The Autocratic Rationales Behind Trump's Greenland Fixation

Plunder, Pleasing Putin, Partnerships with Technofascists, Megalomania, Corrupting the U.S. Military

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“Autocrats thrive on chaos and disruption, even if they claim they are bringing stability to the nation,” I wrote in a November essay about how chaos is a feature and not a bug of autocratic governance. “They specialize in doing unexpected things, some of which were previously unthinkable, and in shaking up the system in the interest of pushing through their agendas and consolidating their personal power.”

"Both Sane and Insane": Chaos as an Autocratic Governance Strategy

A few months later, the Donald Trump administration surprised the world by capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and claiming Venezuela’s oil for America. The operationally flawless and completely illegal extraction left trigger-happy administration officials and their leader feeling invincible, and now they have set their sights on Greenland, which Trump vows he will obtain for the United States “one way or another.”

It is easy to consider this threat as the latest and “weirdest” fixation of a “mad dictator,” in Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman’s words. Trump has said it is a “psychological necessity” to have “Compete and Total Control” of Greenland. In a message to Norway’s prime minister, said that he no longer felt obliged to “think purely of Peace” because he did not get the Nobel Peace Prize. So file this under the exhaustive and exhausting category of “aggrieved autocrat vendettas against the world.”

Yet the quest to own Greenland has rationales and constituencies that must be taken seriously. All of them reflect a worldview in which the strongman has the right to take what he wants, and the weak deserve to be dominated and exploited.

Resource Plunder and Climate Change Denial Legitimation

Why should natural resources essential for the United States be wasted on tiny and unimportant Greenland? Once climate change escalates —the faster the better, for plunder purposes—more bounty will be revealed. As Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said in 2019, when his boss started musing about buying Greenland: the melting of Arctic glaciers promises “opportunity and abundance” and the liberation of 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30% of its undiscovered natural gas, and now-buried gold, diamonds, and uranium.

Scientist Dr. Neil Shubin has stated that this campaign is also about legitimizing climate change denial, getting more people on board with an extraction-without-consequences mentality, and gaining access not just to buried precious substances but also an underwater mountain range, the Lomonosov Ridge, that is a gateway to the ocean floor —”the largest piece of the earth that’s up for grabs” right now. Trump is targeting two of three countries having claims to it (Canada and Denmark, by virtue of Greenland) and allying with the third (Russia).

The aurora borealis over Kulusuk, a village in Greenland. Credit: Norris Niman/Visit Greenland.

Technofascist Fantasies of Freedom and Racial Purity

Greenland has long been targeted by technofascists such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and their political proxies and operators (J.D. Vance) as an ideal laboratory for the network state: a state where billionaires and oligarchs can live free from the laws, regulations, and taxes imposed by traditional governments. Fascism has always attracted people with utopian promises of national communities cleansed of all traditional restraints and norms.

For this tribe, the old-school route to financial freedom by making use of the offshore system to store and launder profits is not enough: they want to construct a new and pure society “in which any restrictions on American oligarchy—any oversight, any democratic checks, any hurdles whatsoever—are removed, and a golden, pro-oligarchic age reigns, centered on, but by no means limited to, Greenland,” as Casey Michael writes.

Fantasies of racial purity also factor in here, along with libertarian and neoliberal philosophies taken to an extreme. As Nina Burleigh reminds us, Julius Evola —a Fascist who appeared to other Fascists in the 1930s as too extreme —has become the muse of Musk and others for lauding Greenland as “the primordial homeland of a highly civilized white race.” For today’s Fascists, the United States poses challenges. Even if you deport 15 million people of color, so many remain! A Greenland governed by white supremacists offers a fresh start for the white race.

Solving Putin’s Problems

Since the start of this authoritarian administration, I have argued that Trump is in office, in part, to solve Vladimir Putin’s problems.

The Make Russia Great Again "Summit"

That includes removing deterrents to his expansion into Europe and Eurasia. NATO is the primary deterrent and so creating a crisis for this trans-Atlantic alliance benefits Russia. Breaking down democratic defenses has been the overarching goal of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare against the West. Trump has made himself a vehicle of that mission. This hostility to European democracies is why Trump immediately retorted that he would impose heavy tariffs against European nations that opposed his moves on Greenland.

Breaking the U.S. Military

Threatening war on an autonomous territory within Denmark, a founding NATO ally, has one more advantage from the autocratic point of view. It’s no secret that Trump and his enablers have been trying to transform the powerful U.S. military into an authoritarian institution. That means not only banning democratic cultures and values (diversity, meritocracy, critical thinking, non-partisanship, obedience to the Constitution) but corrupting service members by asking them to do things they never imagined.

A Holistic Plan for an Authoritarian Military

This is the secret sauce of all autocrats, who “test” and re-socialize their armed forces by having them treat their compatriots as enemy combatants (military juntas) and giving them license to commit atrocities (Israel, Russia, Syria under Assad, the Fascists, etc). The U.S. military is being prepared for such tests. Los Angeles in June was the trial run, with a battalion of Marines deployed for use against protesters.

Now the United States Northern Command has placed 1,500 members of the 11th Airborne Division on alert for deployment, supposedly to Minnesota. It is notable that this is a highly specialized force trained for Arctic warfare and stationed in Alaska. Minneapolis is cold, but Greenland has Arctic conditions.

The United States has had troops in Greenland since World War II and keeps a small missile defense base there. But here we are talking about a potential invasion, or special forces lightning seizure, which, like the Venezuela operation, would require killing people —in this case, civilians or state security forces of a democratic NATO ally. This would “break” the military as a democratic institution, opening the way to moral bankruptcy of the kind we see in armed forces that serve dictators.

As we see, there is much to gain for the cause of autocracy and lawlessness by claiming Greenland for America. A “Committee of Vultures” may be circling Greenland, as tech journalist Gil Duran writes, but its target is also the remnants of democratic America and democratic unity in Europe.