Location, location, location: Greenland’s position above the Arctic Circle makes the world’s largest island a key part of security strategy.
Increasing international tensions, global warming and the changing world economy have put Greenland at the heart of the debate over global trade and security, and U.S. President Donald Trump wants to make sure his country controls the mineral-rich island that guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America.
Trump’s repeated demands for the territory and threats to take it by force have rattled the NATO alliance and discomfited European allies who have long relied on the U.S. as a partner in their defense.
Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally that has rejected Trump’s overtures.
Greenland’s own government opposes U.S. designs on the island, saying the people of Greenland will decide their own future.
The island, 80% of which lies above the Arctic Circle, is home to about 56,000 mostly Inuit people who until now have been largely ignored by the rest of the world.
Here’s why Trump covets Greenland, and why it is strategically important in the Arctic:
Trump has mulled territorial expansion via Greenland, Canada and Venezuela during his second term. But of the three, he comes back to Greenland most often, arguing that it is necessary for U.S. security to be in control of the Arctic island.
“Greenland is very important to the United States, but it’s not important to Denmark,” Trump said Wednesday during a NATO summit. “We need it for protection of the world, not just the United States.”
Earlier in his term, he would not rule out taking the island by military force to secure its “right, title and ownership,” though the president has since said he's taken military options off the table.
Trump says the U.S. needs Greenland to deter threats from Russia and China, and has repeatedly made false claims of Chinese and Russian military forces lurking off the island’s coastline.
Greenland sits off the northeastern coast of Canada, with more than two-thirds of its territory lying within the Arctic Circle. That has made it crucial to the defense of North America since World War II, when the U.S. occupied Greenland to ensure it didn’t fall into the hands of Nazi Germany and to protect crucial North Atlantic shipping lanes.
Following the Cold War, the Arctic was largely an area of international cooperation. But climate change is thinning the Arctic ice, promising to create a northwest passage for international trade and reigniting competition with Russia, China and other countries over access to the region’s mineral resources.
In 2018, China declared itself a “near-Arctic state” in an effort to gain more influence in the region. China has also announced plans to build a “Polar Silk Road” as part of its global Belt and Road Initiative, which has created economic links with countries around the world.
Then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected China’s move, saying: “Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?”
Meanwhile, Russia has sought to assert its influence over wide areas of the Arctic in competition with the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway. Moscow has also sought to boost its military presence in the polar region, home to its Northern Fleet and a site where the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons. Russian military officials have said that the site is ready for resuming the tests, if necessary.
Russia's military has been restoring old Soviet infrastructure in the Arctic and building new facilities. Since 2014, the Russian military has opened several military bases in the Arctic and worked on reconstructing airfields.
European leaders’ concerns have been heightened since Russia launched a war in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that Moscow is worried about NATO’s activities in the Arctic and will respond by strengthening the capability of its armed forces there. But he said that Moscow was holding the door open to broader international cooperation in the region.
The U.S. Department of Defense operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, which was built after the U.S. and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland Treaty in 1951. It supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.
Greenland also guards part of what is known as the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) Gap, where NATO monitors Russian naval movements in the North Atlantic.
Thomas Crosbie, an associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defense College, said that an American takeover wouldn't improve upon Washington’s current security strategy.
“The United States will gain no advantage if its flag is flying in Nuuk (Greenland's capital) versus the Greenlandic flag,” he told The Associated Press. “There’s no benefits to them because they already enjoy all of the advantages they want.
"If there’s any specific security access that they want to improve American security, they’ll be given it as a matter of course, as a trusted ally. So this has nothing to do with improving national security for the United States.”
Denmark’s parliament approved a bill last year to allow U.S. military bases on Danish soil. It widened a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, where U.S. troops had broad access to Danish air bases in the Scandinavian country.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, in a response to lawmakers’ questions, wrote last summer that Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the U.S. tries to annex all or part of Greenland.
Greenland is also a rich source of the so-called rare earth minerals that are a key component of cellphones, computers, batteries and other high-tech gadgets that are expected to power the world’s economy in the coming decades.
That has attracted the interest of the U.S. and other Western powers as they try to ease China’s dominance of the market for these critical minerals.
Development of Greenland’s mineral resources is challenging because of the island’s harsh climate, while strict environmental controls have proved an additional hurdle for potential investors.
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Dasha Litvinova contributed to this report from Tallinn, Estonia.
