How to get what Greenland has, with permission

This is Planet Money from NPR.

Listen, I have never worked so hard to get someone on the phone.

I'm eating beans out of a bag.

That's how bad life is today.

She's eating refried beans out of a bag.

Not even out of a can, it's out of a bag.

Just cold out of a bag.

Like not even a spoon.

Like it's like I've like cut a corner or edge

and I'm like squirting them in my mouth on my break.

Okay, it's my hand.

Yeah.

I know.

Graceland Bascarin has had some long busy days.

I mean, you've been busy because you're like one of very few experts

on among other things Greenland and minerals.

It's a very small nexus.

Graceland is a mining economist who has worked in rare earth minerals globally.

She's the director of the critical minerals security program

at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Where are these rare earths?

It's like how deep into the ground, what do they look like?

Have you seen them?

Is it sparklies and shiny?

Like what does it look like?

You know, it's funny for how valuable these rocks are.

They look like they're very, they're very gray.

So they just look like gravel, like little gray rocks.

Kind of, they're not golden sparkly.

They're not shiny like a diamond,

but they're incredibly valuable.

Yeah, rare earth minerals are little rocks that are very, very critical

for everything from military fighter jets, missiles,

nuclear submarines to the display on your phone,

the hard drive on your computer, the seat belts in cars.

You have prosodimium and you dimium,

you have dysprozium, terbiium, holmium.

Graceland knows all 17 of these minerals.

She's been in mines, touched rare earths,

tried to smell them once,

and then I ended up snorting them.

And my colleague was like, you know,

you're like snorting metal right now, right?

Sorry, one second. What's up?

Everyone wants Grayson's attention right now.

What's on fire?

Because the thing she is an expert on rare earths and Greenland,

President Donald Trump has thrown into the global spotlight.

All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.

In the last month,

Trump refused to rule out taking Greenland by force.

He slapped tariffs on European countries

unless Denmark agreed to sell Greenland to the US.

Then he walked the tariffs back and said,

okay, I won't take Greenland by force.

But he has still insisted that he needs to control Greenland.

Greenland is in a really great position geographically.

It's along an Arctic shipping route

that is becoming more and more important as the ice sheets melt.

And it's also just like strategically

in a very important place in the world

because it sits between the US and Russia and China.

And if they were to hypothetically shoot a missile at the US,

the shortest path for that missile would be over Greenland.

And then of course Greenland has those little boring

but super valuable gray rocks that the rare earth minerals.

So position given where China and Russia are sitting and rare earths.

We're chasing our weakness here.

Hello and welcome to Planet Money.

I'm Sarah Gonzalez and I'm Mary Childs.

Greenland has said it is not for sale.

Denmark has said it can't even legally sell Greenland.

And over the weekend at a security conference in Munich,

US lawmakers spent a lot of time

trying to walk back some of Trump's threats.

But whether Trump can or will or should try to control

or purchase a territory that doesn't want to be sold

is not the interesting question here.

What is interesting is how we got to this moment

and how we might gracefully get out of this.

Today on the show, how the US dropped the ball

on the rare earth's race.

Like why doesn't the US already have the minerals it wants.

Also, one way the US gets strategic locations

without threatening to buy or take over an entire territory.

Yeah, you may not realize it,

but the US is always expanding its territory.

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Before we get to the rare earth minerals

that Greenland has become suddenly famous for.

I've never been to Greenland.

Not very many people will ever go to Greenland.

Like, describe it for us.

It's a very calm place.

This is Christian Kelsen.

It's got this huge fuel system of fuels.

You've got their mountains,

the northern lights, the whales.

Sure, we have humpback whales and northern lights.

And this is Saha Olsvik.

Yesterday night we saw northern lights

in our traditional beliefs.

These are our ancestors playing soccer.

And therefore, that's actually a very scary thing

because they are doing so with a skull.

And if you whistle, they will come and cut off your head.

But they're beautiful, northern lights.

About 90% of Greenland is indigenous.

Inuit, le Saha.

Christian is in the minority.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they know each other.

Well, our kids go through the same swim club

and that kind of thing.

It's a small town.

There are just 56 to 57,000 people in Greenland,

a smaller population than Dubuque Iowa.

And everyone is on the coast.

80% of the country's covered in ice.

So nobody lives in the middle.

Basically no traffic.

I don't spend time on motorways.

There's no highways?

Yeah, no.

There's not one highway.

No towns are not connected.

If we need to go to another town,

I'll take a helicopter, a plane, or a boat.

Wow.

That's it.

Yeah.

Greenland and its indigenous people

were colonized by Denmark in 1721.

Now, technically it is still a part of the kingdom

of Denmark, but Greenland is self governing.

It's kind of like a separate nation within a nation.

It has its own democratically elected government,

a lot of autonomy over domestic affairs,

over foreign policy.

It has its own language.

And this part is very relevant right now.

Nobody in Greenland owns land.

You actually cannot own land in Greenland.

If you're building a house,

you can get a permit to build your house on a specific spot,

but you cannot own the land that it's on.

This is rooted in the inner belief

that land is not for sale,

but something to be shared.

Which is our way, grammatically also,

saying that,

Galashit-Nunad Greenland is owned by the people.

And this island where no one owns land,

there is something deep, deep underground

that everyone does want to own.

If you're standing in Greenland,

a mile down below your feet,

sometimes two whole miles down,

it is just massive, solid ice.

And locked underneath that ice are the rare earths.

That's why we called Graceland Basgren,

the critical minerals expert

who was eating beans out of a bag.

To walk us through the story of how we got to this moment

where the US seems to be coveting Greenland.

So one of the things that makes Greenland particularly attractive

is that they don't just have rare earths,

which they do,

but they have heavy rare earths.

There are two types of rare earths,

light rare earths and heavy rare earths.

And the US does have a lot of light rare earths in California,

but geologically speaking,

Graceland says we are not very well endowed with heavies.

But also, the US doesn't even really have the capability

to turn heavy rare earths into things we need.

The US is working on it, but is not there yet.

About 90% of the world's rare earths are processed in China.

That's where the US gets them.

China has a near monopoly.

So if China decides to restrict exports of them to the US,

like they did last spring,

that is a bad situation.

This was when the US and China were really

tit for tanning each other during their trade war last year

and the US felt it.

Less than eight weeks after China imposed those restrictions,

we stopped manufacturing Ford explorers in Chicago

because of that shortage.

Yeah, the plant shut down for about a week,

but our heavy rare earth supply chain was disrupted for months.

And this US dependence on China for minerals,

there is a long history that led us here.

A history, Graceland says,

of the US deciding not to prioritize rare earths.

From the 50s up to the mid 80s,

the US was the top rare earth producer.

It led the production and refining of rare earth elements.

But then China started mining rare earths

and the US ended up backing off.

Left it to China.

China's just done it and we were happy to buy Chinese produced goods

that had rare earths in them.

In 1996, the US closed the Bureau of Mines

and we stopped making minerals a strategic focus.

Now China did the opposite.

Right, starting about the early 90s,

they started buying mines all around the world.

And they would take those minerals and export them back to China.

And there the most minerals were processed.

And really China is now enjoying minerals security

as a result of the 30 odd years

that it has been building its dominance.

And China has also been courting Greenland's minerals.

But China's approach has been very different from President Trump's.

China has kind of been creeping into Greenland infrastructures.

China's been doing the thing it often does.

It is trying to invest significantly in infrastructure in Greenland

as the way to later get some of Greenland's natural resources.

China's approach by doing infrastructure first

is how it is conquered much of the world.

Right, so the Belt and Road Initiative,

BRI, is how it has established footholds in Africa,

Latin America, the Middle East,

is by making these significant infrastructure investments

that then give it power infrastructure a soft power.

And China's been trying to soft power its way into Greenland's infrastructure too.

So if you look at the last 10 years,

China has tried to invest in Greenland's airports

and abandoned naval station.

And when it comes to the minerals themselves,

yeah, China's after those two.

There's an Australian company making plans

for a rare earth mine in Greenland.

And in 2018, a Chinese rare earth company

signed this agreement with that Australian company

to process the minerals that they plan to extract.

This Chinese company is even the second largest shareholder

in that big mind project.

China plays a long game.

Are we nervous about China beating us in Greenland?

Is that a fear it seems like?

We're always nervous about China outpacing us,

particularly in new jurisdictions.

You do start to see like,

okay, yeah, like if it's like we really need them

and China mainly has them

and China started limiting them.

And now China is trying to, you know,

get in on Greenland's rare earth.

You can see like,

maybe this is very important to our national security.

But does the US need Greenlands minerals in particular?

Is there a point in which it becomes so important?

Like let's say China's like,

we're done. We're not giving you anything

where you would go like,

you know what?

We have to try to buy Greenland

or take it by force because that's how important it is.

No, no, no.

She says, especially if it's going to create chaos in Europe.

And here is why.

It is a three-part answer.

First of all,

the US does not need to take control of Greenland for its minerals

because Greenland is happy to partner with the US.

Greenland's Minister for Business and Mineral Resources

has actually said it wants to work with the US,

seemingly over China.

Denmark sometimes with encouragement from the US

has actually stalled Chinese investment projects in Greenland.

Greenland prefers to do business with Western countries.

Even during Trump's first administration in 2019,

Greenland was like,

come on in, look around.

The US signed this MOU with Greenland

to do this geological survey together

and exchange scientific and technical knowledge

to develop these resources.

And then also a US company just purchased

this big, rare earth deposit in Greenland,

not the Australian one,

largely to ward off Chinese investment.

But a second reason why controlling

or even just working with Greenland

does not solve the US's current mineral problem

is because it can take decades

to extract the rare earths there.

And it could cost a trillion dollars according

to some estimates,

though Grayson thinks that could be a major underestimate.

Because there's just so little infrastructure in Greenland.

There needs to be roads built, rail built,

more ports,

electricity in the

around freezing cold middle of nowhere.

The Arctic is considered so punishing.

No one there has ever even gotten any of these minerals.

So we've never mind rare earths in Greenland.

No, like nobody has.

No, she says Greenland is just not a short

or even medium term solution to the US's minerals problem.

If China cuts me off today

and I have three months supply as a country,

Greenland is not an answer to that.

Brazil, Australia, and the next couple years

Saudi Arabia, they will have rare earths

now if we need them in a pinch, not Greenland.

In the current globally interdependent world of minerals,

Grayson says you actually need other countries.

That's her big point.

Her third and last big reason why controlling Greenland

or even just Greenland's minerals

will not solve the US mineral problem is

because controlling the source of minerals

anywhere is not the solution.

No one country is going to counter China's dominance alone.

Even if you have all the rare earths in the world in your country.

Just because you have geology

doesn't mean you have mineral security

because I've got to process those minerals.

And those technological capabilities

also don't exist in one country.

So we see countries like Australia, Saudi Arabia,

India, Canada, emerging is really key

potential partners for processing technology.

So it really is the fact that both

geological and technological control

can't be sustained with a single country.

So cooperation becomes required.

The only way to mineral security for the US

she says is cooperation, traded agreements.

There is no way to be mineral secure solo.

And this is how the US has often gotten

the natural resources it needs in the past, right?

Through trade.

So of course, also through coercion or war,

but also through trade.

We've traded military protection for Saudi Arabian oil.

We've found creative ways to get the resources we want

from other countries by playing nice.

Like there was a time during the 20th century

that we actually were trading butter from America

to box site in Jamaica, a butter for box site trade

because we needed box site to make defense technologies.

So we have had incredibly creative arrangements

to get minerals.

So minerals, yes, very important.

But greenlands minerals, nice to have,

but not absolutely critical.

And plenty of diplomatic ways to get them.

And while the Trump administration has talked

about greenlands minerals,

President Trump has also acknowledged

that greenlands rare earths are very hard to get to

deep under all of the ice.

And that's not the reason he wants greenland.

That it's about the strategic location part of it all, right?

Just the physical place in the world

that greenland sits for missile defense.

So is that a reason to get greenland?

That's after the break.

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President Trump has made it clear he understands

greenland isn't the only source of rare earths.

Rare earths are actually not that rare.

And also not the easiest place to get them.

But at the same time, he said that more than minerals,

greenland is important for national security

and international security.

Greenland is a vast almost entirely unadhabited

and undeveloped territory.

The sitting undefended in a key strategic location

between the United States, Russia, and China.

It's exactly where it is right smack in the middle.

Not actually undefended.

It is part of Denmark, part of NATO.

Also, it is inhabited.

But okay, moving on.

This desire to take control of strategic location.

It is a big part of the history of the world and its borders.

Many wars have been started over strategic location

and resources like country A,

country B's natural resources or their physical place in the world.

But without war and without actually buying,

which again, people are saying won't happen,

does the U.S. need a piece of greenland for security?

To sort that out, we called up the author of a book called

How to Hide an Empire.

My name is Daniel Imervar.

And so your last name is slower for me,

so I can pronounce it.

Great, yes.

It's the W's pronounces of V,

so it is Imervar.

Imervar.

Imervar.

You actually have to say it three times already.

The number of Imervars are so few

that I am related to every one of them by ways

that I can specify.

Cool.

It's fun.

Same with my last name.

Yeah.

I think I may have met some of your relatives.

Daniel Imervar says often in the history of the world,

countries have expanded their territories largely through force.

But a lot of the U.S. territory actually came from purchases.

Some became from war, but a lot of it came from purchase.

And on the one hand, you can think,

well, this is rather civilized.

Like I would rather see countries just make deals

than go to war with each other.

On the other hand, you realize that what is being sold

in almost every case is not just land, but people.

The last major U.S. purchase of territory

and all its people was more than 100 years ago.

In 1917, when the U.S.

bought the Danish West Indies.

Now the U.S. Virgin Islands from, yes, Denmark.

For $25 million, like $640-ish million in today times.

Back then, the U.S. was worried that Germany

was eyeing the Danish West Indies as an ideal base

for naval warfare.

So the U.S. started pressuring Denmark

to sell these islands in the Caribbean.

But buying an autonomous self-governing territory in 2026?

For the past 80 years.

Since World War II,

we, the world, have operated under this understanding

that, okay, however borders were drawn,

whether they were acquired by war

or through colonization or any other way,

we are just going to respect them from here on out.

Which is part of why when countries invade each other,

it's a big deal.

Haven't we, like, divvied up the world already?

Like, who owns what?

And international order is, like, we're all going to respect

whatever boundaries there are,

whatever borders there are,

and, like, it is what it is, is that not?

Yes, I mean, uh, depends.

Yes, but kind of.

This is the reason we wanted to talk to Daniel.

Because in his book, he talks about this whole other way

that the U.S. does actually expand its borders all the time.

Still, just in, like, a quieter way.

Daniel says the shape of the United States we all know

is not at all representative of the actual territories

and colonies of the United States.

It's that plus hundreds of little dots all over the globe.

And the way we got all those other little dots

is through a version of buying territory

that the U.S. still does when it sets up military bases.

We're not sure how many,

and we're not sure exactly where they all are.

The military admits to roughly 500 of them

and journalists have found about 200 more.

But you can just be, like, walking down the street in Greenland

and then be like, oh, that's a military base.

We know about the base, we know about one of the bases in Greenland.

We, but like, that doesn't mean the U.S.

owns that part of the country, right?

So as a matter of private property,

it could be that the United States owns

in the way that you would own the land

and which your house is built.

The bigger question is,

is the United States have sovereignty?

Which is, is that land U.S. territory?

And generally, the answer is no.

These are bases that are being hosted by foreign countries.

But the United States generally has such profound rights uses

over its bases that it starts to look a lot like sovereignty.

Like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Yeah, it's in Cuba.

And Cuba has been asking the U.S. to leave for years.

But the U.S. just won't.

Nope.

So whose piece of country is it really?

Right. Is that U.S. territory? Is that Cuban territory?

Right. Yeah, yeah.

So like, the U.S. decides what rules apply on that territory?

Whose jurisdiction is it? Whose flag is flown?

This can be a touchy subject.

And one example that I just love is that

when the United States is setting up on a base in Saudi Arabia,

it arranges architecturally

to have its flag come straight out from the top of the building.

And the reason is that the Saudi government can still say

that the flag has not touched Saudi soil.

When it comes to Greenland, Daniel says,

yeah, it is placed in a very strategically important spot.

And he can see why the U.S. would want to have a big military presence.

But the U.S. does have a big military presence there.

Remember the one you'd find if you were just walking around Greenland?

The United States has that.

It has a massive base in Greenland.

And it's used that base and it has the right to have more bases.

And actually both Danish and U.S. flags fly over this military base

in Greenland, which is fun fact,

in constant darkness sometimes and then

constant daylight other times.

And this big U.S. military base in Greenland is used for

missile early warning, missile defense, space surveillance.

And here is Daniel's point.

The U.S. can build more bases in Greenland.

Have more missile early warning systems if it wants.

Since 1951, the U.S. has had nearly unchecked access

to Greenland for defense purposes.

It can already move freely in Greenland for defense

as long as it lets Greenland and Denmark know.

It has permission already to expand its military presence.

So there's no need to colonize Greenland in order to have a base there.

But Trump has been talking about expanding the U.S.

since he came into office again.

He said he wanted to make Canada the 51st day.

Take the Panama Canal, not all the Panama.

Just the Canal part, take over Gaza.

And then of course there's Venezuela.

President Trump sent American troops,

true Venezuela captured its leader

and then declared that the U.S. would now run Venezuela.

So much of the Venezuelan regime is actually still intact.

And that is a hard power move.

Now the kind of soft power move

that Daniel and Grayson will say could get the U.S.

what it wants, like investing in infrastructure in Greenland

or trade agreements or even expanding military presence.

For Daniel the most charitable way,

he can make sense of President Trump's focus on Greenland

is that Trump maybe imagines that we're heading to a world

where countries don't cooperate with each other anymore.

Where soft power is no longer the way to do business.

A world where trade will be closed off,

where anything that you don't physically control,

you won't have access to.

And if we're heading in that direction,

it behooves the United States to lock down resources that it needs

and doesn't have now before there is a scramble for them.

Now if the U.S. were to start taking land by force

or even try to buy up territories to lock away its resources

for itself,

you could argue that that would do quite a lot

to push us into that world where people don't trade

with each other anymore.

And that world, that is the world that Zaha Ultsvig,

the indigenous Greenlander from earlier.

That's what she's concerned about.

It was very clear for us that this is something that is bigger

than Greenland.

It will have ramifications,

unknown consequences to a much broader alliance.

She says the fact that Trump so aggressively asserted

that he needs Greenland has already made the idea

of taking over other countries,

seem a little less taboo.

She says that's really what people in Greenland are concerned about.

People are not running around looking scared.

They're not.

But there is concern.

Mostly concerned for the broader safety and peace

for the whole world.

Some people have said that Trump's play for Greenland

is so obscene or offensive or dangerous

that we should not even be talking about it.

Zaha, who has been in parliament

and is an expert in Arctic studies

and chairs a nonprofit called the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

She says she wants to talk about it.

I, as you probably can hear,

have rejected everyone who has asked me how does it feel

because that also positions us as a sort of passive spectators

to what's going on as just the receivers

where we are the contrary.

So we are not passive spectators,

as many have portrayed us to be.

We are good tradespeople.

That's been necessary for us to survive

and thrive in the Arctic for time immemorial for thousands of years.

We've had to establish trade relations

with so many states from all over the world

and create markets for our resources

in order for us to be able to build an economy.

Zaha says Greenland is not in the market

for a new colonizer.

Should we tell them our big names?

Sure, you tell them.

I feel like they should know.

We are going on our tour.

Oh, I did the drum roll after.

I should've been before.

Whatever.

You get it.

Tickets are available to see Mary, to see me on tour.

You can get them at PlanetMoneyBook.com.

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In New York City at the 92nd Street Y,

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And hopefully so will you.

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There's a link in the show notes.

This episode was produced by the one

and only amazing Willa Rubin with booking help

from Sam Yellowhorse Kessler.

It was edited by Mary Ann McEun,

with fact-checking help from Sierra Juarez.

It was engineered by Quacy Lee and Robert Rodriguez.

Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

I'm Sarah Gonzalez,

and I'm Mary Childs.

This is NPR.

Thanks for listening.