More people believe in alien abductions than support an invasion of Greenland

One of the crazy ideas that have been floated by President Trump in his second term has been to annex Greenland as the nation’s 51st state. The nation hosts a key Space Force Base that deals with early warning missiles coming from Russia or China.

President Trump has stated that Greenland is of grave importance to America’s national security. The nation is rich in natural resources that would be useful for the United States to have full control over. The massive island nation also guards access to northern sea passages, an ocean way that is becoming more and more important.

There’s just one slight issue: Greenland is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and Denmark has no intention of selling it.

The American public has also shared how crazy the idea is. A recent poll by USA Today shows that over half of Americans don’t agree with a purchase or invasion of Greenland. However, 11% of Americans agree that President Trump should use any means possible to bring the island nation into the union. While that might seem like a decent size, 20% of Americans believe in alien abductions, and we aren’t invading a country over that.

This isn’t the first time the US has discussed purchasing Greenland. Post-World War II, after the nation served as a key jumping-off point for supplies and troops on their way to fight Nazi Germany in Europe, President Truman offered $100 million in gold and Alaskan oil drilling rights for the island. Denmark declined the offer.

Another reason for Truman’s perceived interest was that the island would serve as a way to defend the nation against Soviet bombers headed toward the US. In modern times, any attack on the United States would be carried out using intercontinental ballistic missiles or cyber methods.

Why is Greenland important to the US?

Those early warnings of an attack are actually the main reason why Greenland is already used by the United States for national security.

Through the creation of NATO and agreements between Denmark and the US, we have had several military bases in Greenland over the years. However, it currently has only one operational base as of 2025, Pituffik Space Base.

Pituffik is the northernmost military outpost and is tasked with being the most important base for early missile warnings. The base also takes part in the Space Force’s space surveillance operations, tracking what is up there and ensuring no one gets too close to each other. While it’s not the only base supporting this mission, with the current market only planning to drastically expand its number of space assets, more are needed.

The Greenland base holds about 200 active-duty Air Force and Space Force personnel, with the remainder of its roughly 650 workforce made up of contractors.

There’s no sign that the US would want to expand its already small presence in the nation even more, given there is no need for transatlantic stops by aircraft anymore, nor the need to use it as a base to start an air attack against Russia. Also, given Denmark’s part in NATO, it is likely any expansion that might be requested could be handled diplomatically.