{"id":132670,"date":"2025-04-06T08:48:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T08:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/greenland-isnt-the-first-territory-america-wanted-from-denmark-heres-another-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-04-06T08:48:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T08:48:03","slug":"greenland-isnt-the-first-territory-america-wanted-from-denmark-heres-another-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/greenland-isnt-the-first-territory-america-wanted-from-denmark-heres-another-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenland isn't the first territory America wanted from Denmark. Here's another. – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president says that \u201cone way or another we\u2019re gonna get<\/a>\u201d Greenland from Denmark. The vice president tells Greenlanders they\u2019d be better off<\/a>. And the White House refuses to rule out<\/a> deploying American soldiers.
President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s bullying tactics have caused an international stir. But his bluster isn\u2019t unheard of in White House history, and not even just in U.S. relations with Denmark.\u00a0
Over a century ago, another administration brandished the same tactics to successfully take over another piece of Denmark\u2019s old colonial lands: the U.S. Virgin Islands, then the Danish West Indies.
Americans today barely hear anything about the Islands beyond being a restful vacation destination. The U.S. territory evokes an atmosphere that\u2019s the near opposite of Greenland: tiny bits of tropical land near the equator with near-perfect temperatures, in contrast to Greenland, the world’s largest island that is not a continent. The Virgin Islands boasts beaches and pirate coves, Greenland has the world’s second largest ice sheet. The Virgin isles are a place of stiff rums rather than grizzled whale meats in the frosty expanse of Greenland.
But more than a century ago top U.S. officials saw in the Virgin Islands what Trump\u2019s administration sees in Greenland: key military positions off American shores, as well as an ideal position along burgeoning trade routes.
Private White House communications under Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president, evince a menacing determination similar to the 47th president\u2019s recent words \u201cWe\u2019ll get Greenland. Yeah. 100%<\/a>\u201d
In a letter to Wilson in 1915<\/a>, then Secretary of State Robert Lansing tells the president about an \u201cembarrassing question\u201d a Danish diplomat asked.
If Denmark didn\u2019t strike a deal to sell the Islands, would American troops take them by force, the diplomat wanted to know.
\u201cI told the Minister that while I had not had in mind such action,\u201d Lansing says to Wilson, \u201cI could conceive of circumstances which would compel such an act.\u201d
The Danish minister says losing\u00a0 St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix will \u201cbe felt as a great national loss\u201d but the Danes moved quickly to complete the sale.
\u201cThere are plenty of moments of the U.S. purchase of the Virgin Islands which have close parallels to the quizzical ways Trump and the Trump administration have been talking about the U.S. relationship with Greenland,\u201d Christopher Nichols, a Woodrow Wilson scholar at the Ohio State University, told USA TODAY.\u00a0
\u201cBut here\u2019s where it gets really Trumpian,\u201d he says of Lansing\u2019s threat to the Danes.
A sticking point in the sale of the Caribbean islands had been whether or not residents would become citizens. But the Danes cave at Lansing\u2019s chilling suggestion.\u00a0
\u201cGuess what,\u201d Nichols says, \u201cthey agreed to the no citizenship thing right away.\u201d
The Danish West Indies became the U.S. Virgin Islands for $25 million in gold<\/a> and on March 31, 1917, the American flag goes up on the Islands in place of the Dannebrog, and so began a ceremony now commemorated on the islands as Transfer Day.
As Trump and his administration ramp up efforts to transfer another Danish territory, here\u2019s what to know about the last time the U.S. aimed to take Danish territory and how it wound up for those in the middle.
The 28th president\u2019s ambitions to take the Danish West Indies were much like the reasons given by the 47th president over a century later: strategic. New world powers were emerging then, trade routes were at stake and nations were aiming to snatch up critical junctures before their adversaries.
American officials dating back to at least the administration of the 18th president, Andrew Jackson, wanted a naval base in the Caribbean and saw the then-Danish islands as the best option, according to historians. Washington also wanted to secure the new trade routes created with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, much like Trump\u2019s interest in securing burgeoning trade through the Arctic<\/a>.
The nation\u2019s rival then wasn\u2019t China or Russia but Germany. Disparate states unified in 1871 to form Imperial Germany and the empire rapidly became an industrial powerhouse.
America and Germany soon found themselves in stiff opposition and U.S. officials, again, raised the possibility of securing the Islands.\u00a0
\u201cWe should acquire the Danish Islands\u2026 no strong European power, and especially not Germany, should be allowed to gain a foothold by supplanting some weak European power,\u201d\u00a0then Assistant Secretary of the Navy – later the 26th president – Theodore Roosevelt writes in a letter in 1897<\/a>. \u201cI do not fear England; Canada, is a hostage for her good behavior; but I do fear some of the other powers.\u201d
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 and fears that Germany would absorb Danish territory made the matter into a more urgent issue than ever for Washington.
When asked what would \u201ccompel\u201d the U.S. to take the Islands by force, Lansing told the Danish minister in 1915 that \u201cthe possible consequence of absorption of Denmark by a great power would create a situation which it would be difficult to meet other than by occupation of the Islands.\u201d
Today, the Islands mark the easternmost point of the U.S. territory. The Islands never became the significant naval base U.S. officials once envisioned but they remain a popular destination for American vacationers.
Around 87,000 people live on the Islands which cover some 135 square miles, according to U.S. Census data<\/a>.
The White House\u2019s determination to make Greenland part of the United States brings the ambitions of presidents like Wilson and Roosevelt into a whole new century.
This time it\u2019s not about Germany, the Panama Canal and protecting America\u2019s southern coast. It\u2019s about U.S. adversary China, a thawing Arctic creating more opportunities for trade through the Northwest Passage<\/a> and missile defense systems helmed by the U.S. Space Force.
\u201cWe have an obligation to protect the world,\u201d Trump said of his ambitions to take Greenland. \u201cThis is world peace, this is international security. And I have that obligation while I’m president.\u201d
American troops are already stationed in Greenland at Pituffik Space Base, where Vance spoke last month<\/a>. The base hosts missile defense early warning radar systems and is strategically located above NORAD radar installations in Canada designed to detect missile launches against North America crossing the Arctic.
The Arctic Ocean provides a shortcut<\/a> for ships traveling between the U.S. and Asia and between Europe and Asia, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. The distance is about 40% less than routes using the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal.
Greenland also offers a trove of rare earth minerals<\/a>, of which the U.S. was a top producer until China took over. The island is estimated to have the eighth-largest reserve<\/a> of rare earths. Gaining access to them would reduce U.S. reliance<\/a> on China \u2013 though the Chinese have already invested<\/a> in Greenland mining projects.
Trump and Vance have tried to sell Greenlanders on the idea that joining the United States would be an improvement on Denmark but the story of the Virgin Islands contains some cautionary lessons.\u00a0
America did improve life on the Islands in many ways, historian Isaac Dookhan writes in A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. Schools, emergency services and hospitals were all upgraded over what had been in place under Danish rule.
But the economy still flagged – another main reason for Denmark to sell the land – and Islanders continued emigrating. Conditions deteriorated to the point that President Herbert Hoover called the Islands the \u201ceffective poorhouse<\/a>\u201d of the U.S. after visiting in 1931.
Congress didn\u2019t confer U.S. citizenship on Islanders until 1927. The U.S. began granting them some self-governance in 1936 but Islanders still cannot vote for president and the delegate that they send to Washington cannot vote in Congress.
\u201cWe\u2019ve come a long way since 1917 . . . It took us a long while to become citizens, as far as we are,\u201d Donna Christensen, a former longtime delegate to Congress from the Virgin Islands, told USA TODAY.\u00a0
But a few issues Christensen perennially battled over in Congress leave the Islanders as effective second-class citizens: the inability to vote for president and the fact that Medicaid funding is capped, unlike for states.
\u201cHealthcare is the one where I think not having state-like treatment has hurt us the most,\u201d Christensen said.
The median household income on the Islands is around $40,000, compared to around $72,000 for the United States, according to the Federal Reserve<\/a>. Around 23% of the population lives under the federal poverty rate – compared to 11% for the U.S. Meanwhile, the average home price is $291,000, just 10% less than in the U.S.
By contrast, Greenland receives the same robust social benefits afforded to people in Denmark, including free healthcare and free education.
Shelley Moorhead, a former minister of state for external affairs for the Islands, describes their status as a U.S. territory in bleak terms. \u201cWe are a third world country with an American flag,\u201d says the native of St. Croix, the largest island.
But when asked whether the Islands would prefer to remain part of Denmark, Moorhead gave a resounding no.\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cWe appreciate Denmark\u2019s affection – the people-to-people affection we have – but you got to understand we are not fish on a colonial wharf to be passed between empires,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is what makes Trump\u2019s advance towards Greenland so abhorrent, this is no longer the age of empire.\u201d
Moorhead today is the president of the African-Caribbean Reparations & Resettlement Alliance, a group trying to secure reparations from Denmark for the nearly 200 years the Nordic country practiced slavery on the Islands.
The Danes abolished the practice after a slave rebellion in 1848, which led to conditions where a forced sale of the Islands actually benefited Denmark. Amid new labor costs and high security costs needed to prevent labor union strikes over still poor working conditions, the Islands began running a recurring deficit for Denmark.
\u201cThe very purpose of colonialism, namely economic gain for the colonizing power, no longer existed for Denmark,\u201d writes William Boyer in America’s Virgin Islands: A History of Human Rights and Wrongs.
Neither Denmark nor the U.S. have lived up to their principles regarding human rights and democracy when it comes to the Virgin Islands, Moorhead argues.
Denmark effectively absolved itself of responsibility for enslaving Islanders and the U.S. has left Islanders under the same undemocratic conditions that \u201cled the 13 colonies to revolt against the king,\u201d he says.
\u201cWe are owed a great debt and we have been disenfranchised and marginalized for too long,\u201d Moorhead says. \u201cThe right to self-determination is a human right, an inalienable human right and it was violated.\u201d
Michael Loria is a national reporter on the USA TODAY breaking news desk. Contact him at mloria@usatoday.com, @mchael_mchael or on Signal at (202) 290-4585.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The president says that \u201cone way or another we\u2019re gonna get\u201d Greenland from Denmark. The vice president tells Greenlanders they\u2019d be better off. And the White House refuses to rule out deploying American soldiers.President Donald Trump\u2019s bullying tactics have caused an international stir. But his bluster isn\u2019t unheard of in White House history, and not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}