Gerardus Mercator may have a lot to answer for. He was the cartographer who, in the 16th century, drew up a world map as an aid for navigators. On the Mercator map, which magnifies the polar regions and is still widely used today, Greenland looks bigger than the whole of South America and roughly the size of Africa. In reality, both continents are many times larger.
The deceptively enormous size of Greenland may have helped spark Donald Trump’s lust to take over the island. The US president once told interviewers: “I love maps. And I always said, ‘Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States.’” Denmark, which has sovereignty over the island, would happily give America all the military facilities it needs, as well as access to Greenland’s critical minerals. So there is no strategic case for US annexation. The president’s ego is driving this policy.
Trump has talked threateningly of acquiring Greenland the easy way or “the more difficult way” — an unmistakable reference to using force. In response to American threats, Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, has said that the annexation of Greenland would represent the end of the Nato alliance. Nicholas Burns, a former US ambassador to Nato, agrees that a US invasion “would destroy Nato”.