Greenland
To understand the strategic role of Greenland to the U.S.'s ability to control the world, it's very helpful to look at a map. Greenland sits at a critical area between North America, Europe, and the Arctic.
From the perspective of the U.S. empire, controlling Greenland is not optional. This is due to several interlocking factors: (a) the need to control travel routes and shipping lanes around Greenland (which helps control access between Europe and North America), (b) to maintain access to the Arctic (preventing China and Russia from roaming freely), and (c) to have the sole ability to build up military infrastructure on the island (the region is key to detecting and blocking submarine and bomber routes, especially from Russia). And, as climate change accelerates, this may open up access to Greenland's large reserves of rare earth minerals which are essential for new technologies. Right now, the U.S. sees its dependence on China for these rare earth minerals as a big strategic weakness, and they want to prevent China, and other imperialist powers, from controlling these strategic resources.
At this point, even as the U.S. has a large military base in Greenland, it is ultimately Denmark and Europe overall that is supposed to "defend" Greenland and prevent Russia and China from having free rein there. But the American fascists don't think Europe is at all aggressive enough in this.
This dovetails with serious concerns about what these American fascists see as the "decline of Europe." The November 2025 National Security Statement warned of the danger of Europe's "civilizational erasure"—because there has been an influx of migrants (due to the nightmare imperialism has wrought in their homelands), Europe is losing its "Western" (aka white Christian) "identity." And Trump is constantly railing against Europe for relying too heavily on America's military might and not investing heavily enough in European military strength.