COPENHAGEN — “One way or the other,” President Donald Trump has said, the United States needs to “get” Greenland. Not only to defend the homeland, but the “freedom of the world.” Denmark, he says, isn’t doing nearly enough to protect it. He has named two potential adversaries: China and Russia.
Second lady Usha Vance will visit Greenland as Trump talks up US takeover
Its location, way out there, in a hostile ocean between North America, Western Europe and Russia, made Greenland strategically vital during the Cold War. After the Soviet Union collapsed, not so much.
But now, as tensions rise across a melting, militarizing Arctic, the world’s largest island is back on the map.
Arctic sea ice typically reaches its greatest extent in March. It makes most of Greenland difficult to reach by ship.
By September, the ice contracts to its smallest extent, opening passages that can shorten shipping routes.
Greenland lies along what the old Cold Warriors dubbed the “GIUK Gap,” the pinch point between Greenland, Iceland and Britain that protects the North Atlantic from Russian ships and submarines.
The island is also a waypoint for communication cables that cross the Atlantic — the kinds of cables that European defense officials say Russian “ghost ships” have been attacking by dropping and dragging their anchors across the seafloor.
Vice President JD Vance has praised Greenland’s “incredible natural resources.” Like Ukraine, the island possesses the critical and rare metals needed for the modern world — for electric vehicles, smartphones, medical imaging equipment, computer chips and wind turbines. Though mining Greenland has so far proved notoriously difficult, its leaders say the territory is open for business to U.S. companies with the money and guts to explore.
But Trump’s comments have raised more questions than answers. What are the threats against Greenland, and the U.S.? How should they be met, by whom and with what level of force? Treaties? Dogsleds? F-35s? Nukes?
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