US President Donald Trump's desire to acquire Greenland for the US would require either a military annexation or a significant financial outlay in the event of a sale, depending on the path he pursues.

The White House has confirmed that it is "actively" considering purchasing the island for unspecified national security reasons.

And Trump officials are considering how they would act under international laws and norms to do so.

According to a report by Reuters, based on four anonymous sources familiar with the plans, the US has discussed sending successive payments to individual citizens of Greenland to facilitate a peaceful purchase, as it is also considering a less tactical military option.

Whether through purchase or invasion, Trump has repeatedly made known his intentions to own Greenland.

Greenland and Denmark have rejected any suggestion that the country is for sale, and the latter has warned that military action would likely mean the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

While the US has purchased large tracts of land in the past – mainly in the 19th century – there is little contemporary appetite for such means of territorial expansion, given the evolved notions of sovereignty and self-determination that have prevailed since then.

And efforts to determine any fair value estimate for a parcel of more than 2.166 million square kilometers in the North Atlantic are complicated, writes Newsweek.

“Estimating the purchase price for Greenland is incredibly difficult,” said Michael Williams, director of international relations at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.

"The last official attempt to do this was in 1946, when then-US President Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million," he added.

"Today, Greenland is probably worth hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, given its strategic location and phenomenal wealth of rare earth minerals," according to Williams.

According to the report from Reuters, the administration is considering paying Greenland's population between $10,000 and $100,000 per person to facilitate a potential transaction.

Based on its current population - around 57,000 - this would cost up to $5.7 billion, although such a fee would likely be nominal and supplemented by a much higher sum paid to the governments of Greenland or Denmark, or both.

David Barker, a real estate developer and former New York Federal Reserve economist, said the territory could be worth between $12.5 billion and $7 billion.

The estimates were based on prices paid by the US for the Danish Virgin Islands in 1917 and Alaska in 1867, adjusted for inflation, as well as for the growth of the US and Danish economies.

Britannica calculated that a deal on similar terms for Greenland today would cost around $90 billion.

But David Smith, a professor of politics at the University of Sydney, believes the amount "would be much higher than that, because there is much more at stake."

"It is much more difficult, if not impossible, to put a price on values ​​like sovereignty, which should be taken into consideration. What is the price of giving up political control of your future?"

Moreover, there is also the great bounty of property rights over the territory and the largely untapped treasure trove of valuable minerals hidden beneath its ice.

Last January, the American Action Forum - a center-right think tank based in Washington - estimated the value of Greenland's known mineral resources at $4.4 trillion, but added that only $186 billion is currently extractable due to logistical and environmental barriers.

“Greenland is a repository of many rare earth metals needed for high-tech industries and national security items,” said Michael P. Scharf, president of the American Branch of the International Law Society.

"The melting of Greenland's ice is making it easier to extract these metals."

And Scharf pointed out an additional, less measurable, value attached to possession of the territory: “Control of Greenland also means control of a large part of the Arctic’s resources, as well as of the Arctic’s transportation routes.”

But despite the cost calculations, Greenland and Denmark have stressed that it is not for sale, and even the idea of ​​the US using its economic - or military - power to acquire it has been greeted with alarm by experts. /Telegraph/

From the WorldTHE WORLD