White House Greenland summit could decide Arctic’s future

It’s a time of crisis. US Vice President JD Vance hosts the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, as well as US Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio, at the White House on Wednesday.

The focus of the talks is the future of Greenland, the world’s largest island.

A large digital news ticker tape plays over a snow-covered shopping mall in the island’s capital, Nuuk. You don’t have to speak Greenlandic to understand the words “Trump,” “Greenland,” and “sovereignty” that keep appearing in red letters.

Donald Trump said he wanted the territory and would take it “the easy way or the hard way.” After his recent controversial military action in Venezuela, Greenlanders are taking him at his word.

The anxious countdown ahead of the Washington meeting has continued for several days.

People passing by say it feels like years have passed.

“I want to encourage (Donald Trump) to use both ears wisely, to listen more and talk less. We are not for sale. Our country is not for sale,” said Amelie Ziv, as she removed thick mittens, traditionally made of sealskin and known as pualuk, to wave her hand for emphasis.

“My hope is for our country to be independent and well-managed, not bribed,” said Inuit writer and musician Sivnîssoq Rask.

Maria said to me, with her 7-week-old baby wrapped snugly in a winter coat. “I’m worried about the future of our young family. We don’t want all this attention here!”

But international interest in Greenland isn’t going away anytime soon.

Much more hangs in the balance than the fate of this island.

The fight over Greenland pits NATO countries Denmark and the United States against each other.

Greenland is a semi-autonomous region of Denmark. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that if the United States took control of the island by force, it would spell the end of the transatlantic defense alliance that Europe has relied on for decades for security.

It would also deal another blow to US-European relations, already badly bruised since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. And remember: European leaders are desperately trying to keep the Trump administration in office and support a sustainable peace deal for Ukraine.

The potential ramifications of the fallout for Greenland are enormous, but it is unclear how Washington will handle Wednesday’s meeting. Will it be a spirit of compromise or a spirit of confrontation?

President Trump argues that Greenland is needed for national security. If the United States doesn’t take Greenland, China or Russia will, he said.

With this in mind, major European powers, which have vocally supported Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, are also scrambling to put together military proposals to strengthen NATO’s presence around the island and in the Arctic more broadly.

I heard that Britain and Germany are taking the lead here. France on Wednesday announced it would open a consulate in Greenland early next month. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barro described it as a “political signal” for greater presence in Greenland, a “territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday that he “sympathizes with the United States’ concerns that this part of Denmark needs better protection.” “We just want to improve the security situation in Greenland together.”

Patrick Sensburg, president of the German Reserve Forces Association, called for at least one European brigade to be stationed in Greenland as soon as possible. He emphasized that Germany “will have a special responsibility in the effort” and pointed out that the German military would gain a strategic advantage by training its soldiers in difficult Arctic conditions.

The British government is also consulting with European allies about the possibility of deploying troops to Greenland, particularly to counter threats from Russia and China.

Talks are in preliminary stages. The possibility of deploying soldiers, warships, aircraft, submarines and counter-drone capabilities to the region is already being discussed, although troop numbers have not yet been determined.

One specific proposal is to create a maritime NATO ‘Arctic Sentry’, mirroring the ‘Baltic Sentry’ established by the alliance in the Baltic Sea following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The seafloor of the Baltic Sea and the Arctic is dense with underwater infrastructure, including energy pipelines and internet cables that are essential for financial transactions and communications worth billions of dollars every day. All are vulnerable to hybrid attacks.

“More can be done in the Arctic,” said Oana Lungescu. Until 2023, she was NATO’s longest-serving spokesperson. She is now a Distinguished Fellow at the defense and security think tank RUSI.

“I don’t expect the UK or Germany to send significant numbers of troops to Greenland, but I don’t think they will be able to conduct more exercises or expand existing exercises in the region. The UK and other NATO allies have already begun deploying maritime assets for a large-scale Norwegian-led exercise in the High North called Cold Response. The Arctic has become a strategic priority for NATO following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But more needs to be done.”

Greenland is located between the United States and Canada on one side and Russia and Europe on the other.

Washington first got a taste of Greenland’s strategic value during World War II. The United States occupied the island to prevent Nazi Germany from taking over it after their invasion of Denmark. The United States attempted to purchase Greenland after the war, but Copenhagen refused. Soon after, the two countries became founding members of NATO, and in 1951 they signed a defense agreement still in effect today, allowing the United States to maintain a military base in Greenland and bring as many troops to the island as it wishes.

Greenland is at the heart of missile defense as it is on the shortest route between the U.S. mainland and Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States greatly reduced its presence there, maintaining only one military base, the Pitupik Cosmodrome, one of Washington’s most important radar stations.

The coastline here is particularly important. In the waters between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, there is a maritime gateway, the so-called GIUK Gap, which is considered important for monitoring Russian and Chinese ships, especially submarines moving between the Arctic and the Atlantic Ocean.

The United States requested Denmark to strengthen its surveillance capabilities. Copenhagen recently pledged $4 billion for Greenland’s security, but the Trump administration ignored it.

But will NATO’s proposals for a bigger and better Arctic presence be enough for the Trump administration?

Julianne Smith was the U.S. Ambassador to NATO until President Trump was re-elected. She is currently the President of Clarion Strategies.

“This week’s meeting is really important.” she told me “Anyway, I think it will be a turning point. Representatives from Denmark and Greenland are coming prepared.”

“They are taking this moment very seriously, but the real question is whether any of these proposals can actually satisfy a White House that seems more determined and interested in expanding U.S. territory than dealing with the security of Greenland itself.”

Ian Lesser, a special fellow at the German Marshall Fund in the US, argues that if security was really what Donald Trump was worried about, the Pacific High North is a far more sensitive Arctic region for the US than Greenland.

That is where Russian and American presence and interests come into close contact, he said. In fact, there are two small islands in the center of the Bering Strait that you can walk to from the United States to Russia in the middle of winter. Big Diomede is in Russia and Little Diomede is in the US state of Alaska.

But tensions have risen since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The waters of the Bering Strait are central to the movement of Russia’s strategic nuclear assets, and U.S. and Canadian warplanes have repeatedly had to scramble to intercept Russian military aircraft off the Arctic coast.

Ian Lesser believes that Donald Trump’s focus on Greenland rather than Alaska suggests he is more concerned about economic security than security in the traditional sense.

But he said both problems could be resolved without affecting the sovereignty of Denmark or Greenland. NATO could help strengthen security and defense, and the United States could negotiate investment rights in Greenland.

Greenland is rich in natural resources, including rare earths and minerals, which are coveted by all world powers, including the United States, because of their importance to high-tech industries, including advanced defense technologies.

Washington is also eyeing the possibility that melting Arctic ice could open up new, potentially lucrative shipping routes.

But it’s hard to see how Donald Trump’s appetite for territorial expansionism could leave room for negotiation on Wednesday. These were his words at the beginning of the week:

“We’re talking about an acquisition, not a lease…. We have a base in Greenland. We can deploy a lot of soldiers if we want, but we need more than that. We need ownership. We really need ownership.”

Greenland is a Danish territory, so it is politically European, but geographically it is part of North America. The island is closer to Washington than Copenhagen, and Donald Trump seems deeply interested in making the United States bigger in terms of size and dominance.

Most Greenlanders said they wanted independence from Denmark, but far more of them (85%) refused to become Americans.

Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said ahead of a meeting in Washington on Wednesday that the country was facing a geopolitical crisis. “If we had to choose here and now between the United States and Denmark, we would choose Denmark,” he said.

But even if his meeting with the US vice president and secretary of state takes place on Wednesday, Donald Trump is the joker of the pack, said Sarah Olbig of the Greenland Center for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

“It’s up to the president what happens,” she said. “And he is very unpredictable. But if the United States takes Greenland by force, America will no longer be the land of the free. It will be the end of NATO and the democratic world as we know it.”

Russia and China will probably be watching the outcome of Wednesday’s talks as closely as Greenland. There are many risks here.

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