"We don't want to be Danish, we don't want to be American, we want to be Greenlandic." With these words, Greenland's Prime Minister Múte B. Egede responded to those asking him to account for Donald Trump's remarks about a possible US military occupation of the Arctic territory currently under Danish jurisdiction. He did so during a press conference held in Copenhagen, where he and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen discussed new forms of cooperation with Washington. Frederiksen spoke of an agreement with the United States that should bear its first fruits during the second Trump administration to "open opportunities for further cooperation, from the military sector to the development of Greenland's critical raw materials sector." These words come at a time when this enormous island — largely uninhabited and almost entirely covered in ice — has suddenly taken centre stage in international debate.

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Greenland's Prime Minister Múte B. Egede pushed back against speculation the island could be up for grabs, after United States President-elect Donald Trump's renewed fixation on acquiring it this week sparked a political storm.
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An "absolute necessity"

On Tuesday 8 December, Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect's eldest son, paid a visit to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Donald Trump will officially take office in a matter of days, on 20 January, but interest in Greenland had already been widely expressed in his public appearances following his presidential victory. In December he described the Greenland question as "an absolute necessity," during the announcement of the nomination of the new US ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery, a man very close to Elon Musk. Howery had been one of the five co-founders of PayPal, the digital payments app through which Musk first became known to the wider public. He was subsequently appointed ambassador to Sweden during the first Trump administration, before resigning when Biden took office. The work he carried out during those months earned him a reputation as a "trained and presumably loyal" man, as described by Greenland expert at the Danish Institute for International Studies Ulrik Pram Gad to the Danish newspaper The Local. Howery's interest in the Arctic thus appears to have remained intact, enough to earn him this second, prestigious appointment.

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@KenHowery @realDonaldTrump Congrats! Help America gain Greenland 😂

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After Musk's comment, Trump himself piled on. At a press conference, when asked whether he intended to rule out the use of "military or economic coercion" to obtain Greenland, he replied: "No, I can't assure you of either of those, but I can say this: we need it for economic security." Words that have inevitably drawn international debate towards the near-term future of this island of over two million square kilometres and just 53,000 inhabitants.

Trump's eyes on Greenland

This is not the first time Trump has spoken of buying Greenland. The first occasion was in 2019, during his first term. Some sources close to his first administration have revealed that on that occasion a crucial role was played by geologist and mining entrepreneur Greg Barnes, 76, who has been surveying the island since 1992 and owns the Tanbreez mineral reserve in southern Greenland, sitting atop the second largest deposit of rare earth elements in the world. According to Barnes — whom the White House asked in 2019 to give a briefing on the island's mineral potential and the possibility of opening mining settlements in Greenland — the claims made by Trump during his first term were aimed at stirring things up and re-establishing contact with the Danish-dependent territory, initiating a dialogue with its officials.

The issue of mining has played an important role in Greenlandic politics, as evidenced by the outcome of the affair surrounding the construction of a large rare earth and uranium mine at Kuannersuit ahead of the 2021 elections. On that occasion, the Inuit Ataqatigiit party won with the promise of halting the project, drawing the fury of Greenland Minerals, which filed a lawsuit against the government before the arbitration court in Copenhagen demanding either a resumption of mining operations or financial compensation for lost investments. Nevertheless, Egede recently indicated that if the next coalition government were to include parties more favourable to extraction, he could put the matter to a popular referendum.

Trump's interest in Greenland's mining activity is aimed at pulling the island away from the Chinese sphere of influence, which had itself begun to penetrate Greenland some years earlier. In 2016, a Chinese company was among the few buyers to express an intention to take over an old naval station. According to a statement by Peter Viggo Jakobsen, associate professor at the Institute for Strategy of the Royal Danish Defense College, "China's goal is to gain a foothold in the Arctic, and Beijing sees Greenland as a potential gateway for influence in the region, especially if Greenland at some point achieves independence." At the start of 2024, Múte Egede had returned to the possibility of holding a referendum on independence from Denmark, reviving a question that has been ongoing for years. Over time, Greenland has gradually gained greater autonomy from Copenhagen, achieving self-governance — with self-rule and autonomous management, albeit with some limitations, of its own natural resources — recognised in 2009.

The presence of rare earth minerals is one of the factors that interests Beijing most. The United States Geological Survey has estimated Greenland's extraction capacity at approximately 500,000 tonnes per year of two minerals (eudialyte and feldspar) from which tantalum, zirconium and niobium can be extracted — materials whose market value exceeds that of gold. China holds roughly one third of the world's reserves of these strategic materials, essential for the production of civilian and military technologies, but has seen its market share shrink over the past ten years, falling from 98 per cent in 2010 to 60 per cent in 2021, according to data published by the US Geological Survey. In its bid to secure Greenland's rare earths, China could promise investments aimed at improving transport links and other infrastructure still lagging behind, counting on Greenlanders' desire for greater autonomy from Copenhagen — including in terms of international connections that would help boost tourism. This could give China a competitive advantage in the global race for raw materials, wresting a strategic objective away from Washington.

But on this ice-covered island, the battle for global influence is also being fought — and it is one the United States has no intention of relinquishing. This is precisely the interpretation stressed by Eyck Freymann, author of the book One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World, quoted by Foreign Policy: "I don't think the United States' interest in Greenland is so much about access to rare earth minerals as it is about preventing China from gaining influence." For this reason too, Trump considers control of Greenland a matter of national security.

The melting of Arctic ice threatens Greenland twice over

In December 2021, a study presented at the American Geophysical Union demonstrated that the Arctic is warming 4 times faster than the global average — a thesis also supported by data gathered by NASA, the United States space agency, and by the Met Office of the United Kingdom, the national meteorological service. Researchers have long known that the Earth warms more rapidly at the North Pole due to a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification, which is connected to the complexity of the global climate system. The Arctic is in fact one of the areas of the planet with the greatest climate sensitivity — that is, where changes in climate parameters produce the most significant effects. Specifically, the melting of sea ice, which then becomes ocean water, prevents solar energy from being reflected by the ice back into space: in the absence of ice, it is absorbed by the ocean and converted into heat. The disappearance of ice at these latitudes therefore opens up a new geopolitical and economic contest: "Greenland is where climate change, scarce resources, tense geopolitics and new commercial patterns intersect," says Geoff Dabelko, professor of security and environment at Ohio University. The world's largest island is now "central to geopolitical and geoeconomic competition in many ways," in part because of climate change, Dabelko adds.

It would therefore appear that climate change — a phenomenon Trump has always described as "a giant hoax" — has become a new driver of United States global interests. The thaw has indeed opened new shipping routes, extending the window of time during which navigation is possible in the summer months in the northern hemisphere. A trend confirmed by the data: according to the Arctic Council, maritime traffic in the Arctic has increased by 37 per cent over the past ten years, a trend due in part to the consequences of the melting. A route that Washington has no intention of ceding to Beijing.

The possibility of China exploiting a new transpolar route is set out in the Arctic White Paper, published by the government in 2018. The document enshrines the intention to develop an infrastructural plan for land and sea connections between China, Europe and the rest of the world; in this context, the opening of the polar route would mean access to a third maritime passage alongside those running through the Suez Canal and Panama — another location over which Trump has recently asserted claims to control. It thus appears that the melting of the ice threatens Greenland on two fronts: environmentally — putting at risk the vast and still largely untouched ecosystems that define it — and politically, in terms of its autonomy, as it risks passing from Copenhagen's control to becoming a genuine stake in the contest between competing superpowers.

The mistrust of Greenlanders, eager for independence

The unease born of feeling like a new land of conquest has spread widely among Greenland's small population, which is 85–90 per cent composed of indigenous Inuit. Speaking to the New York Times, Aaja Chemnitz, one of Greenland's two representatives in the Danish Parliament, said she was concerned that Trump might seek to give momentum to Greenland's independence movement in order to advance his own interests. "We risk becoming a pawn in a game between Denmark and the United States," she said. The anti-Danish sentiment among Greenland's Inuit does not, however, come from nowhere. Centuries of domination and unjust treatment — carried out by suppressing local culture and privileging the Danish community on the island, a small minority yet predominantly employed in crucial sectors under Copenhagen's direct control — have fuelled the native population's desire for independence. A discontent that reached its peak two years ago, when revelations emerged about Danish doctors who, in the 1960s and 1970s, had fitted contraceptive devices to thousands of indigenous women and girls, often without their knowledge.

Over time, the Copenhagen government has granted Greenland greater independence, including control over its mineral resources and the right to call a referendum on independence — which nonetheless remains a highly debated issue. The prevailing sentiment among the political class, however, appears to be one of wariness and caution when it comes to Trump. Danish officials have repeatedly stated that Greenland is not for sale, while emphasising their desire to maintain cordial relations with the United States and expressing their openness to dialogue. Never before has this vast ice-covered island in the Arctic seemed less remote, as it now finds itself at the centre of the geopolitical contest.