Greenland
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Greenland is, in John Kiriakou's description, "for lack of a better word, a colony, a protectorate of Denmark", and Denmark is a NATO country, which is the fact that makes American interest in it dangerous. The United States has had an air base there for many years. Everybody assumed Trump was joking or trolling when he first raised taking it, Kiriakou says, but he kept bringing it up.

What it is actually about: rare earths

Kiriakou's explanation of the underlying interest is entirely about minerals. Greenland is rich in rare earth metals, and Trump has "this obsession now with rare earth metals"; the same obsession explains the interest in Ukraine.

The problem he describes is not supply but processing. The United States has some rare earths but far less than it needs, buys most of what it uses from Central Africa, and all of it is refined in China. Refining is expensive to the point of being a money-losing proposition, and in Kiriakou's account the Chinese are willing to absorb that loss precisely to keep the monopoly on refining.

On this much he grants the premise: "in the back of his mind, Trump sees this as a long-term problem, correctly, most likely." His objection is to the remedy, "to correct the problem, the solution is not to invade Canada or to invade Greenland."

Two contradictory readings from his own contacts

Kiriakou has reported two incompatible accounts, both sourced to people he knows, and has not reconciled them.

The first came from a friend in the White House over coffee: the United States is "serious about Greenland" and does not intend to attack it, but does want to buy it. When Kiriakou objected that the king and the prime minister of Denmark had both said Greenland was not for sale, the contact replied that Washington would instead lean on a 1951 or 1953 treaty signed with Denmark, granting the United States essentially unfettered rights to bases and rare-earth extraction in Greenland, to argue that Greenland is "de facto ours" anyway: take the money for it, and we are going to keep it. Kiriakou told him flatly that this was a violation of international law.

The second came from a friend who used to chair the Republican Party in Texas, and made Kiriakou laugh: "Trump doesn't have any designs on Greenland." On this reading Trump likes to throw grenades into the middle of the room because it distracts the media from things that matter more to him, confirmation fights, or his tax bill, and lets people waste their time arguing about Greenland and the Panama Canal while the bill goes through. Kiriakou adds his own dry note in support: "we already have military bases in Greenland anyway."

Reactions in Congress and in Greenland

The congressional response Kiriakou singles out is House Resolution 1116, sponsored by a junior Republican congressman from Georgia, which calls for the president to take Greenland by any means necessary and to change the territory's name to "Red, White, and Blue Land." His assessment is two words and a consequence: "This is just ridiculous", and "it's bad for our foreign relations."

Greenland's own answer he treats as the more telling one. Admitting he had not even realised Greenland had a prime minister, he notes that a special election was called and the parties came together to elect someone whose entire platform was to oppose any attempt by the United States to take any part of Greenland.

The cost to the alliance

Kiriakou noted that every member country of the European Union had signed a document pledging support for Denmark over the dispute, and warns that if the United States were to forcibly take Greenland, or coerce Denmark into giving it up, the result would be the end of NATO, replaced by the unified European Union military the EU has been striving toward regardless.

He files it alongside the threats to annex Canada and to retake the Panama Canal as evidence of a foreign policy he will not defend: "We're threatening to invade and annex Greenland. It's craziness. So, I'm not a big supporter of US foreign policy right now." What he would rather see the effort spent on he states plainly: sitting across the table from the Iranians, or reopening the American embassy in Havana, "something that's going to encourage peace in the world."

The Danish preparations

John Kiriakou confirmed in 2026 that Denmark had made real military preparations against an American invasion of Greenland, troops to be sent, airstrips to be lined with explosives and destroyed, blood supplies staged, because the Danes took Donald Trump's statement that "Greenland will be ours" literally.

He did not consider the question settled even during the Iran war, noting that "the Greenland topic keeps popping up again like a meerkat." The episode is treated at the Danish Greenland demolition plan.

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Monroe Doctrine
- China's base in Djibouti
