“Trump announces deal giving US ‘permanent control’ over Greenland’s security”, 18 September 2026 (Photo via Washington Examiner — the original report)
As it ran on the front
THE AMBITION TO OWN GREENLAND OUTRIGHT died this week at the signing table, survived by a memorandum. It was twenty months old.
It was born in a boast. In January 2025, the President declared that "ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity," a phrase urgent enough that his son flew to Nuuk within weeks to look the island over in person — a scouting trip for a country that was not for sale and did not, as it turned out, need scouting. The Danish prime minister met the visit with the only sentence a head of government needed: "Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders." That was the whole argument, delivered twenty months early.…
…(cont) The ambition spent the year loudly, in public, waiting for the receipts to catch up. Foreign policy experts who had dismissed the annexation talk as unrealistic found themselves, by September, watching Beijing stop laughing at it, which is a different thing from watching it happen. On September 18th the President announced the payoff: a deal giving the United States "permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many U.S. concerns." Two days later, the people paid to read agreements for a living called it "largely a rebranding of the status quo to claim a win." By the time the New York Times got around to it, the verdict had a headline of its own: he settled for something much less.
Both things are true, which is the whole trick of a memorandum — you can restate NATO-era security arrangements in capital letters and call it permanent control, and nobody has to be lying. That is not hogwash exactly. It is malarkey with a signature page.
The ambition to own Greenland outright is survived by a security memorandum, a press release, and a son's travel receipts. It is preceded in death by every Greenlander who watched a foreign son inspect their country like a car on a lot, and answered, correctly, that it wasn't his to buy.
In lieu of flowers, ask what the memorandum restates that the old treaties didn't already cover.
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“They sent the kid to go scout real estate that already belonged to somebody else, called owning it an absolute necessity, and twenty months later signed a paper that just restates what NATO allies already had — and they're calling that a win. That's not a deal, that's a press release wearing a deal's clothes. The only people who never got a vote in any of this were the Greenlanders, and they said no from day one.”
“Look, "permanent control over security, and all other needs" — that's historic language, that's a — okay, "historic" might be doing some heavy lifting there. But the President said it addresses ALL of our many U.S. concerns, in his own words, capital letters and everything, so that's — wait, am I citing his own press release as the evidence? That's not... let's just say the framework speaks for itself.”
The United States has entered into an agreement with Denmark and Greenland to have a lasting military presence in the semi-autonomous territory, President Donald Trump announced on Friday. Trump said the deal will give the U.S. “permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many U.S.
Danish and international commentators dismissed President Donald Trump's claim that the deal he announced Friday gives the United States "permanent control" over Greenland's security as what one journalist called a "repackaging" of long-standing agreements spun as a foreign policy win. Trump—who has repeatedly threatened to gain control…
In traditional diplomacy, progress is usually slow. The Trump administration does not follow that old script. When President Donald Trump renewed his demand to acquire Greenland earlier this year, foreign policy experts panicked.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
