(transcript via ChatGPT)
Julian Zelizer:
Hey everyone, welcome back to Then and Now. I’m Julian Zelizer of The Long View.
Jonathan Alter:
I’m Jonathan Alter of Old Goats.
Zelizer:
So John, this week there’s been a lot in the news. Greenland is one of the stories — President Trump’s effort to get it, and then backing off from some of his threats in some emerging deal that’s being discussed.
One of the comparisons often made by supporters of the president is the fact that President Truman, back in 1946, was also interested in acquiring Greenland. This was after World War II, of course. There are different accounts of where the idea originated, but there was a shared understanding that Greenland was strategically valuable in the postwar moment.
The story goes that in December 1946, at a meeting in New York — at the Waldorf Hotel — Secretary of State James Byrnes floated an offer to the Danish foreign minister. The idea was to buy Greenland for $100 million in gold. According to accounts, the Danish minister was shocked and said he didn’t think his country would go for it.
This was all done secretly, not in public, and the Truman administration backed off from the idea. Then, in 1951, a few years later, an agreement was reached that allowed the U.S. to expand its military presence in Greenland. During the Cold War, it became an important U.S. military base. The United States did not acquire Greenland, and that idea was off the table until recently.
So that story is out there, and it keeps coming up. I’m curious how you think about it — and how it should inform how we think about what’s going on right now.
Alter:
First of all, it was a friendly conversation. Jimmy Byrnes, as secretary of state — and also a former Supreme Court justice — was a very important figure during the Roosevelt administration. He almost became vice president when Truman did, and would have been president, but he was from South Carolina, which caused all kinds of political problems, so he didn’t end up on the ticket.
He made an offer — $100 million — but it was just that: an offer. He wasn’t saying, as Trump did, “We could do this the easy way, we could do it the hard way,” or “I might have to take over Greenland because I’m more powerful.” It was handled diplomatically.
And it wasn’t a crazy idea. We bought Alaska from the Russians in 1867. We bought a large part of the continental United States from Napoleon in the early 1800s. So the issue wasn’t the idea itself — it was the way it was done.
Also remember: this offer came before NATO. NATO emerged in the wake of this effort by the United States — the same year as Winston Churchill’s famous Iron Curtain speech — as part of a broader strategy to contain the Soviet Union.
Owning Greenland, or expanding bases there, might have been one strategy for containment. But a far better one was collective security through NATO — the most successful alliance in hundreds of years. It has kept the peace and prevented World War III.
What Trump did was go straight at the heart of NATO. If he had been successful this week, it would have been curtains for NATO, as European leaders were saying.
In a strange way, NATO may now be stronger, because European allies have pulled together to resist the leader of NATO — the United States. But that’s not how you want to strengthen an alliance.
So we should leave this episode understanding that the United States is not going to buy Greenland. It’s not for sale. And our European allies are going to need to stand up to our dangerous president.
Zelizer:
Well, thanks, John. That was very helpful and useful analysis.
That was Then and Now. We’ll be back next week with whatever’s happening in the news. Talk soon, John.
