What Trump’s desire to buy Greenland may reveal about him… psychologist unpacks the president’s personality

US generals and European leaders have insisted that America already gets everything it needs from Greenland, from military access to surveillance and airbases. 

Several NATO allies, including Canada and Germany, have even offered to send troops to the island to counter any threat from Russia or China.

But Donald Trump is unmoved.

The President warned Wednesday that anything short of full US control of the Danish territory was ‘unacceptable,’ later adding, ‘we need Greenland for national security.’

In an interview last week, the commander-in-chief suggested that the need to own the island had little to do with defense or resources and everything to do with ownership.

He told the New York Times that ownership was ‘psychologically needed for success,’ adding, ‘ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.’

Now, Daily Mail has spoken to three psychologists who say Trump’s instincts, while controversial, are a well-established principle of human behavior. All spoke to Daily Mail in a neutral capacity, did not offer an opinion on whether the US should or should not control Greenland. Instead, they only sought to explain the President’s psychology. 

None of them have examined or treated Trump, but were commenting based on his public statements.

Dr Zea Szebeni, a social psychologist at the University of Helsinki, Finland, who researches territorial ownership, said that the president’s statement on how ownership provides a boost ‘actually captures this psychological reality really quite accurately.’

She told Daily Mail: ‘The feeling of ownership changes the relationship itself. It’s not just about practical control, but about identity, belonging and the deep-seated sense that “this is ours.”

‘Research shows that ownership fulfills deep psychological needs. The need for efficacy, feeling that we can control and influence what happens, the need for self-identity, defining who we are through what we possess, and the need for having our own place in the world.’

In geopolitical terms, she said, this means a country that owns territory behaves very differently from one that merely has access to it.  

Dr Adi Jaffe, a psychologist and former lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Daily Mail: ‘From a psychological perspective, what Trump is describing taps into a very deep and well-studied human instinct around control, certainty and power. 

‘When people can claim that they “own” something, it creates a sense of permanence, dominance, and reduced vulnerability. Psychologically, ownership signals autonomy and supremacy.’

This is a difference between legal access, or treaties or agreements that give access to an area, and physical control, where one nation is in control of an area of land.

Dr Jaffe added: ‘For someone like Trump, whose identity and worldview are strongly shaped by competition, hierarchy, and winning, ownership represents the ultimate form of security and success. It removes ambiguity. 

‘There’s no negotiation, no shared authority, no need to ask someone for permission. 

‘That kind of clarity can feel emotionally stabilizing, especially for leaders who are uncomfortable with uncertainty or perceived weakness.’

Dr Jaffe also suggested that Trump’s pursuit of Greenland may have a legacy component, saying he believed that the President wanted to be able to say that he obtained the island for the nation.

At a meeting at the White House yesterday between the foreign ministers of Denmark, Greenland, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, officials agreed to form a working group that would try to find a deal that could accommodate Trump’s security concerns without violating Greenland’s territorial integrity.

Denmark, alongside NATO allies, also said it would boost its military presence on the island to counter perceived threats from other nations.

But Trump, who has said the US needs Greenland for security, continued to say that America must have sovereignty over the island.

Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, warned that ‘fundamental disagreement’ over the future of Greenland remained.  

Dr Ziv E. Cohen, a forensic psychiatrist at Principium Psychiatry, told Daily Mail: ‘It is important to note that gifted politicians tend to have an uncanny sense for psychology. 

‘Trump’s insight about ownership is something that has a basis in psychology. Other gifted politicians have intuitions on psychology too that are often plausible.’

America already has full military access to Greenland, the largest island in the world, and the ability to post as many troops there as it likes. It posted more than 10,000 troops there at the height of the Cold War, although afterward this was slashed to 150 to 200.

US companies are also working to start mining rare earths on the island, although these mines are expensive because most materials are trapped under vast ice sheets.

Speaking to Daily Mail, psychologists said that US ownership of Greenland would likely boost investment and interest in the island. They said it could also further improve the island’s defenses.

Dr Szebeni added: ‘Psychological ownership fundamentally transforms behavior.

‘Research shows that when groups feel collective ownership, they’re more likely to invest resources, defend boundaries, and develop deep emotional attachments to a place.

‘There’s a feedback loop at work here: The more a group invests in and controls something, the stronger the ownership feeling becomes, which then motivates even more protective and possessive behaviors.’

She added: ‘For nations, this can translate into increased military presence, infrastructure development, settlement expansion and powerful emotional rhetoric about “protecting what’s ours.”‘

America has sought to acquire Greenland economically, and at one stage, Trump even threatened to invade the island, which the Danish prime minister said would be the ‘end of NATO.’

Retired Navy admiral James Stavridis, a former supreme allied commander of NATO, told the Wall Street Journal: ‘We don’t need “ownership” in order to conduct all the operations we would like to do. 

‘Greenland, and the sovereign state Denmark, have always been courteous and responsive hosts going back many decades.’

Richard Fontaine, who served as a foreign-policy adviser to former Republican Senator John McCain, added to the publication that Trump’s demands amounted to a ‘no one washes a rental car’ theory of international relations.

In other words, he said, a country only defends or cares about its own territory, but not that of other countries.

Negotiations over the future of Greenland continue.