A Buyer’s Guide to Greenland
Greenland wants but can't afford its independence. But despite lip service to the contrary, Denmark sees no zero strategic logic in enabling Greenlandic independence. Trump could provide the solution.
NOTE: President Trump’s Davos speech was most enlightening — watch it if you haven’t already — but not necessarily in the way you’re hearing from the talking heads.
Yes, the President renounced the use of force to obtain Greenland. Shocking, I know. The only question here is why the pundit class breathlessly reports such nonsense as though it were real, or perhaps as though it were 2015 and they’d never covered the man before. Trump was never going to use force, but at the beginning of a negotiation, he also never takes any option off the table.
So why did he now? Because all the sound and fury signified something: getting the full attention of a European establishment stuck in inertia.
The results:
Trump’s speech was clarifying. Read between the lines and you see why. Trump is planning for the future, not the next four years but the next 40. And that future has potential to look very different.
First, governments change, and allies make mistakes. The UK under Socialist Keir Starmer is in the process of handing the Chagos Islands — home of America’s most important Indian Ocean base, Diego Garcia — to Mauritius. There’s no reasonable basis for this: the Chagossians oppose the transfer, Mauritius is in China’s orbit, it has no power to make Britain act, and just to make things even worse, Starmer intends to pay Mauritius to take the islands.
Wait, what?!
So when you hear the various arguments about how America can put any bases it wants in Greenland, remember Diego Garcia and the absurd Chagos Islands deal, which the President rightly called “an act of great stupidity”. If this is what one of the world’s nuclear powers will do under the wrong government, what might tiny Denmark do in the course of the next half-century?
But second, while the Chagos deal is happening under the purview of a supposedly-solid U.S. ally, who’s to say any of these countries will be allies tomorrow? The Enemedia constantly screeches that “Trump is destroying NATO”, yet never contemplate that NATO might not be forever. As the President pointed out again yesterday, Europe is importing an Islamic horde that in time will transform the continent. Will Francistan, or Londonistan, still be our friends? Will Denmark? Who knows?
Hemispheric defense is non-negotiable. There’s a reason Trump wants to “own” Greenland (though an independent Greenland with a U.S. Compact of Free Association like several island nations in the Pacific seems far more likely). He likes Europe. He’s for NATO. But he doesn’t trust either of them. He’s not wrong.
That’s the subtext no one’s reporting. And that’s why you need The Rod Martin Report.
In any case, the negotiations having commenced and a deal being in the works, you need to read Elizabeth Buchanan’s “Buyer’s Guide to Greenland”. You can bet Donald Trump has. — RDM
A Buyer’s Guide to Greenland
by Elizabeth Buchanan
January 22, 2026
I recently wrote a book countenancing the idea that the United States could buy Greenland, and I have received some very interesting responses. Some are perplexed at the utility of an Australian assessment of Greenland geostrategy (I’m from Canberra); others have admonished me personally for “willing into reality” U.S. ownership of Greenland. All I did was offer a buyer’s guide to an alluring piece of real estate — background that anyone laying claim to this land should know.
