Trump's Godfather plan for Greenland may be falling into place

Can NATO be counted on to protect Greenland after Ukraine's fall to Russia? US President Donald Trump is betting that the answer is no.

- Ravi Velloor

There's this scene in the second part of The Godfather trilogy where Freddie Corleone, the ineffectual middle son of the late New York mafia boss Don Vito Corleone, proves helpless in controlling his drunk, wayward wife at a family gathering.

A Corleone enforcer then approaches to whisper a message from his brother, the current family head: The boss says if you can’t handle it, let me take care of the issue.

President Donald Trump’s insistence that Denmark hand over to the US the large, semi-autonomous island of Greenland has shades of the incident involving the fictional Corleone family and has been widely mocked as another example of his strongman instincts.

But to dismiss it as mere Trumpian theatrics misses the deeper strategic concern about China’s expanding footprint in the Arctic and the ability of the existing Western alliance to counter this.

From Washington’s perspective, Greenland is strategically vital to the US. Sitting on the northernmost part of the Western Hemisphere emphasised in Mr Trump's recent National Security Strategy, it lies along the shortest flight path for intercontinental and hypersonic missiles from Russia to major US population centres. It also sits astride sea lanes that are becoming newly navigable as Arctic ice melts.

Last week, Vice-President J. D. Vance advised European leaders to take Mr Trump seriously when he worries about the security of the US landmass. “Because if you are not, the United States will have to do something about it.”

The phrasing was bellicose, but it reflected a view increasingly common in Washington: that European assurances no longer suffice in an era of intensifying great-power rivalry.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has told reporters that Mr Trump and his officials are “actively” discussing the feasibility of buying Greenland from Denmark, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet leaders of Denmark and Greenland this week over the issue.