Donald Trump’s recent outburst that it would be “unacceptable” if the US cannot gain control over Greenland has thrust the largely autonomous Danish territory into the centre of global geopolitics. The sparsely populated but strategically vast island sits between North America, Europe and Russia, and as the Arctic ice melts, its importance is growing fast.
Climate heating is shrinking the Arctic ice cap, opening up sea routes that were once the preserve of icebreakers and exposing valuable mineral resources beneath Greenland’s retreating ice sheet. What was once seen as a frozen backwater is now viewed as a strategic prize, explaining why Trump’s previously outlandish-sounding threats are being taken far more seriously in European capitals.
Our Nordic correspondent, Miranda Bryant, who has just returned from Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, reports that families are quietly wondering whether they will have to flee as politicians find themselves in the sights of a superpower. The ice retreat makes shipping routes viable, exposes seabeds and minerals, and brings the high north into the everyday business of global trade and security.
In any future conflict between nuclear powers, missiles would pass over the polar region. The US already operates early-warning systems at Pituffik in north-west Greenland. Russia has rebuilt cold war-era bases across its Arctic coastline, and China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state”. For Trump, access and cooperation are no longer enough; control is the prize.
Greenland’s Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen has stated: “Greenland does not want to be part of the US … We choose the Greenland we know today, which is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark.” However, the second biggest party in the Inatsisartut, Naleraq, thinks Greenland should negotiate directly with the US, without Denmark, a crack Trump may try to prise open.
