland is clear: being able to install anti-Russian military installations such as early-warning radar and nuclear bomber bases (Greenland being fairly close, on a great circle, to Russia)^1. … It would not even have been the first sale of Danish land to the USA, as there was at least one other, the United States Virgin Islands in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies. (As should be no surprise: transfers of land are an important way that geopolitics can be improved without requiring war.)

This appears to have been a large offer:…

The reason why Denmark would want to not sell Greenland is… less clear. At first glance, it’s not clear. Nor the second.

Costs

By the economics, holding on to Greenland is a bad idea. …

We can deal with the economy of Greenland in one fell swoop: Greenland’s entire GDP is around $2b. The overall trade deficit is a few hundred million and has been in place for 21 years, since 1990. The official Danish subsidy was $512m in 2005. Greenland is not a going concern and would collapse within years. …

To get a better understanding, convert to per capita (multiplying by 60), to get a range from $180b to $960b—at which point it becomes clear that this is no laughing matter for a small country like Denmark. This money could have funded major projects like the Øresund Bridge.

Benefits

So what can we put on the positive side of the balance-sheet? Before evaluating something we need to ask ourselves whether Danish sovereignty over Greenland matters—sovereignty is what Denmark was asked to sell, nothing else. If something would benefit Denmark regardless of whether it sold Greenland or not, then it cannot count as a benefit. We are also interested in the changes on the margin based on Denmark not selling.

Proceeding through possible benefits in descending order:

1. … The fact that a small, obscure, distant country like Denmark has been permitted by the much larger or much more closely located powers like the USA, UK, USSR, France, Germany etc to retain Greenland for so long implies that it is either not that valuable or Denmark is not gaining its value.) Likewise, Denmark has failed to capture the indirect geostrategic value of Greenland: not only did it refuse the US offer, it then—as a founding member of NATO, joining 1949-04-04—proceeded to let the US use Greenland as much as it pleased, expanding the US WWII installations into the gigantic Thule Air Base (linchpin of the Strategic Air Command nuclear bombers aimed at Russia) and agreeing to govern Thule under a 1951 treaty which specifically says (emphasis added):

Without prejudice to the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over such defense area and the natural right of the competent Danish authorities to free movement everywhere in Greenland, the Government of the United States of America, without compensation to the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark, shall be entitled within such defense area and the air spaces and waters adjacent thereto: …

In other words, after refusing to sell Greenland for $100,000,000 highly valuable greenbacks in the bleak European economy of 1946, Denmark let the US have the vastly valuable air force base of Thule for free, where my brother-in-law spent several years tracking Soviet and then Russian aircraft.

Paywall …