Trump Isn’t Crazy to Want to Buy Greenland
The island is not for sale, but a market for sovereign territories isn’t such an outlandish idea.
No, Trump, Greenland is not for sale.
Photographer: Posnov/Moment RFFormer Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen called U.S. President Donald Trump’s reported idea of buying Greenland, a self-governed Danish territory, an out-of-season April’s Fool joke. Trump’s idea may be outlandish (and impossible) but that doesn’t mean there’s no benefit in thinking about reviving the market in sovereign territories, which once made America great.
Besides acquiring Louisiana from France, Florida from Spain, Alaska from Russia and much of its southwest from Mexico, the U.S. nearly bought Greenland and Iceland in the 1860s. The idea was to surround Canada with U.S. territory and thus persuade it to join the U.S.