Carla Sands, former U.S. ambassador to Denmark during the first Trump administration, said the U.S. acquisition of Greenland would be a vital national security move for America and its allies.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, is a North American island autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
President-elect Donald Trump previously said that the U.S. “ownership and control” of Greenland is “an absolute necessity” for “purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World.”
Sands (pictured above), who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark from 2017-2021, agrees with Trump, explaining how the lack of an American presence in the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom) gap gives adversaries including Russia and China an upper hand in the region.
“The [GIUK gap] is a giant area of open sea that has been historically, in the 21st century, largely unprotected by the U.S. Now, Russia has been playing there and now China is also playing in that region and not far away, working to get new transportation routes through the Arctic to cut off about two weeks of passage to get goods from Asia to Western Europe and the U.S.,” Sands explained on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“China looks at this region as if they should control it. They call themselves, incorrectly, a near Arctic nation and literally wrote a paper called the Polar Silk Road. They want to pull the Arctic into their Belt and Road Initiative and they expect to do that right in Greenland,” Sands added.
Noting that while Greenland relies on Denmark for defense, the Danish military does not possess the capabilities to defend Greenland if China or Russia were to invade,
“Greenland has control of everything except their own defense and their foreign policy. Those two areas are controlled by Denmark because Denmark has more capabilities to take care of that, but they don’t have enough. They have a little Arctic military up there, but it’s maybe 30 guys, and then they have several dog sled patrols,” Sands said.
“The fact is, that’s just not going to do it in an area one third the size of the continental U.S. It’s gigantic. So they need more than they can actually provide,” Sands added.
Sands said that the U.S. would be more than capable of defending Greenland, especially with Trump at the helm.
“The might of the United States, being the most powerful nation in the world, most capable nation in the world, can do it, especially with a president like Donald Trump at the helm. He leads with peace through strength and putting America first. When you have your eye on the ball, on the goal, which is to put America first, everything else falls into place because everybody benefits when we have a strong America,” Sands explained.
“You can see how the world has fallen apart and the world’s on fire because of a weak president. We see it under Joe Biden and we saw it under Barack Obama,” Sands added.
Sands said Greenlanders have long wanted independence and noted how a recent poll confirmed that approximately two-thirds of Greenlanders support joining the U.S.
“They’re wonderful people. They like to hunt and fish mostly. Greenlanders, when I asked them what they wanted, they said they want to have success in their mining. They’ve got a lot of rare earth minerals and energy there, but they want to protect their environment, which America is the best at. They want to have success in their tourism and they want their kids to learn to speak English and be well educated and not end up speaking Chinese as their second language,” Sands said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
