Like a novice gambler whose response to a big win is to start betting bigger, the Trump White House is doubling down on their aggressive approach to the Americas in the wake of the U.S. military raid to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro over the weekend.
Over the four days that have elapsed since the daring, unprecedented — and according to critics, illegal — special forces action that brought Maduro from a Caracas safe house to a New York courtroom on drug and weapons charges, the president and his allies in the White House have proceeded to threaten or warn of military action against multiple American allies and neighbors, including Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Denmark, the NATO member kingdom which has controlled Greenland in whole or in part since the 16th century.
Trump himself told reporters on Sunday that the result of his decision to have U.S. forces seize Maduro was to show that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” while claiming that his administration’s aim was to make sure the hemisphere was filled with “countries around us that are viable and successful and where the oil is allowed to freely come out.”
For Trump, it was a return to the bellicose rhetoric he’d spouted since the days immediately following his 2024 election victory, when he began claiming the U.S. needs to annex Greenland for “national security” reasons despite the existence of a decades-old treaty that essentially gives America carte blanche to base troops there as part of the country’s commitment to NATO.
But he has now stepped up his claims about the mineral-rich arctic territory, which he has baselessly asserted is “covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place” while dismissing the Danish government as “not going to be able” to do what is needed to protect it.
One of his foremost senior aides, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, defended the president’s expansionist dreams while adding a sinister edge to them during a contentious interview with CNN on Monday.
After anchor Jake Tapper pressed him to say that the U.S. would not take “military action” to seize Greenland by force — something that would require attacking one of America’s closest allies — Miller responded by asking Tapper what he called “the real question.”
“By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?” Miller replied.
In fact, Denmark has had claims and presence there since 1721 — more than a half-century before American independence — and it ceased to be a Danish colony in 1953. And while the United States once had a tenuous claim on some of Greenland’s territory after American explorers mapped the island’s northernmost reaches, Washington formally surrendered such aspirations in 1916 as part of a treaty signed with Copenhagen in which Denmark gave the U.S. what were then the Danish West Indies — now the U.S. Virgin Islands — in exchange for $25 million paid in gold.
But Miller’s question was not intended to explore any hypotheticals. It was instead an expression of pure contempt for the idea that Denmark — a relatively small country — could assert a claim to anything the United States (meaning Trump) desires to have for itself.
He told Tapper shortly thereafter that Greenland should “obviously ... be a part of the United States” and said the question of how to make that happen would be “a conversation that we’re going to have as a country.”
“Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” he added.
The president’s continued unsolicited assertions of desire to take over the arctic territory regardless of what the Danes may have to say about it has drawn universal condemnation from America’s closest European allies, including the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain, and Denmark.
Greenland, they wrote, “belongs to its people.”
“It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” they said.
Moving ahead with whatever plan the White House might have to gain control over the territory would universally alienate allies and potentially break up the NATO alliance, casting the U.S. into uncharted foreign policy territory after more than 75 years leading the West.
Such an action would be unprecedented but in character for Trump and aides such as Miller, because underlying Miller’s grandiose declarations is a belief held by Trump and many in his orbit that America can simply take what it wants because it has a bigger stick than the other guy — especially in the Western hemisphere.
But fortunately for Greenlanders, the “conversation” he suggested would be had on whether to take an ally’s territory by force isn’t one Americans are interested in having.
According to a Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Monday, Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to the White House’s apparent plan to become the West’s schoolyard bully.
When asked whether the “United States should have a policy of dominating affairs in the Western Hemisphere,” just 26 percent of respondents answered in the affirmative. Not even a majority of Republicans supported Trump’s hypothetical “dominating” policy, with just 43 percent expressing support; 19 percent disagreed, while the rest said they were unsure or did not give an answer.
Asked if they supported sending U.S. troops to be stationed in Venezuela, 60 percent of Republicans said they did but just 30 percent of Americans overall. And while 59 percent of Republicans said they were in favor of the United States taking over Venezuelan oilfields, almost the same proportion – 54 percent – said they were concerned about the U.S. becoming too involved in the South American country’s affairs.
Similar polling taken last year showed that Americans opposed attempting to seize Greenland by margins of 55% percent to 28 percent for, 54 against to 23 percent for, and 73 percent against to 27 percent in favor.
Trump has expressed no concerns about alienating the European allies he has long considered “weak” compared to the authoritarian strongmen with whom he feels a kinship.
But unlike those dictators he admires — men with names like Erdogan, Orban, Putin and Xi — Trump and his party must still answer to voters who want no part in his imperialist ambitions.
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