As the Arctic thaws and power politics return, Greenland is no longer a peripheral curiosity but a test of Europe’s strategic nerve and America’s imperial impatience From Viking outposts to Cold War airstrips, Greenland has always mattered for reasons larger than itself. Geography has been its calling card. When Donald Trump stood before the World Economic Forum in Davos this week and declared Greenland as American territory, he was asserting maximalist leverage in a world where strategic assumptions have been rapidly eroding. This assertion did not arise in a vacuum: Greenland’s location and resources have long made it a pivot of Northern Hemisphere strategy. Trump’s fixation on Greenland (as with his musings about Venezuelan oil) would hardly have surprised novelist Joseph Conrad, who charted a veritable blueprint about American domination of the world economy in his 1904 classic Nostromo. In the novel, the American financier Holroyd explains the logic of intervention with brutal clarity: “We shall run the world’s business whether the world likes it or not.” At Davos, Trump, echoing this Holroydan instinct, described Greenland as “a big, beautiful piece of ice” that was “dangerously exposed,” and insisted that only the United States could defend it. He lamented that the U.S. had been “stupid” to return the island after the Second World War and implied that refusal to negotiate could entail consequences. During World War II, Washington had assumed Greenland’s ‘defence’ after Nazi Germany’s occupation of Denmark, constructing airfields, weather stations and strategic infrastructure vital to the Allied war effort. In 1946, President Harry Truman offered Copenhagen $100 million in gold for the island that was politely declined. Earlier still, in 1867, Secretary of State William Seward explored acquiring Greenland alongside Alaska, recognising that control of the northern approaches was central to continental defence. In the Cold War, Thule Air Base became a linchpin of America’s early-warning network, monitoring the shortest routes for Soviet bombers and missiles toward the continental United States. These historical layers underscore that Trump’s blunt interest in Greenland, however crudely articulated, is no aberration but a continuation of a long strategic logic that has driven American policy toward the island since the 19th century. Global Scramble Today, Greenland is a lynchpin in the global scramble for critical minerals. Deposits of rare earth elements, uranium, graphite, and other strategic metals buried beneath Greenland’s ice are essential for advanced electronics, hypersonic weapons, semiconductors, electric vehicles, renewable energy technologies, and other systems central to great-power competition. Kvanefjeld, one of the world’s largest known rare earth deposits, contains millions of tonnes of rare earth oxides plus uranium. It has been a focal point for investment for nearly two decades, though its development has been stalled by local restrictions on uranium mining and regulatory hurdles. Nearby Tanbreez, now majority-owned by a U.S.–aligned developer, is estimated to contain vast quantities of heavy rare earths. Despite these riches, no commercial rare earth mining has yet taken place in Greenland. Mining remains technologically daunting owing to harsh climate and minimal infrastructure while environmental concerns have kept projects in limbo, even as global demand for critical minerals has surged. Access to these minerals is now inseparable from American national security strategy and the broader contest to decouple supply chains from Chinese dominance, which still controls roughly 90 percent of rare earth processing globally. Greenland’s wealth in critical materials is the Arctic equivalent of Venezuelan oil. Private investors have woken up to the potential. Denmark’s state-owned export fund has signalled a huge appetite to back long-term partnerships in Greenland’s critical minerals and energy sectors, underwriting guarantees and loans to companies like Amaroq Minerals and GreenRoc Strategic Minerals. Meanwhile, Australian listed firms such as Energy Transition Minerals are pursuing multi-element rare earth projects. Climate change is magnifying the stakes. As Arctic ice recedes and new deposits become exploitable, shipping lanes will shorten and undersea cables can be routed more efficiently. Greenland’s geographic position makes it not just a repository of resources but a potential logistics, surveillance and defence hub where sensor networks and missile warning systems could influence Eurasian and trans-Atlantic calculations alike. As foreign capital flows in, Europe’s historical conservatism risks leaving Greenland sidelined as global powers convert geography and mineral wealth directly into strategic influence. Structural Weakness Europe’s response to Trump has exposed deep structural weaknesses. The European Union has long championed defence and industrial initiatives in form of the Permanent Structured Cooperation, joint research into critical minerals, and the European Raw Materials Alliance that support projects like the EU-backed Amitsoq graphite mine, but these efforts remain fragmented, underfunded and reactive to American pressure. Historical analogies loom large. In the 19th century, Denmark lost Norway and Schleswig Holstein not through lack of desire but through strategic vulnerability; in the early 20th century, the Danish West Indies were ceded to the United States under the Monroe Doctrine. Today, Europe risks repeating that pattern with its inability to project force or deter pressure in its own Arctic backyard. Discussions to resolve Greenland’s future have coalesced around compromise solutions designed to preserve sovereignty while addressing strategic imperatives. A significant new NATO Arctic mission, dubbed ‘Arctic Sentry’ has been proposed to counter Russian assertiveness. Another idea is to expand the 1951 Defence Agreement into ‘sovereign base areas’ modelled on Britain’s arrangements in Cyprus, thus giving Washington operational control over select zones without undermining Greenlandic or Danish authority. Proposals also include restrictions on non-NATO mining rights beneath Greenland’s ice. None of these options is settled though. While Trump’s mercurial behaviour has yet again underscored the fragility of trans-Atlantic relations, Greenland itself has gained agency as polls show little appetite for U.S. sovereignty. Meanwhile, foreign attention and investment have enhanced local bargaining power, reinforcing aspirations for independence and economic self-determination. History offers precedents for charting out a creative compromise. Condominiums, shared sovereignty arrangements, and sovereign base areas have reconciled strategic imperatives with local rights in various parts of the world, from the Anglo-German-American condominium in Samoa (1899–1914) to the Sudan–Egypt condominium over the Sudanese Nile region (1899–1955), and Britain’s Akrotiri and Dhekelia bases in Cyprus (since 1960). Greenland may yet follow that path. But the real challenge for Denmark and Europe is whether they can think as strategically as the island’s geography demands. In the grim 1965 Cold War thriller The Bedford Incident, an American destroyer stalks a Soviet submarine off the coast of Greenland in a cat-and-mouse game that ends in catastrophe. Today’s contest is less cinematic but no less consequential as mineral rights and private investment tie together defence, industry and national strategy in ways that make Greenland a pivot of 21st-century world power. The Long Arctic Temptation Greenland’s modern predicament has deep historical roots. The island’s entanglement with global power politics predates the modern state by nearly a millennium. In the late 10th century Erik the Red, an Icelandic exile with a flair for branding, led Norse settlers to the island’s south-western fjords, founding what became known as the Eastern and Western Settlements. These were organised agrarian societies, complete with farms, churches and by the 12th century, a bishopric at Garðar. In 1261 the settlers formally submitted to the Norwegian crown, binding Greenland to Scandinavian authority centuries before the rise of international law. Their disappearance by the 15th century, which was likely the result of climate cooling and an inability to adapt to Inuit practices, did not erase their legacy however. It left behind a legal and historical thread that later Scandinavian states would tug at insistently. When Denmark and Norway were joined in a dynastic union in 1537, Greenland was quietly bundled into the arrangement. Amid the late-18th-century imperial land-grab, Copenhagen formally declared Greenland a Danish colony, a claim subsequently recognised by the Treaty of Kiel (1814), which ended the Napoleonic Wars in Scandinavia. While Denmark lost Norway to Sweden it retained Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands - a curious Arctic consolation prize whose value would grow with time. That value did not escape the notice of early modern Britain. In the early 17th century, England and Scotland had just been united under James I of England (and VI of Scotland). James Stuart was also the son-in-law of Christian IV of Denmark. English merchants and fishermen clashed with Danish claims over Greenland’s rich fisheries, prompting James to argue that the island was a “legitimately acquired possession of our English crown.” Even family ties bent before fish and geography. It was the United States, however, that has proved Greenland’s most persistent suitor. In the late 19th century, American explorers such as Charles Francis Hall and Robert Peary pushed into Greenland’s north-west and high Arctic, ostensibly in the name of science. The strategic rationale sharpened in the 20th century. During the Second World War, Greenland ceased to be peripheral. After Nazi Germany occupied Denmark in April 1940, sovereignty over the island became ambiguous. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine, the United States, while still formally neutral, sent Coast Guard personnel to Greenland to prevent German encroachment while avoiding legal entanglements. The Cold War cemented Greenland’s role. Under Operation Blue Jay (1951–53), the United States constructed Thule Air Base in north-west Greenland, a logistical and engineering feat executed at speed and scale. Thule became a linchpin of America’s Arctic strategy - a forward position for strategic bombers and later a key node in early-warning systems against Soviet intercontinental missiles. By the late Cold War period, Greenland was integral to NORAD, the joint US-Canadian aerospace defence command. Offers to purchase Greenland have been floated since 1946 and revived intermittently thereafter. In 1946, the United States under President Harry S. Truman offered Denmark $1.6 billion to buy it, but Copenhagen refused. From a purely strategic ledger, it is hard to see why Washington would not be interested. Greenland commands the North Atlantic approaches, offers proximity to Europe, and sits atop vast reserves of minerals, hydrocarbons and rare earths. Greenland’s coastline stretches some 27,000 miles, much of it bordering waters newly accessible to shipping and surveillance. China has noticed its value as well. Declaring itself a “near-Arctic state” in 2018, it has poured investment into Greenland, accounting for roughly 12 percent of GDP. State-owned Shenghe Resources has secured access to a significant share of Greenland’s mineral wealth. Fish exports to China echo earlier imperial disputes. This influx of capital has transformed Greenland’s self-perception. The island has long been a chessboard for world powers to play. Each era brings new suitors and fresh rationales. Russia, NATO and Wedge-Driving Amid the crisis, Vladimir Putin insouciantly remarked that Greenland is “none of Russia’s business.” The statement of course, is profoundly disingenuous and part of a longer historical pattern. From the late 1940s, Greenland had become an indispensable node in America’s early-warning system. The construction of Thule Air Base in 1951, under a US–Denmark defence agreement, followed the blunt strategic logic that the shortest route for Soviet bombers (and later ballistic missiles) to the American heartland ran over the Arctic. Greenland lay directly across that trajectory, like a frozen sentinel on the northern approaches. This was perfectly understood by the Kremlin. Throughout the Cold War, the USSR consistently exploited Greenland’s awkward constitutional status as a vast, sparsely populated territory governed from Copenhagen but hosting American nuclear infrastructure. From the late 1950s onward, Moscow pointed to Thule as a symbol of NATO’s double standards where Denmark publicly declared itself a nuclear-free zone in peacetime, yet tolerated American nuclear deployments on Greenland under the cloak of alliance necessity. After the 1968 crash of a U.S. B-52 bomber carrying nuclear weapons near Thule, the gap between rhetoric and reality became impossible to deny. Soviet diplomacy and propaganda emphasised Western hypocrisy by using Greenland to suggest that NATO’s smaller members proclaimed restraint while enabling American militarisation. The Kremlin repeatedly returned to the language of Arctic and Nordic demilitarisation. From the late 1950s onward, Moscow endorsed proposals for a Nordic nuclear-weapon-free zone - ideas advanced most persistently by Scandinavian peace movements and sympathetic politicians - and later elevated the theme through Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1987 Murmansk Initiative, which cast the Arctic as a prospective “zone of peace.” The Kremlin was under no illusion that Washington would ever accept arrangements that constrained early-warning systems, bomber routes or strategic basing. But such proposals unsettled NATO’s northern flank by exploiting divergences between American security priorities and Nordic political sensibilities, particularly in Denmark and Norway, where public opinion was more ambivalent about nuclear strategy. Greenland occupied a persistent place within this approach. Soviet statements at the United Nations and in bilateral forums periodically invoked the language of decolonisation and self-determination, offering rhetorical sympathy for Greenlandic autonomy without advocating independence outright. Every Danish parliamentary debate over consultation rights, sovereignty and nuclear ambiguity, especially after Denmark declared itself nuclear-free in peacetime while tolerating American nuclear-capable deployments linked to Greenland, introduced friction into NATO planning. From Moscow’s perspective, this ambiguity was a strategic dividend. A Greenland whose legal status was debated, whose consent procedures were politically sensitive and whose nuclear posture was deliberately opaque was harder for NATO to use with complete confidence, even if operational control never changed. Putin’s remarks today follow the same script. Russia has invested heavily in the Arctic, reviving bases, expanding its icebreaker fleet and fortifying the Northern Sea Route. Greenland, sitting opposite Russia’s Arctic flank, forms part of the strategic geometry whether Putin admits it or not. That is why Trump’s provocations have alarmed America’s allies more than its rivals. Any attack, real or rhetorical, on Danish sovereignty risks weakening NATO from within. And Putin understands this arithmetic well.
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