“If the United States takes over and annexes Greenland, what legal rights will they have to try to stop Putin in Ukraine?”
That was the question posed by Jens B. Frederiksen, Greenland’s former deputy prime minister, when we met over coffee in central Copenhagen last week. “Which legal rights will they have to try to defend Taiwan, if China wants Taiwan?” he continued. “Trump [is] just the same person as Putin. Trump wants to own Greenland. He wants to make the US bigger.”
Three weeks before our conversation, Frederiksen had addressed 30,000 Danes and Greenlanders as they gathered in the Danish capital to oppose Donald Trump’s threat to invade Greenland some 3,550 kilometres away. The strategically important island, two-thirds of which lies within the Arctic Circle, has been a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark for more than 70 years, and a Danish colony for 140 years before that.
One crucial dividing line in Greenlandic politics is independence. When the country was fully integrated into the Danish state in 1953, it established its own Parliament, constitution and introduced a host of electoral reforms. But in recent years, polls suggest around two-thirds of Greenlanders want to break away from Denmark, not least due to long-running issues such as pay inequality and the legacy of colonialism. For now, though, the threat from the US has prompted a renewed sense of unity with Denmark and Europe, with a poll from last month finding only 6% of Greenland’s adult population wants to join the US.
“I would say that everybody has been agreeing that Greenland will be independent at some point, and the disagreements were on when,” said Camilla Siezing of Kalaallit Peqatigiiffiisa Kattuffiat Inuit, an organisation that represents Greenlanders living in Denmark. “But this situation has moved back a lot of things in this regard, because I think Greenland realised how fragile we are. A lot of the discussion for independence has been on the economic and social parts. But now we also have to think about the international security issue.”
The US has had extensive access to and a military presence in Greenland since 1951, when it signed the US-Denmark Defence Agreement as the Cold War intensified. The treaty granted it operational rights on the island, including over construction, logistics, military activity and mining. Earlier this year, the concession of Greenland’s Tanbreez mining project was sold to New York-based Critical Metals Corp.
For Trump, though, the agreement is no longer enough. He began signalling his expansionist aims towards Greenland in his first presidency, initially arguing that the White House should be able to buy the island from Denmark. Earlier this year, he upped the ante, claiming US annexation of the island is necessary to secure his “golden dome” defence system, in which the Pentagon would use Greenland to launch its air defences against a hypothetical missile attack from Russia.
Similarly, as the Arctic becomes a high-pressure region in terms of security and resources, the US president says he is also concerned by China’s expansionist aims. With Greenland, he says, he could better defend his country against any eastern aggression.
Paul Rogers
Defence experts say Trump’s logic is flawed. “The US falsely claimed that there has been an increase in Russian and Chinese presence in and around Greenland,” wrote Rachel Ellehus of the Royal United Services Institute, a UK defence and security think tank, last month. “Actually, there has been little to no Chinese and Russian military activity around Greenland over the last decade.” This was echoed days later by Spenser A Warren, the Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, who branded Trump’s national security claims “grossly overblown” in the War on the Rocks blog.
There is a more extractive motivation behind the US’s interest in the Arctic. Greenland is rich in mineral wealth, including much-coveted rare earth minerals essential for technologies such as phones and the growing AI industry. Seizing Greenland would give the US access to the minerals and mining territories desired by its government and its billionaire class.
“To some of Trump's supporters, some of the tech billionaires, Greenland has become a new territory from where the US can expand and enlarge,” said Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, when we met in her book-lined office in Copenhagen.
Greenland is not an empty island, existing only to provide minerals and military bases – despite how some members of the US right have sought to portray it in recent months. It’s home to 70,000 people, and has a diaspora of around 18,000 in Denmark.
Its population includes an Indigenous community with a close relationship with nature and the land, who “live in ways that are not only organised around capitalist markets and profits”, said Danish trade unionist, writer, campaigner and Red-Green Alliance member Bjarke Friborg. “Many people still hunt and fish, share food within families and communities, and plan their time around seasons, weather and ice conditions. When you depend directly on nature like that, it shapes how you think about work, time and what really matters.”
While Friborg is clear that the “Indigenous people have been subject to colonisation and domination from Denmark,” he warned against “how the US has treated its native populations. Greenlanders know this, too, and they are not encouraged.” Greenland’s Inuit people, he added, fear what a US annexation would mean for their wellbeing and safety.
Former deputy PM Frederiksen is a member of Greenland’s historically unionist Democrats Party, which has in recent years shifted its stance to support independence in the long term, as part of a gradual process that starts with increased self-determination. He pointed out that Greenlanders, like residents in Denmark, are entitled to free healthcare, receive payments to support their education, and a generous welfare system – which he fears could all be lost under US control.
“Look at Alaska, look at Puerto Rico,” he said, adding: “Our people are incredibly anxious. We are anxious about our country, our families, our own lives. We are anxious about all the connections we have. And it’s all just because a bully wants our country for his own ‘psychological welfare.’”
These anxieties have also led politicians on the island to put aside their differences, said Frederiksen. “Greenland’s political parties, at this time, realised they have to stand up together. You couldn't imagine that three, four months before that they should work together. And I was so proud, because I think it was a very, very strong signal to send to all the world that we don't want to be a part of the United States.”
The signal was particularly loud and clear when 30,000 people marched in Copenhagen. Anders Franssen, one of the co-founders of the Hands Off Greenland campaign group, told openDemocracy he knew he had to do something after Trump’s vice president, J D Vance, visited Greenland in March last year.
“We all know what that visit meant,” Franssen told openDemocracy. “It meant they were going to try to convert the Greenlandic people to look more positively on Trump and the Trump administration. “I called up the police, and I said, I'm going [to organise] a demonstration. He said, ‘How many people are gonna show?’ I said, it’s going to be me, then two cops, it’ll be three of us. We ended up being 3,500.”
Since then, the Hands Off Greenland protests have grown in size and number, with several large marches held in Danish cities and Greenland’s capital, Nuuk.
Like their cause, the protests transcend traditional politics, said Siezing, whose organisation is non-political but joined one of the many demonstrations that took place across Denmark. “It was really emotional because it was so peaceful, and everybody just got together. There were a lot of Danish people there, and they just supported the demonstrations. Greenland has been shown a lot of support.”
“I think the demonstration showed that we are all together,” said Franssen.
Frederiksen agreed. “I really feel like it was we were united,” he said. “I’m the first person who had a speech in Greenlandic at that place in the middle of Copenhagen. At one point, I shouted to the crowd, ‘Greenland is not for sale,’ and thousands of people shouted it back. It was really powerful, a really amazing feeling.”
European security
Earlier this year, Denmark’s European allies sent troops to Greenland in response to Trumpian aggression – a display of solidarity with the embattled country. The move did not come without cost. In response, Trump tried to escalate his trade war against the region, though he later reversed a threat to increase tariffs on the UK and the EU.
This increased military presence has created, said Friborg, a “new and dynamic situation” that is forcing the Danish and Greenlandic left to ask new questions about its approach to independence, military force, NATO and international security.
“Our traditional policy in the Red-Green Alliance is that the Arctic should be a low-tension area and preferably demilitarised,” said Friborg. “But for the time being, this is just wishful thinking. When faced with classical imperialist and open imperialist behavior like we see from Trump, then the military presence is a way of supporting the people of Greenland. You could say it is also a way of keeping Danish unity, but in a situation where Greenland actually has increasing autonomy and positive attention.”
It’s a question of Western solidarity, too. What happens in Greenland does not stay in Greenland. Trump’s actions, said Fribog, who is also the Red-Green Alliance project manager for Ukraine, “is an encouragement to other imperialists such as Russia and China, saying it is okay to annex other countries, it is okay to try to dominate other countries, whatever the wishes of the local population.”
Sian Norris
Russia’s pro-government media praised Trump’s ambitions for Greenland, with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta writing: “If Trump annexes Greenland by July 4 2026, when America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he will go down in history as a figure who asserted the greatness of the United States.”
In Beijing, the reaction has been more circumspect, with Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry, telling a regular news briefing, “We have no intention of competing for influence with any country, nor would we ever do so.”
Annexing Greenland also risks European security and the future of NATO. The defence organisation’s Article 5 states that if one member state is attacked, others will come to its aid – a protocol invoked only once, when European soldiers, including from Denmark, joined the US in its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. In January, as Trump escalated his demands against Denmark, it seemed possible that its second invocation would lead to the end of the alliance, as it’s hard to imagine it surviving a scenario in which one NATO member attacked another.
For this reason, insisted Frederiksen, “this is not only for Greenland. It's not only for Denmark. It's not only for the kingdom. This is about the world order. It's about the international laws we have. It's about NATO. ”
The impact on European security has served, said Banke, who leads the foreign policy and diplomacy research unit at the Danish Institute for International Studies, as a “wake-up call to Europeans” who are having to confront the reality that the region can no longer rely on the US as an ally.
“Now it's time that we as Europeans take care of our own security,” she told openDemocracy. While she believes that Europe “cannot be completely independent of the Americans”, Trump’s threats combined with a combative US national security strategy must prompt “Europe to be much stronger in security and defence. We have to see European countries developing their own and stronger defence, and we have to see this moving as fast as possible.”
The US president’s meeting with NATO’s secretary general Mark Rutte in Switzerland last month pointed towards a framework that recognises both US and European priorities in the island – details of which have not yet been confirmed. But, said Camilla Siezing, “I am not calm yet.” She, and others, recognise that Trump can renew his threats at any time.
“There's a dialogue and diplomacy is working,” said Banke. “But one issue of the Trump administration is its unpredictability. You cannot be sure of what you're dealing with, and that's a big change from the very tight transatlantic relationship we have had.”
Trump’s administration, Banke said, “doesn’t respect that Greenland is part of the kingdom. They don't respect people's rights, and national sovereignties. These are all very fundamental principles for Europe and are fundamental in the multilateral framework developed after the Second World War.”
For now, Trump has withdrawn his threats. Some of the European troops that headed north have gone home. But the future is still uncertain, with Greenlanders still hoping for peace and a more self-determined future. “I think the only thing that we hope for is just to have some peace and quiet, leave us alone and just let us be,” said Siezing.
