When Vice President J.D. Vance got off his plane, he was met with a banner that read “Yankee Go Home.” The advance team tried to find a local who supported Vance’s visit, but came up empty. And so the visit came and went with little more than Vance claiming that Denmark has failed to safeguard Greenland, a claim for which there was absolutely no basis. Not that Vance cared.

Vance: “The president said we have to have Greenland, and I think we do have to be more serious about the security of Greenland. We cannot just ignore this place. We cannot just ignore the president’s desires.” pic.twitter.com/kkGRbamsqp

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) March 28, 2025

After all, isn’t Trump’s “desires” what matters most? And Trump desired Greenland.

As if to drive home the point, Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday: “We have to have Greenland. It’s not a question of ‘Do you think we can do without it.’ We can’t.”

How we ever managed to survive without Greenland before might seem like a mystery to those who care deeply about Trump’s desires, although it might have something to do with the American military base already on Greenland with the permission of our NATO ally, Denmark. Yes, the same Denmark that Vance accused of being a bad ally and failing Greenland, apparently forgetting that Denmark willingly sent soldiers to fight alongside us, at our request.

Yet one of the mysteries hanging over the Vance tour is how far Mr. Trump is willing to go to achieve his goal. That has been the question since early January, when Mr. Trump, awaiting his inauguration, was asked whether he would rule out economic or military coercion to get his way. “I’m not going to commit to that,” he said. “You might have to do something.”

The people of Greenland may prefer greater independence from Denmark, but they have no interest in becoming an American territory. What about their “desires”? But Trump says we can’t do without them, so that’s what really matters.

It’s not that Greenland isn’t strategically valuable to the United States in protecting itself against Russian and Chinese attack. It’s not that this hasn’t been true for a long time.

Mr. Trump is not wrong when he claims that there are strategic advantages to acquiring the territory. William Seward, the secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, was negotiating to buy the territory for a bit more than $5 million in 1868 — with Iceland thrown in — just after he acquired Alaska. But the deal never came to fruition. Harry Truman wanted the territory after World War II, recognizing that failure to control it would give advantage to the Soviets, and make the United States more vulnerable to Soviet submarines.

Had this been about expanding the United States’ military presence in Greenland, there is every reason to believe that Greenland would have been fine with it. There was no need to seize it, to own it, to dominate it, even if that would have facilitated our using Greenland as a military buffer for an attack across the arctic. But by saying we’re just going to take it, one way or another, and then falsely denigrating our ally, Denmark, we’ve burned any good will that might have enabled a cooperative venture that would benefit everyone.

So what’s the option now that Trump has made it clear that he’s seizing the territory of an ally, one way or another?

Just before he left, Mr. Vance was asked if military plans had been drafted to take Greenland if it declines to become an American protectorate.

“We do not think that military force is ever going to be necessary,” he said. “We think the people of Greenland are rational and good, and 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.”

The people of Greenland are rational and good. Because of this, they don’t want to become an American territory. Much as Vance doesn’t think military force will be necessary, a “Donald Trump-style” deal suggests that there will be no alternative. As his success with getting Putin to agree to a ceasefire shows, he’s not very good at making deals. And if there is no deal, and Trump is disinclined to look foolish for having failed to get Greenland, what then can he do?