The Russian president’s message is clear: suck it up. Just as Russia has an inherent right to Ukraine, so America is entitled to Greenland.

In May 1958, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, together with his wife Pat, visited Caracas, Venezuela. President Dwight Eisenhower had dispatched Nixon to Central America as part of a goodwill tour. But Nixon found little of it in Caracas. The country was in revolutionary ferment. Its president had recently fled to Miami. A mob attacked the American motorcade and showered the Nixons with rotten fruit. Their entourage ended up taking refuge in the American embassy. By that standard, Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha’s visit to Greenland is fairly tame. However, the visit encountered a frosty reception (the locals planned to stage a protest in the capital city of Nuuk), forcing the Vances to confine it to the remote and solitary American military base called Pituffik. 

Vance offered fairly cautious remarks: “What we think is going to happen is that the Greenlanders are going to choose through self-determination to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there. So I think talking about anything too far in the future is way too premature. We do not think that military force is ever going to be necessary. We think this makes sense. And because we think the people of Greenland are rational and good, we think we’re going to be able to cut a deal, Donald Trump style, to ensure the security of this territory but also the United States of America.”

President Trump has declared that America will “get it—one way or the other.” He seems to view it the same way that Russian president Vladimir Putin views the Donbas region of Ukraine—a tempting morsel. Indeed, Putin himself has averred that he understands Trump’s avidity for Greenland. 

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