Days after arresting Nicolás Maduro and transferring him to the United States, President Trump announced the next acquisition on his wish list: Greenland. He told reporters on Air Force One that the US had to have the country “from the standpoint of national security”.

On Tuesday, the White House said that military intervention was “always an option”, while Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has said Trump wants to buy it.

It’s true that Greenland, a Nato ally that is under the control of Denmark, would give America a strategic advantage in the Arctic, where Russia and China are jostling for dominance. It is also rich in untapped natural resources such as oil and minerals. But a US takeover of Greenland is unlikely to benefit Greenlanders. In fact, the country is still recovering from our last intervention there.

The last time the US had a heavy presence in Greenland was during the Second World War when as many as 25 American military installations — including major posts, weather stations, minor airstrips and auxiliary facilities — provided fuel, information and supply services to our allies in Europe.

It didn’t end well.

In 1947, when we departed the country, we left behind a huge, toxic mess of oil barrels, military equipment, hangars and trucks.

US and Danish soldiers examine equipment left behind by Germans during the Second World War

HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

In 2017 when I visited Bluie East Two, one of the major old military sites on the east coast of the country, it was in desperate shape. Nearby streams ran red with rivulets of rust and fuel deposits, and the carcasses of air hangars and trucks were rusting and sinking into the soft ground.

And that’s just what you could see with the naked eye — the soil is said to be contaminated with asbestos and lead, while the valley is rumoured to contain 700 pounds of undetonated dynamite.

“You people left a disgusting mess for us,” one local in Ikateq told me. “And it’s there just polluting everything.”

To be fair, the American argument for leaving the military sites in disarray after the war was akin to: “We paid for these airbases to save Denmark and Europe from the Nazis — so Denmark can clean them up.”

But it wasn’t until 2017 that Denmark agreed to pay for the clear-up of about 30 bases, including the Ikateq base, where more than 100,000 old oil barrels were lying about rusting. The elimination of asbestos-ridden buildings, barrels filled with leaded aviation fuel, corroding metal trucks and unexploded dynamite didn’t start until 2019.

Seven years later, it is still continuing.

Inuuteq Holm Olsen, the Greenland representative at the US embassy of Denmark, told National Geographic in 2018: “For the people that live in Greenland, the rotting bases are a bitter reminder of an agreement they didn’t have a say in … and a potential hazard to their way of life. Many Greenlanders live off hunting and fishing, and there’s no way of knowing what has been polluted.”

Only one US base, Pituffik Space Base (formerly known as Thule Air Base), remains operational today under a defence agreement with Denmark.

The base supports 150 US servicemen year-round and boasts the world’s northernmost deep-water port, playing a logistical hub role in the Arctic.

Pituffik Space Base is a rarity in that it is still operating today

ALAMY

Now, the fiercely independent and eco-conscious Greenlanders see any further signs of colonisation as a threat to their unique culture and way of life.

That is likely to include the latest idea floated by US officials, who are considering offering Greenland a “Compact of Free Association” (Cofa) — the kind of agreement it has given small Pacific nations in the past.

In a survey conducted last year by the Verian Group, 85 per cent of Greenlanders said they did not want to leave Denmark to become part of the United States, while only 6 per cent wanted to join the US (the remaining 9 per cent are undecided).

President Trump has expressed a strong desire to increase US interests in Greenland

JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

If anything, Greenlanders want everyone out. The survey showed that 56 per cent said they would vote for complete independence if a referendum were held today (28 per cent would vote no, while 17 per cent were undecided).

It’s a sentiment that has been expressed to me during the two times I visited Greenland — in 2015, when I was snowed in in the capital Nuuk for six days, and in 2017, when I was part of a vintage-aircraft rally across the Arctic that recreated Second World War supply lines.

A vintage-aircraft rally in 2017

PAULA FROELICH

“We just want to rule ourselves,” an elder in Nuuk told me. “We are our own people with our own culture and don’t want anyone — not the Danish or Americans — here.”

Greenland has a robust and thriving indigenous culture. The country’s ancient Thule traditions have prospered in Greenland for 1,000 years, and even older traditions, such as the 4,500-year-old “mask dance”, are still performed in cultural centres in Nuuk.

Part of the lifestyle means living off the land, subsistence hunting and fishing, while animals killed must be registered with the government and guides insist that hunters respect traditional indigenous practices.

So what would Greenland get out of a relationship with the United States? The answer is … absolutely nothing.

It is my experience that Greenlanders are excited to welcome visitors, to show them their rich culture and beautiful country, but they are not interested in yet another conqueror. Especially America, which has proven there is no place on earth it can’t pollute.

Any oil exploration or military intervention would signal a danger to a culture they guard so fiercely. And, as most of us learnt in pre-school: just because you want something doesn’t mean you can just take it.

Paula Froelich is the senior story editor and on-air contributor for NewsNation. Follow her travels on her Instagram @pfro