By P M Amza –

An Idea Revisited

Recent public remarks by President Donald Trump once again brought Greenland into global headlines as a territory of strategic interest to the United States. Although widely treated as rhetorical provocation, these comments echoed Trump’s explicit proposal in 2019 to acquire Greenland—an idea promptly rejected by both Nuuk and Copenhagen. What appeared then as a diplomatic eccentricity has, with the passage of time, acquired sharper analytical relevance.

This article approaches the Greenland question through three interrelated lenses. First, it examines why Donald Trump has persistently fixated on Greenland, identifying the strategic, economic, and geopolitical motivations that underpin his interest. Second, it considers how such ambitions might theoretically be pursued, distinguishing between options that remain legally and diplomatically plausible and those that would represent a clear departure from established international norms. Finally, it assesses what this line of thinking reveals about the resilience of the post-war international order and the future credibility of NATO, particularly if power-centric impulses begin to override alliance discipline and respect for sovereignty.

Why Greenland? Motives Behind the Obsession

Greenland is the world’s largest island, covering approximately 2.16 million square kilometres, with nearly 80 per cent of its surface locked under ice. Its strategic importance lies not in population—it has barely 57,000 inhabitants—but in location. Positioned between North America and Europe, Greenland dominates the Arctic approaches to the North Atlantic and overlooks the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) gap, a maritime corridor once central to Cold War naval strategy and now again gaining relevance as Arctic ice retreats and military competition intensifies.

Trump’s repeated focus on Greenland is best understood not as a detailed policy blueprint, but as an instinctive convergence of strategic anxieties shaping contemporary U.S. power thinking. Greenland sits at the intersection of geography, security, resources, and climate change—each reinforcing the others.

The geographic logic is reinforced by the long-standing U.S. military presence at Thule Air Base, renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2023. Established under a 1951 defence agreement between the United States and Denmark, the base provides a legal and operational foundation for U.S. Arctic defence. It plays a critical role in ballistic-missile early warning and space surveillance, offering vital minutes of warning in the event of missile launches across the Arctic. In an era of hypersonic weapons, anti-satellite capabilities, and increasing militarisation of space, such installations are no longer peripheral; they are central to national defence planning.

A second motive lies beneath Greenland’s ice. Geological surveys confirm significant deposits of rare earth elements, along with zinc, lead, iron ore, gold, graphite, and uranium. Rare earths are indispensable to precision-guided weapons, radar systems, electric vehicles, renewable energy technologies, and advanced electronics. According to the U.S. Geological Survey and the International Energy Agency, China controls roughly 60–70 per cent of global rare-earth mining and more than 85 per cent of processing capacity, creating a strategic dependency increasingly viewed in Washington as a national-security vulnerability. Greenland thus features in U.S. thinking not as an immediate commercial prize, but as a long-term hedge against supply-chain coercion.

Climate change adds a further layer to this fixation. The Arctic is warming at more than twice the global average, accelerating ice melt, extending navigable seasons, and reshaping both commercial and strategic geography. Emerging sea routes promise shorter Europe–Asia transit times and confer new importance on territories previously considered marginal. Trump’s Greenland rhetoric reflects an instinctive—if crudely articulated—recognition that the Arctic is shifting from periphery to centre in global geopolitics.

Finally, Trump’s personal political style is integral to understanding the tone of his interest. His framing of Greenland as a “real estate deal” reveals a worldview that treats territory less as a sovereign political space and more as a strategic asset to be controlled or secured. While this framing departs sharply from diplomatic norms, it mirrors a broader drift toward transactional geopolitics, in which power increasingly tests legal and normative restraint.

How Could Such Ambitions Be Pursued?

If the motives behind Trump’s interest in Greenland are intelligible, the means of pursuing them are far more contentious. An outright purchase of Greenland is legally implausible and politically indefensible. Greenland’s autonomous status within the Kingdom of Denmark, combined with the principle of self-determination enshrined in international law, places such an act firmly outside the boundaries of acceptable state conduct. Yet the articulation of acquisition rhetoric invites examination of alternative options through which influence—or control—might be sought.

The first option is incremental military expansion. The United States already operates in Greenland under defence agreements with Denmark dating back to 1951. These arrangements provide wide latitude for expanding operational presence without altering sovereignty. Additional radar systems, expanded basing, Arctic-capable forces, and enhanced space-domain assets could deepen U.S. strategic control while remaining formally within alliance frameworks.

A second option lies in long-term basing or quasi-leasing arrangements. Historically, major powers have often secured enduring strategic advantages through agreements that stop short of annexation but deliver operational autonomy in practice. Expanded basing rights, extended lease horizons, and enhanced jurisdictional privileges could insulate U.S. Arctic capabilities from political shifts in Copenhagen or Nuuk, without provoking the legal backlash associated with outright acquisition.

A third option is economic and diplomatic entrenchment. The opening of a U.S. consulate in Nuuk in 2020, increased development assistance, infrastructure financing, and preferential partnerships in mining and logistics point toward a strategy of embedding influence rather than asserting ownership. Over time, such measures shape local incentives and political alignments, creating leverage without overt coercion.

The final option—coercion, whether economic or military—is the most destabilising. While operationally unlikely, even the suggestion of coercive acquisition is significant. It signals a willingness to test alliance solidarity and erode long-standing norms against territorial acquisition, blurring the line between strategic competition and outright revisionism.

NATO, Denmark, and the Alliance Red Line

Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a founding member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Any attempt by the United States to impose its will on Greenland through coercion would therefore amount to pressure on a NATO ally, striking at the core principles of collective defence and mutual trust enshrined in the Washington Treaty.

Such a scenario would be existential for the Alliance. NATO’s credibility rests not only on military capability, but on restraint and the assurance that power will not be exercised arbitrarily among allies. Even absent a formal invocation of Article 5, coercive behaviour by the Alliance’s leading power would fracture cohesion and hollow out NATO’s moral authority.

Ironically, Greenland is often framed in Washington as a counterweight to Arctic assertiveness by Russia and expanding economic engagement by China. Yet coercion against Denmark would validate the very power-politics logic the Alliance claims to oppose, handing rivals both strategic and narrative advantage.

The World Order at Stake

Beyond NATO, the Greenland episode exposes deeper stress fractures in the post-1945 international order. Territorial acquisition—whether by force or coercive bargaining—has long been delegitimised. The United Nations Charter affirms the sovereign equality of states and prohibits the threat or use of force against territorial integrity.

When a major power treats territory as an object of acquisition, even rhetorically, the normative barrier against revisionism weakens. The danger lies in precedent. If acquisition logic is normalised, opposition to territorial revisionism elsewhere—from Eastern Europe to East Asia—loses moral clarity. Power begins to trump principle, and restraint gives way to transactional geopolitics.

Lessons for Small and Medium-Sized States

For small and medium-sized states, the Greenland debate is not an Arctic curiosity but a warning. Strategic geography and natural resources can rapidly transform peripheral territories into focal points of great-power ambition. When major powers begin to test limits, it is smaller states that feel the consequences first.

Such states rely disproportionately on international law, alliances, and multilateral institutions. When these frameworks weaken—whether through rhetoric or action—the costs are asymmetric. For countries such as Sri Lanka, the lesson is clear: diplomatic agility, diversified partnerships, and principled defence of multilateral norms are essential for preserving sovereignty in a more permissive power environment.

Conclusion: Motive Without Mandate

Trump’s renewed focus on Greenland can be explained, but it cannot be legitimised. The strategic motives are intelligible; the methods implied are not. More troubling than the idea itself is what it reveals about shifting attitudes toward sovereignty, alliance solidarity, and the limits of power.

Greenland today stands not merely as an Arctic outpost, but as a litmus test for whether the international system will continue to be governed by rules and restraint—or drift toward a world in which strategic desire alone defines what is permissible.

References

1. U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries: Rare Earths, latest edition.

2. Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark Concerning the Defense of Greenland, 27 April 1951.

3. U.S. Space Force, Pituffik Space Base Fact Sheet, 2023.

4. NATO, The Strategic Importance of the Arctic Region, Brussels.

5. Arctic Council, Arctic Climate Change Update.

6. International Energy Agency, The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions.

7. European Commission, Critical Raw Materials Resilience.

8. Danish Institute for International Studies, Greenland and the Geopolitics of the Arctic.

9. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, The Washington Treaty (1949), Articles 1 and 5.

10. United Nations Charter, Articles 2(1) and 2(4).

*Author is former Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to EU, Belgium, Turkey and Saudi Arabia