Greenland
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Most of us have only ever caught a bird's eye view of the snow-covered south end of Greenland from the airplane window on a transatlantic flight, or seen pictures of its breathtaking glaciers. But U.S. President Donald Trump has put the Arctic island back on the map. — And I also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland. We strongly support your right to determine your own future.

And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for... He wants it, and he's not ruled out getting it by force. But we need it really for international world security. And I think we're going to get it. One way or the other, we're going to get it. We will keep you safe.

We will make you rich and together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before. In this special episode of the Reuters World News Podcast, we'll visit Greenland, the autonomous territory which is a part of Denmark, look at its strategic potential in Arctic defense, and of course, its vast treasure trove of natural resources. Plus...

what Greenland's upcoming election could mean for its future and its independence movement. I'm your host, Gail Issa.

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I'm joined by our chief Denmark correspondent, Jacob Gronholdt-Peterson in Copenhagen, and our White House reporter, Trevor Honeycutt in Washington, D.C.

Jacob, Trevor, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Trevor, have you ever been to Greenland? I have not. It's on my list. Jacob, I think that makes you the only person I know who's ever been to Greenland. You're just back from a two-week trip to its capital, Nuuk. Can you paint a picture for our listeners? What is Greenland like? Absolutely, yeah. So this was my third visit to Greenland. It was actually my first during wintertime, which was, well, cold.

I think it was like minus 15, 20 degrees when we got there. It was a very dramatic coastline with lots of dramatic cliffs and landscapes and very deep fjords, lots of glaciers that you fly over going into Nuuk. So you have these fjords filled with icebergs and lots of drift ice during the winter. So it's really quite spectacular.

And it just keeps getting better and better, especially because of the people. I mean, they're so friendly, so warm. They love to have a laugh. The main language is the Inuit language. But then, you know, it's been Danish territory for over 300 years. And almost everyone speaks and understands Danish. So for me as a native Dane, it's...

a strange and interesting place to visit. You come to this very different country, very different culture, but then everyone speaks your language and you pay in Danish currency and in the supermarket you buy the same products as you do in Denmark. 95% of Greenland's exports from the fisheries

And then there's the tourism industry, which is still small, but it's growing very rapidly, which is very much seen in all the main towns with new hotels and new airports being built. Trevor, we heard President Donald Trump give Greenland a headline in his recent marathon speech to Congress.

This isn't the first time he's talked about snapping up Greenland, famously making an offer to buy it during his first term. Can you give us a sense of the administration's thinking here? Is he serious? Well, he is. I mean, I think aides who've been around Trump for a while know that when he has an obsession, it tends to be something that reappears over and over again. You know, now at the same time, it's also worth noting that Trump has a tendency to float kind of fantastical ideas around.

And then, you know, not always necessarily follow through with implementing them. And this certainly fits in that that bucket as well. But as far as strategically where the Trump administration is at, there is one this kind of undercurrent of.

I'm going to call it a kind of neo-imperialist streak in some of the policies that they pursue. And kind of all of these ideas come from this place of an idea that the United States needs to be in exploration mode, needs to be expanding, needs to be shoring up its defenses vis-a-vis China, needs to be acquiring the minerals that are needed for advanced technologies.

and needs to be energy independent as well. And Greenland checks a lot of those boxes. Let's get into Arctic defense then. Trevor, can you kick us off with why Greenland's location just is so significant in terms of U.S. military might? Sure. So the United States wants to be an Arctic power. And

And the degree to which global warming has changed the world has made the Arctic a space that is going to be way more important in the future than it has been in the past. And the U.S. is already present in the Arctic, but they want dominance when it comes to both energy possibilities, but also in a related sense, the military advantages of being strategic and dominant there. That is not something they want to

China to ever gain. That's not something they want. China to be able to partner with Russia, another Arctic power, in order to have a foothold there.

And Jacob, does the U.S. really need to snap up Greenland in order to get the kind of military leverage that it wants there? The short answer is no. The United States has, dating back to the 1950s, they entered a defense treaty with Denmark that essentially gave the United States unlimited powers over

to do what it wants militarily in Greenland. Since then, they've closed down all but one military base up in the north. But really, if they wanted to open more military bases, if they wanted to install radars on Greenland's east coast to see what's going down through the GI-UK gap between UK and Greenland, they could do this basically just by telling the Danish and Greenlandic governments

Now, we've recently seen Trump gravitating more towards Russian President Vladimir Putin's orbit. How does Greenland figure in countering Russian influence? And of course, on the global political stage as well? I think that, you know, at this point, Greenland is not figured in in a major way into the Trump administration's Russia policy, which is surprising, right? I think the main goal here is to try to make sure that there aren't

new powers that get a foothold in the region. And I think a lot of the focus is actually on the possibility that China could work with Russia or that China could, in a private sector capacity, come into Greenland and gain some advantage. Right. And we've seen in the past that the main U.S. concern in Greenland has really been Chinese activities there. So we've reported in the past years about how Washington has

has tried and successfully kept

the Chinese out of Greenland in mining, in financing new airports that have been built in research institutions. Of course, the buzzwords that we're all hearing non-stop now are critical minerals, rare earths. Greenland is sitting on top of a significant number of natural resources. Trevor, what is the US eyeing in Greenland and how does that play into its economic security strategy?

So this is a huge focus for Trump and for his national security advisor, Mike Waltz, is this concern about the availability of especially rare earth minerals that are needed for the semiconductor and other technology industries.

And the administration is very concerned by China's increased weaponization of its dominance in the rare earth space, including its use and threat of export controls on some of these very rare, rare earths. And so that has kind of dictated a policy where they are scouring far and wide in the world for new sources of stability and insurance.

when it comes to some of these minerals. And so Greenland has definitely fit into that strategy too, as this is one of the places, along with anywhere from Ukraine to space, where the United States is going to be looking to pull some of these rocks out of the ground. And Jacob, what exactly does Greenland have to offer here? Yeah, I mean, they pretty much have it all, to be honest. And the unique thing about Greenland is that its availability, many of these critical minerals and rare earths,

graphite, copper, nickel, zinc, gold, iron, titanium, uranium, and many, many more. They're easily available sitting right there ready to mine. The problem is, of course, the lack of infrastructure in Greenland. There are no roads between towns in Greenland.

The climate is a big hindrance in the northern part of Greenland. It's completely dark for at least four or five months of the year and extremely cold. So you only have a window of a few months to do any real exploration. But they've been trying to get their mining industry going for a long time.

with little success. What you really need is some of the big companies and large serious investor types to come in and say, okay, this is something we believe in. So, there's a big investment gap to get some of the real big mining sites up and running. Now, especially in the south, there's two

very large rare earth deposits, some of the biggest in the world. That's two of the projects that could be relevant for the United States.

Okay, Jacob, now let's zoom in and hear from some of the Greenlandic people you met in Nuuk. What have they had to say about this revived U.S. interest in their island? Kim Clijs Eriksson is an artist who carves these beautiful and very detailed sculptures of walrus tusks and walrus craniums.

And he is very well known in Greenland and I think he's the only artist of this kind. This is a very old art form that he's taken up and trying to revive, trying to bring it back. These are the last walrus tusks that my grandfather carved. He sees himself

As a storyteller, he said there's very few history books about the Inuit, you know, what happened before colonization and before Greenland was really modernized. Kim Klaes Erikson is a symbol of this growing sense of pride in Inuit identity that is happening in Greenland right now and which has been very much galvanized by the comments made by Trump. I mean, at first I thought it was a joke.

but I could sense that he was serious about it. But what kind of man tries to buy a country in 2025? Who does that? So even though I don't hate the United States,

I was kind of in disgust that he wanted to do that. But in reverse, I'd love to work with the United States and not be part of the United States, but be proud Inuits of Greenland and our own government here. And not only United States, we would be open to the rest of the world instead of just Denmark from here.

Greenland's population of roughly 57,000 people are gearing up for an election on Tuesday. Top of voters' minds are aspirations for independence from Denmark.

Jacob, you spoke to a Greenlandic influencer, Kupernuk Olsen, who's also running in next week's election. You spoke to her on a very windy day in Nuuk's colonial-era harbor. What did she have to say about this tightrope that Nuuk is walking between Copenhagen and Washington, D.C.? So Kupernuk Olsen used to work as a mining engineer in Greenland's government. She's Greenland's biggest social media influencer. And she told us that she decided to run for parliament.

for the main pro-independence party. I hope that my children will be proud Greenlanders in an independent country and live a free life without any colonization. And her decision was fueled basically by Donald Trump's remarks about him wanting his own Greenland.

She was not too keen on Trump wanting to take over Greenland. We will never ever become a state under the United States. But all the interest from the US and the rest of the world is empowering Greenlanders. So it's helping towards our independence. But what he said about how Greenlanders felt they'd been treated poorly by Denmark for many years,

And that certainly was something she and many others were happy that he brought up. I think she's certainly going to attract some votes among people who want to distance or completely cut ties with Denmark. And it feels like the Greenlandic people, in a sense, are caught right now between a rock and a hard place. They're alarmed by the U.S., but they're not really thrilled with the fraught relationship that they have with Denmark.

You attended a documentary premiere as well, which you said underscored a shifting attitude towards Copenhagen. Can you tell us about that? While we were there, a documentary called Greenland's White Gold premiered at the Newt Cinema, and it was a really big event.

The whole government was there and the political, business, cultural elite was there. And the documentary basically told the story of how Danish companies, including state-owned ones, had mined a very large cryolite deposit in the south of Greenland over many, many decades.

how they had brought all this back to Denmark and without this benefiting the people of Greenland at all. And it made a real big impact. I saw people really upset and some people were crying and they said the whole narrative that Denmark has been telling us all these years about how they're a good colonizer and we should be happy that Denmark is supporting us economically.

That's basically a lie. This documentary all of a sudden made Denmark the main villain in the election campaign and even further galvanized the independence movement. Denmark's finance ministry has said it will look at the profit allegations made in the film as part of an ongoing historical investigation into relations with Greenland. The ministry said it had not reviewed the numbers presented in the film.

Given these developments, Trevor, any sense of how closely the U.S. administration is keeping tabs on Greenland's election? No, I mean, they are watching. They are very interested in kind of where the sentiment of the people is on this issue. And they want to see, you know, what are the possibilities for the U.S. to kind of set up a plan going forward on how they can execute on Trump's vision.

And Jacob, can you give us a taste of what to expect when the polls open? What's really at stake in this election? One party, the Nallerag party, that wants to swiftly cut ties with Denmark. They are certainly making the most noise at the moment. There are no

opinion polls, so we don't know where it stands. But I think it's unlikely that they will be able to hold power on their own after an election. They will have to share power in a coalition with some of the traditional bigger parties. But the approach of Nallerak is that they want to enter negotiations with Denmark quickly.

And once they have a deal with Denmark, what they hope for is that Denmark will continue to support Greenland for a number of years before they achieve full independence. But I think people really love to talk about independence and they love to talk about the sense of injustice they feel. But when you speak to people just a little bit longer than they say, well, you know, we need to take it step by step.

We need to get the economy in order, we need to get some of the mining projects up and running, we need to get the tourism sector up and running. So I have a sense that it's not going to happen that quickly. I think in Greenland many people certainly see now there's a window, a historic window to gain independence. But I think it also creates a window for the US to increase its influence in Greenland.

Denmark is spending a little less than a billion dollars a year on Greenland. And there's a beginning debate here in Denmark where I'm based. They would say, why should we keep paying all this money to Greenland? On the political side, it's a bit more nuanced, I'd say. I think politicians have, ever since Trump renewed his interest in Greenland, they've realized that

you know, this is serious, we could actually lose Greenland. But again, it has to, any sort of new arrangement, a free association pact, any sort of future links between Denmark and an independent Greenland would have to make economic sense for Denmark. And Denmark does not have the economic muscle to do what Trump really wants Denmark to do in Greenland.

and in the North Atlantic. One thing I should add here is that Denmark, here in Washington, has been completely blindsided by how quickly a lot of this has developed.

And so it's all hands on deck in terms of the Danish government to figure out how to solve this problem and keep its alliance with the United States strong at the same time. Yeah, it's certainly created a big crisis. When Trump floated the idea of buying Greenland back in 2019, it was perceived in Denmark and in Greenland mostly as a sort of a loose idea.

And it was quickly rebuffed by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as absurd. Greenland is today a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It's part of our territory. And it's not for sale. Which caused a sort of a public spat between the Prime Minister and Trump. This time around, the response from Denmark has been

that it's up to Greenland to decide. They realize Trump is serious this time. He really wants Greenland.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

Thanks again to Trevor and Jacob for their time and expertise. Thank you also to producer Tom Little, who worked with Jacob to collect the audio and footage from their trip to Greenland. Reuters World News is produced by Kim Vanell, Sharon Wright-Garson, Jonah Green, David Spencer, Christopher Wall-Jasper, and me, Gail Issa. Our senior producers are Tara Oakes and Carmel Crimmins. Our executive producer is Lila de Kretzer. Musical composition and sound design for this episode are by Christopher Wall-Jasper and Josh Sommer.

We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show. To make sure you never miss an episode, follow along on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.