The two-month-old Trump administration is embroiled in several foreign policy dramas, and not just involving Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East. The president vows to gain control -- somehow -- of Greenland, a self-ruling Danish territory since 1953 and a colony before that. "We need Greenland for national security and even international security," President Donald Trump said in this month's State of the Union speech to Congress, reviving an idea from his first term. Northern ocean ice is receding as the planet warms, opening the region as an area of competition among Russia, China and the United States.

Trump cited military concerns again before a White House meeting with the leader of NATO, alluding to Chinese and Russian naval vessels "cruising around the coast" of Greenland, adding: "We have to have protection. . . . And Denmark is not able to do that." NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, brushed aside his host's remarks to reporters, saying: "I don’t want to drag NATO into that." And following recent elections in Greenland, a mineral-rich nation of 57,000 Danish citizens that is the world's largest island, its next prime minister said: "We don't want to be Americans.” Denmark's government says the territory isn't for sale.

Trump also speaks of coveting two other places – Canada and the Panama Canal, a commercial shipping shortcut in Central America that he says "was built by Americans for Americans . . and we're taking it back." That step also is needed "to further enhance our national security," Trump says.

The unorthodox diplomatic visions are longshot goals. Canada, a neighbor with 41 million people which Trump describes as a potential 51st state, formed in 1867 as part of the British Empire and gained full autonomy in 1931. "We will never, ever -- in any way, shape or form -- be part of the United States," Prime Minister Mark Carney said after being sworn in this month. "America is not Canada." Similarly, Panama rules out any change in control of the Atlantic-Pacific waterway it has owned since 1977 and operated without shared U.S. control since 1999.

In the case of Greenland, the second-term president revives the radical idea of buying it from Denmark, a NATO ally. “I think we're going to get it — one way or the other, we're going to get it,” Trump told senators and representatives early this month. "It's a very small population but very, very large piece of land and very, very important for military security." Two weeks ago, he commented to NATO's leader: "We have a couple of bases on Greenland already and we have quite a few soldiers [there]. Maybe you'll see more and more soldiers go there." A U.S. journalist visiting Denmark, Anne Applebaum, recently wrote from Copenhagen, its capital: "A Danish prime minister cannot sell Greenland any more than an American president can sell Florida."

President says: "NATO might have to get involved in a way, because we really need Greenland for national security. It's very important."

Columnist says: "Greenland is strategically important, minerally wealthy and economically underdeveloped -- which is why the Chinese have taken an unwholesome interest in it. Also, why is there still an enormous European territory, larger than Mexico, on the North American continent?" – Bret Stephens, The New York Times

Presidential critic says: "His uninhibited language . . . adds to the volatility of an already volatile world." – Greg Grandin, Yale University historian