President-elect Donald Trump will on Monday 20 January 2025 be installed to be the United States of America’s 47th president; he was also the 45th president during his 4-year term during 2017-2021. There are many expectations, and also a good number of worries, and plenty of questions, about the predictability and unpredictability of the new Trump term. Also, there are many things that nobody can foresee, not even Trump himself, because, after all, politics doesn’t only have to do what can be analysed, planned, and predicted, it also has to do with what happens outside the President’s office, and how the atmosphere and reactions will be to policies and actions at home and abroad. Hence, general unpredictability always exists.

Few had foreseen the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. None had foreseen the terrible Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, with some 1400 casualties, the abduction of some 200 hostages, and many are still kept, leading to a long-lasting revenge war by Israel against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with some forty thousand deaths, displacement of hundreds of thousands, and enormous destruction of houses and other infrastructure. True, for both wars, the Russian-Ukraine War, and the Israel-Palestine War, there were fears of armed conflicts, but few predicted the magnitude of the wars that still rage.

Trump has said that when he is President, he wants the war in Ukraine to end within a very short time. I hope he follows up his bold words. In Gaza, he hasn’t been as concrete although he has said, without mincing his words, that he wants an urgent ceasefire. America should have contributed to that long ago, as it could have done, and it now seems the initial stages of a ceasefire will be implemented in the last days and hours of President Biden’s administration before Trump takes over the Oval Office in the White House. But then, the longer-term peace and development issues in the Middle East need new approaches after that. In Syria, Trump has said he wants little direct presence there.

As for being cautious in playing a direct interventionist role in conflicts, and working in other ways for good foreign relations, let us remember that in Trump’s previous 4-year term, he did not start new wars and invasions of other countries. There, he was in very good company with President Jimmy Carter (president from 1977-1981), who recently died at the age of 100 and Trump paid his respects at his state funeral in Washington D.C. last week. The style of the two men was always very different; Carter being soft-spoken and reflective, while Trump had a more direct and blunt political and public persona. Carter was a deeply religious man; about Trump, we know less about his personal faith, but without the support of the Evangelical and other Christians, he would not have won the presidential election. I wrote about Jimmy Carter in my column last week, underlining how impressed I and many are about Jimmy Carter and his work and life, especially his achievements after his term as president working closely with his wife Rosalynn Carter, who passed on in 2023 at the age 96. I am pleased that President-elect Donald Trump attended Jimmy Carter’s funeral, as he should, but perhaps it also signals some positive changes to come in his new presidential term, acknowledging people and thinking he doesn’t agree entirely with – and that would be good advice for all politicians and the rest of us to do, too.

But now I will turn to a specific issue, showing that Trump is still Trump, in language and content, namely the Greenland issue which has been in the headlines after his statement at a press conference where he said he would like to buy the world’s largest island, which has been part of Denmark since the 1700s. He said he wants to buy Greenland as it is geographically part of North-America and close to the USA. Yet, Greenland, with barely 60,000 people, is composed of 10,000 ethnic Danes and the rest of Inuits (earlier called Eskimos), or people of mixed heritage. The Greenlanders have ‘home-rule’, meaning that it is basically only defence and foreign affairs that are the responsibility of Denmark, a small land with 5.9 million people. Between one-third and half of Greenland’s government budget is covered by Denmark. Greenland has three representatives in the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen. Also, there is an independence movement in Greenland and a first referendum will take place already in 2025. The USA has a military base on the western side of the island, and it can establish more bases according to existing agreements with Denmark.

Trump’s offer to buy Greenland is not entirely new. He suggested the same in 2019, but that time Denmark’s PM Mette Fredriksen said she did not take it seriously. Well, it had also been talked about in the 1940s, when even Iceland faced a similar offer. This time, it seems the issue may become more concrete, not necessarily about the selling of Greenland, but rather about how to exercise security and military control over the island and other areas north of the USA, Canada, Norway and Russia. Let it be mentioned, too, that the northernmost Norwegian territory of the Svalbard Islands also needs to be looked at as for strengthening of future security.

The background for USA’s increasing interest for Greenland has to do with climate change in security issues. When the ice is melting in Greenland and the High North, as it is, there will be easier access to the precious rare minerals in Greenland, and expansion of fisheries will also happen. Essential, too, there will be potential for new shipping routes from China and the Far East in the waters near Greenland, and there is potential for expansion of tourism. All these things are important, but in the end, the military and security issues are more essential as long as the world looks like it does, with the West and NATO on one side, and Russia and Chine on the other, in competition and conflict with each other and their spheres of control.

In that sense, it shouldn’t really be seen as a surprise that President-elect Trump has hinted to the Greenland issue to be brought up on the agenda. The issue will and should be discussed seriously in the future, not only between the two NATO alliance members of the USA and Denmark, including Greenland, but also the other countries, including the eight members of the Arctic Council (established in 1996). Let us not just wave away Trump’s surprise comment as something that and unpredictable Trump has come up with. I believe it was important of Trump to have drawn attention to the Greenland issue, in spite of his undiplomatic words and form of doing it. Sometimes, though, diplomatic language covers up rather than help solve issues. Perhaps we should sometimes be thankful for Trump’s unorthodox ways of speaking, and begin to look for what good might be in his reasoning. Let us also learn to be blunt and direct back, such as discussing that the world is very much under American leadership, for good and for bad, and that the mostly American controlled multinationals run the world’s economy. The world should be more equal and democratic than that, with fairer opportunities for all. We all know, too, that the USA is not going to remain the only superpower forever.

Atle Hetland
The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience from university, diplomacy and development aid. He can be reached at atlehetland@yahoo.com