Greenlanders brace for summit that could shape the Arctic’s future – and their own

It’s crunch time. The US Vice President, JD Vance, is hosting the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers, as well as their US counterpart, Marco Rubio, in the White House on Wednesday.

The focus of the talks: the future of the world’s biggest island, Greenland.

There is a large digital news ticker tape running above the 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 appear over and over again, in stark red letters.

Donald Trump says he wants this territory and he’ll take it “the easy way or the hard way”. After his recent controversial military action in Venezuela, people in Greenland are taking him at his word.

The anxious countdown to the Washington meeting has been going on for days.

Passers-by tell me it feels like years.

“I would like to encourage (Donald Trump) to use both his ears wisely, to listen more and to speak less. We are not for sale. Our country is not for sale,” Amelie Zeeb said, removing her chunky mittens, traditionally made here with sealskin and known as pualuuk, in order to wave her hands for emphasis.

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

While Maria, with her seven-week-old baby, wrapped snugly inside her winter coat, told me, “I worry for the future of my young family. We don’t want all this attention here!”

But international attention on Greenland is not going to disappear anytime soon.

Far more hangs in the balance than the fate of this island alone.

The tussle over Greenland pits Nato nations Denmark and the US against one another.

Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. The Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that if the US takes control of the island by force, that will be the end of the transatlantic defence alliance that Europe has relied on for security for decades.

It will also be another damaging blow to US-European relations, already badly bruised since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. And remember: Europe’s leaders are desperate to keep the Trump administration onside, to back a sustainable peace deal for Ukraine too.

The potential ramifications of a fallout over Greenland are huge – but it is unclear how Washington intends to handle Wednesday’s meeting. Will the spirit be one of compromise or confrontation?

President Trump insists he needs Greenland for national security. If the US doesn’t take Greenland, then China or Russia will, he says.

Mindful of this, major European powers, who have vocally supported Danish sovereignty over Greenland, have also been scrambling to come up with military proposals to boost Nato’s presence around the island and in the Arctic more broadly. The UK and Germany have taken the lead here, I’m told.

“We share the US concerns that this part of Denmark needs better protection,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday. ” We simply want to improve Greenland’s security situation together.”

The chairman of the German Reservists Association, Patrick Sensburg, has called for at least one European brigade to be stationed in Greenland as soon as possible. He stressed that Germany would “bear special responsibility in the endeavor”, and pointed out that the German army would gain strategic advantages by training soldiers in the challenging Arctic conditions.

The British government is also in talks with European allies regarding the possible deployment of military forces to Greenland, particularly in response to perceived threats from Russia and China.

Talks are at a preliminary stage. Troop numbers have not been defined but the discussions already include the possible deployment of soldiers, warships, aircraft, submarines and anti-drone capabilities in the region.

One concrete suggestion is to form a maritime Nato “Arctic Sentry”, mirroring the “Baltic Sentry” set up by alliance in the Baltic Sea after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The seabed of both the Baltic and the Arctic are busy with underwater infrastructure, such as energy pipelines and internet cables, critical for communications and billions of dollars worth of financial transactions daily. All vulnerable to hybrid attack.

“A lot more can be done in the Arctic,” Oana Lungescu told me. Until 2023 she was Nato’s longest-serving Nato spokesperson. She’s now a Distinguished Fellow with the defence and security think-tank RUSI.

“I don’t envisage that the UK or Germany will send a significant number of troops to Greenland, but they could hold more exercises in the region or expand existing ones. The UK and other Nato allies have already started deploying maritime assets for a big biannual Norwegian-led exercise in the High North, called Cold Response. The Arctic became a strategic priority for Nato after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But more needs to be done.”

Greenland sits between the US and Canada on one side and Russia and Europe on the other.

Washington first got a real taste of Greenland’s strategic value during the Second World War. The US occupied the island to stop it being taken by Nazi Germany after its invasion of Denmark. The US tried to buy Greenland after the war but Copenhagen refused. Not long after, the two countries became founding members of Nato and in 1951 they signed a defence agreement, still valid today, allowing the United States to keep its military bases on Greenland and to bring as many troops to the island as it wished.

Greenland is on the shortest route between continental US and Russia, which makes it key for missile defence. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US greatly reduced its presence here, keeping only one military base – Pituffik Space Base – one of Washington’s most important radar stations.

The coastline here is particularly important. There is a maritime choke-point in the waters between Greenland, Iceland and the UK – the so-called GIUK gap – that’s viewed as crucial to keep an eye on Russian and Chinese ships, and especially submarines moving between the Arctic and Atlantic.

The US had asked Denmark to boost its surveillance capacity. Copenhagen recently pledged $4 billion for Greenland security though the Trump administration has been dismissive.

But will Nato proposals for a bigger, better Arctic presence be enough for the Trump administration?

Julianne Smith was the US ambassador to Nato until President Trump’s re-election; she is now the president of Clarion Strategies.

“This week’s meeting is absolutely critical,” she told me. “I think it will be a turning point one way or another. The 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 will actually satisfy a White House that seems more determined and interested in expanding US territory than actually addressing the security of Greenland itself.”

If security was really all that Donald Trump was concerned about, then the Pacific High North is a far more sensitive area of the Arctic for the US than Greenland, argues Ian Lesser, a Distinguished Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

That’s where Russian and US presence and interests come into close contact, he told me. In fact, there are two small islands in the middle of the Bering Strait, where you could potentially walk from the United States to Russia in midwinter. Big Diomede is in Russia, and Little Diomede is in the US state of Alaska.

But tensions have risen here since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The waters of the Bering Strait are key to Russia for the transit of strategic nuclear assets and American and Canadian fighter jets have repeatedly been forced to scramble to intercept Russian military planes off the Arctic coast.

Ian Lesser believes Donald Trump’s focus on Greenland, rather than Alaska, suggests more of an interest in economic security, rather than security in the traditional sense.

But, he says, both could be dealt with without touching Danish or Greenlandic sovereignty: Nato could help boost security and defence, and the US could negotiate investment rights in Greenland.

Greenland is rich in natural resources, including rare earths and minerals that the US and every other global power crave because of their importance to high-tech industries, including advanced defence technologies.

Washington also has its eye on the potential for new, potentially lucrative shipping routes opening up as the Arctic ice melts.

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

“We’re talking about acquiring not leasing…. We have bases on Greenland. I could put a lot of soldiers if I want but you need more than that. You need ownership. You really need title.”

Greenland is a territory of Denmark and therefore politically European, but geographically, it is part of North America. The island is closer to Washington than Copenhagen and Donald Trump seems to have a keen interest in making America great-er in terms of size and dominance.

Most Greenlanders say they want to be independent of Denmark but even more of them (85% in polls) reject the idea of being American.

Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting in Washington, Greenlandic prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said his country faced a geopolitical crisis, “and if we have to choose between the US and Denmark here and now, then we choose Denmark.”

But however the meeting with the US vice president and secretary of state goes on Wednesday, Donald Trump is the Joker in the pack of cards, says Sara Olvig of Greenland’s Centre for Foreign and Security policy.

“What will happen will come down to the president,” she told me. “And he’s very unpredictable. But if the US takes Greenland by coercion, the United States will no longer be the land of the free.. It will be the end of Nato and of the democratic world as we know it.”

Russia and China will be watching the outcome of Wednesday’s meeting, possibly as closely as Greenlanders. There is a lot at stake here.

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