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USA really, seriously wants to own Greenland.
Trump has made this extremely clear ever since his first presidency when he first offered to buy the island from the Danish government. At the time, the Danes made it very clear that this was not possible. They could not legally sell the island, and if they could, it still would not be for sale. This presidency, he has been probing around, trying to find an effective strategy that can give the administration what they want. He made that clear in 2025 by essentially stating that no tactic is off the table. He has since attempted the following:
This begs the question though: Why does the US want Greenland so badly? It is a frozen rock in the middle of the ocean, with an entire population living off government subsidies. Why not just let Denmark pay the bill while the states keep their bases? I have some ideas below, ordered from what I think makes the least sense to the most:
This just bugs my 'words have meaning' nerve.
In its most general form, a threat is a an indication of intention- verbal or non-verbal- to inflict harm of someone. Often this comes with a conditional, but not always.
When Trump said he was 'going to bomb the shit out of [ISIS],' that was a threat. It wasn't conditional, but it was very much an indication of an intention soon followed.
When Trump said that threats with North Korea would be met with 'fire and fury,' that was a threat. It was vauge on what said fire and fury entailed, and allowed people to project a nuclear dynamic, but it was a threat with a condition (of North Korea threats continuing).
When earlier today Trump said he called off a second wave of attacks on Venezuela because it released a large number of political prisoners, that is a threat. The indication to attack was conditional on a condition no longer present, i.e. Venezuelan behavior, but the threat is on the condition of if that cooperation changes.
'Military intervention is not off the table' is not a statement of intention. It does not indicate an intent to inflict harm. It does not set a condition for which it might be avoided. It does not even set a condition for it to be enacted. It's a non-denial, but a non-denial is not an affirmation. It is, at most, the implication of the possibility of a threat... which has no negotiating leverage or coercive value if you simply choose another implication to interpret, at which point the speaker either has to up the ante by making a more explicit threat, or not sustain the implicit threat.
I tend to loath macho posturing comparisons, but even if you want to act as if that's a threat, it is an incredibly weak threat by the standards of Trump- who is not exactly adverse to explicit threats of military attacks- and it makes the sort of people who treat it as a strong threat seem even weaker in turn.
If we are negotiating a deal, and I ask if you plan to kill me in case we end up not coming to an agreement, and you say that it isn't off the table... That is a threat. You are threatening to kill me if I don't give you what you want. You would just prefer a different way, but if that turns out impossible or too expensive, you are saying that you will in fact try and kill me.
Using your own criteria here, there is a statement of intention: If a deal cannot be reached, the US military will seize the island from the Danish government. When he makes the threat again after bombing Venezuela, this indicates that the US is willing to risk a war to get what they want. There is also a condition for how it might be avoided: "Sell or give us Greenland, on terms that are acceptable to the US". The negotiating leverage is that no sane country wants to fight the American military, and Trump knows this. He is using the threat of invasion as leverage to get a better deal.
To interject just here- if you think I took a position that it was not a threat, you misunderstood the point of the post you are responding to. My position is not that it can't be a threat. My position, made more explicit and encompassing elaboration below, is that it is not a direct threat, that treating it as a threat is a choice of the recipient, and that even if you want to take that position then it is a weak threat.
Returning to the para in full-
It is precisely because you accept the paradigm that you are negotiating a deal that the indirect threat is weak and safe to disregard as a threat, and that treating it as a direct statement of intent is increasing the risk (and costs) for your negotiations here and in the future.
All negotiations deal with implicit and explicit threats. The very possibility of walking away from a negotiation is a form of threat, since it indicates a consequence of denying the opponent what they want (the subject of negotiation) at a cost the opponent prefers (the cost of a negotiated solution, as opposed to the costs of the baseline alternative to a negotiated agreement, i.e. BATNA). This is typically on the low end of the threat spectrum, but it is none the less a form of threat available to both parties.
At the same time, (competent) negotiations entail knowing when and how to deal with, deflect, or dismiss threats based on their credibility. Threats, after all, can be very cheap if they are only words. An insincere threat, one made without an intent to carry out, is still quite valuable if it drives the opponent to make a [concession] to make it go away. Getting something potentially valuable, but for practically free, is an incredible incentive, especially in repeat-game dynamics where the knowledge of willingness to make a concession informs further [concessions]. And there are few threats as cheap to make as an indirect / implicit threat that requires the other side to carry it for you.
And note that [concession] in this context doesn't need to be the nominal subject of negotiation. To dip into the OP context of Greenland as a US-Denmark negotiation, a weak threat over Greenland does not have to be answered with a handover of Greenland. It might be resolved by something like Denmark taking (or not taking/changing) a specific policy position on, say, chip production and trade with the Chinese. Or NATO funding. Or covering base costs. Or anything else of interest to the Americans. The value of cheap threats isn't [specific concession], but [concession] in general, especially in repeat game formulas where smaller [concessions] can add up over time if you know the other party is inclined to over-estimate your threats.
Going back to the general form, this is why if you on the receiving side of a threat, it helps to be able to deflect/dismiss it in ways without making concessions, especially if your goal is to deny the other party their ambition. In a 'defense' negotiation where you want to preserve the status quo, your goal is to raise the costs to the adversary enough that they no longer perceive it as worth the further cost to pursue. Dismissing indirect threats is preferable because a non-acknowledgement forces the offender into a decision to either drop the issue without gaining a concession, in which case 'you' have lost nothing, or to make the implicit threat more directly.
Forcing adversaries to make explicit threats rather than making concessions to implicit threats is good for you, the recipient of threats, because you are shifting the balance of costs against the threatener. The threatener wants to use implicit/indirect threats instead of direct threats in the first place because they are cheaper than explicit threats. Explicit threats often result in (typically) unwanted secondary effects, such as rallying the domestic political base around the leader being threatened, invite external intervention/support into the negotiation against the threatener, and raise the reputational costs to the explicit threatener if they back down by not carrying through. Not being willing to carry through is half the point of using the implicit threat in the first place. You, the defender, are under no obligation to make a concession to a weak threat that wouldn't be carried through.
But note- publicly treating an weak threat as a credible threat is itself a sort of concession to the threat-maker!
A more nuanced double-edged concession, but one that many parties willing to play 'the heel' will happily accept.
This is because the party elevating the threat is investing their own credibility and position into the adversary's threat for them. If you act as if the person threatening you really means it and would really do it, you are signaling to other people that they should take the adversary's threats as credible. And part of taking other people's threats as credible is making concessions to avoid the costs of those threats being carried out. Even if you make no other concession, and hope to reap in the benefits of domestic or external support, you can still be offering [concessions] in genenneral via enhancing the adversary's reputation and credibility to compel [concessions] in other- and future- negotiations.
Including negotiations with you. Which- if you later approach with the history/perceived perception of being Very Very Scared- can convince your own faction that the adversary is credible and sincere in their threats and thus warrant concessions earlier at less cost. But worse, you might also convince the opponent that you see them as scary and credible, and thus increasing the incentive of threats. Which not only running into your own framing bias, but also have the separate issue that- if you do intend to call a bluff- they are in a position where the cost of being called is now closer to the cost of going through with the threat anyway. Which is the context where you actually should be offering concessions if you are serious about denying the [thing] from a position of weakness, because your negotiating goal is to keep the adversary viewing the cost of carrying out the threat as worse than the equivalent.
But there's another drawback here- even if you act as if the adversary makes a strong and direct threat, that doesn't mean they have. Or that the resulting support will do more to deter than to encourage the mentality behind the explicit threats. Adversaries have their own ability to shape the information space, and there are as few things as easy to respond to of 'you said that' as 'no I didn't, here's the proof of what I did say.' Proof may be irrelevant to various groups that would be aligned regardless, but it is a way to separate would-be supporters who might have supported the defender against an explicit threat. That division- or even the division of people who express nominal solidarity but caveat it accordingly because they recognize the implicit-versus-explicit distinction going on that you conflated- can itself be another [concession] the adversary might want. Splitting a coalition because Party B won't be associated/stand by/defend Party A's rhetoric is a classic gain. Worse (for the defender) is if the allies they count on for support would rather prioritize ties with the aggressor than maintain a common front- see the recent sacrifice of European economic interest groups, the nominal heart and reason for being of the EU, to prioritize the American security relationship. Such divisions invite future exploitation, which can create future divisions, which can invite future future exploitations.
This is why the rule of thumb advice is 'don't give a concession for free' also ties to 'don't treat a threat as serious/credible if you don't have to.'
(This doesn't try to address next-level formulations, where things presented as negatives above may in fact be positives from a different paradigm. For example- European elites who would like to exaggerate American threats to build political support for a common European defense policy, and American elites who would happily play the role of villain if it allows European elites to increase European military spending so that the American elites can disengage from the continent. In such a case, 'threats' like 'do this and we'll end NATO' turn into incentives, but this is so far from base premise it's a huge rabbit hole of its own.)
This is not from a statement of intention by the statement of a threat-maker. This is an inference of intention, from the observer.
This distinction matters, both in terms of who is making it, and what it implies one should do regardingn the threat maker.
Substitute this with the distinction of who is making the which claim,
Note that in this venue, the US does not have to be willing to risk a war to get what they want. But if you act as if they were, particularly if you believe they are, then you can be pushed into acting out the [concessions] such a framing would warrant, even by people who might accurately understand such a perception is unnecessary / factually wrong.
This is, again, the inference of the threat, not the stated conditions of a threat.
This matters on the conditions-to-avoid end because it is much easier for a threatener to change the conditions if they never specified them in the first place. If the recipient would make concessions in response to implicit terms, they have already demonstrated their intent/willingness to make [concessions] in principle, and thus continue to make [concessions] to implications of further conditions... let alone further explicit demands. This deal's getting worse all the time and all that.
This is precisely the sort of context where forcing the adversary to make explicit their threats, and their conditions, can improve the defending state's ability to gather and utilize external support. Even if external supporters may not be willing to actively fight against the threatener on the defender's behalf, they may be willing to increase the costs of renenging on the deal, and so indirectly (or directly) enforce the deal in a way that stops the bleeding of [concessions] over the issue.
At the same time, this is a context where implicit threats may result in [concessions] short of the inferred condition that none the less encourage the use of implicit threats in the future. If, say, the Danish government makes a [concession] of 'we won't sell Greenland, but we will pay more of the costs of American soldiers in Greenland,' that may well be enough to lead the Trump administration to drop the push for Greenland's sale... but future considerations, such as budgetary constraints that lead to an attempt to short the bill, which a future administration may / may not use as a future pretext.
He would have no leverage with this threat if people dismissed is as the weak, indirect threat it is instead of treating it as massive leverage, which requires a concession of credibility.
Leverage in negotiations is not an objective metric score. It is highly subjective. It is also subjective in both directions.
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Typo.
And I agree with your sentiment. The US is engaged in seriously deranged, reckless behavior when trying to do a hostile takeover of land from an ally. And threatening to break up an important alliance when that alliance is already under serious threat from another nuclear power.
If Greenland is so important, they sold offer enough money and/or get good lease arrangements.
Typo edited. That one is fairly important for the overall message.
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Trump:
You're right that this doesn't mean Trump is going to invade, in the same way that "plata o plomo" doesn't mean you're going to get the plomo. However, the existence of the plata option doesn't make it not a threat.
Was anyone anywhere unaware that the U.S. does in fact have the ability to seize Greenland by force? I understand it's politic to pretend that this is irrelevant, but I think a lot of people have started to think it really is irrelevant. It's not irrelevant, and it's fair to remind people: we're negotiating not because we have to, but because we want to.
Everyone is aware of that, that's the point. When you are holding a deadly weapon and the other guy isn't, then "We respect your sovereignty and would never do that" isn't a threat, "I'll use this if I have to" is absolutely 100% a threat.
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Do you think that non-denial of willingness to acquire the territory of a sovereign ally by military means, in the context of said ally having strongly rejected the peaceful transfer of said territory, is of little importance? No shit Trump uses harsher language for ISIS than for Denmark.
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