What Trump's Greenland desires mean for America's Arctic race
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The Trump plane in Nuuk, Greenland. Photo: Emil Stach/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images
President-elect Trump's talk of Canada as a "51st state" and annexing Greenland registered among national-security crowds as an "Oh, boy!" moment. Obnoxious, enticing, familiar.
Why it matters: The darlings of Trump's current foreign policy fixation boast Arctic utility at a time when the icy region is heating up.
- Both Russia and China see the northern reaches as a resource-rich crossroads, and melting ice grants new travel and trade routes as well as opportunities for military basing.
It can be argued Trump is on to something, as his onetime national security adviser H.R. McMaster did at the Council on Foreign Relations.
- "What's behind the Greenland comment, I think, is a recognition that not enough has been done ... to secure Greenland and its very important claims to the Arctic."
It can also be argued what underpins all of this is a massive case of FOMO.
- "Once you get involved in high-stakes geopolitical competition, you're very susceptible to these sort of arguments that something ... is about to become much more important, and you've got to get there before the other guy," Jeremy Shapiro at the European Council on Foreign Relations told Axios.
Here are some things to chew on:
- The Defense Department foresees an ice-free summer by 2030. While Trump has declared climate change a hoax, it is not, and it colors the thinking of designers, planners and engineers.
- The department's latest Arctic strategy argues each military service should be cold-weather ready. Think skiing and snowshoeing, medical care and survival skills. Antarctica is no Afghanistan.
- Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick for defense secretary, committed to building up Arctic power at his confirmation hearing Tuesday. The answer came at the behest of Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska).
- In August, the Army put its Alaska-based aviation units under a local command reporting to the 11th Airborne Division. The "Arctic Angel" division is headquartered near Anchorage.
- Chinese and Russian warships operated together near Alaska in 2022 and 2023. In 2024, U.S. and Canadian forces intercepted H-6 and Tu-95 bombers that took off from the same base.
- Beijing for years discussed a Polar Silk Road, part of its mega-influential Belt and Road Initiative.
- A RAND study in 2023 found Moscow "has the capacity to sustain a strong day-to-day presence in the maritime Arctic in a way that the United States does not."
- The U.S., Canada and Finland inked an agreement in November to begin developing icebreakers. It follows the ICE Pact announcement, which coincided with the NATO summit in Washington.
Behind the scenes: Denmark sent private messages to the Trump team expressing a willingness to discuss boosted security in Greenland or increasing U.S. military presence on the island, Axios' Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler reported.
- This puts the silliness aside in favor of realistic, near-term metrics.
- Greenland's prime minister, Múte Egede, at a briefing said they do "not want to be Danes, and we do not want to be Americans," local outlets reported. But that's not a no to closer ties.
Our thought bubble: Refusing to rule out military force and jokes about forcing another state into the union is more shock and awe than it is hard-nosed negotiating.
- But there's signal in the noise.
- As the Congressional Research Service puts it, there's "heightened interest in, and concerns about, the region's future."
