President Donald Trump’s insistence that the U.S. will gain Greenland “whether they like it or not” is simply the newest bankruptcy in a codependent and incessantly difficult courting between The usa and the Arctic’s biggest island – person who stretches again greater than a century however has just lately been at the rocks.
On Jan. 14, 2026, U.S., Danish and Greenlandic officers met on the White Space to talk about Trump’s intentions. The international minister of Denmark later instructed newshounds that whilst the 2 aspects had a “fundamental disagreement,” they’d “continue to talk.” In Congress, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell additionally criticized Trump’s threats, announcing seizing Greenland would imply “incinerating the hard-won trust of loyal allies in exchange for no meaningful change in U.S. access to the Arctic.”
Even if American citizens have lengthy pursued insurance policies in Greenland that U.S. leaders thought to be strategic and financial imperatives, Trump’s means is extra agressive than any earlier president. As I recounted in my 2024 guide, “When the Ice is Gone,” about Greenland’s environmental, army and medical historical past, some prior American concepts for Greenland have been little greater than engineering fantasies, whilst others mirrored unfettered army bravado.
Inuit and their canine crew stand in entrance of a U.S. army radar set up at Thule, Greenland, that scanned the skies for Soviet bombers and missiles right through the Chilly Struggle. Greater than 100 local Inuit have been got rid of from their land right through base building.
NF/SCANPIX/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs
However lately’s global isn’t the similar as when america remaining had an important presence in Greenland, many years in the past right through the Chilly Struggle.
Ahead of charging headlong into this icy island once more, the U.S. can be remiss no longer to be told from previous screw ups and imagine how Earth’s unexpectedly converting local weather is essentially changing the area.
Early US plundering of Greenland’s metals
In 1909, Robert Peary, a U.S. Army officer, introduced that he had received the race to the North Pole – a impressive declare debated fiercely on the time. Ahead of that, Peary had spent years exploring Greenland via dogsled, incessantly taking what he discovered.
In 1894, he satisfied six Greenlanders to return with him to New York, reportedly promising them gear and guns in go back. Inside a couple of months, all however two of the Inuit had died from sicknesses.
Folks moved the 34-ton Cape York meteorite fragment named Ahnighito from the Greenland coast to Robert Peary’s send, which took it to New York in 1897.
Account Of The Discovery And Bringing House Of The ‘Saviksue’ or Nice Cape York Meteorites. New York 1898/Wikimedia Commons
Peary additionally took 3 massive fragments of the Cape York iron meteorite, identified to Greenlanders as Saviksoah. It used to be a singular supply of steel that Greenlandic Inuit had used for hundreds of years to make gear. The biggest piece of the meteorite, Ahnighito, weighed 34 lots. These days, it sits within the American Museum of Herbal Historical past, which reportedly paid Peary US$40,000 for the gap rocks.
International Struggle II: Strategic location and minerals
International Struggle II put Greenland at the map strategically for the U.S. army. In spring 1941, Denmark’s ambassador signed a treaty giving the U.S. army get admission to to Greenland to assist give protection to the island from Nazi Germany and give a contribution to the struggle effort in Europe. That treaty stays in impact lately.
The brand new American bases in western and southern Greenland was a very powerful refueling stops for planes flying from The usa to Europe.
A political cool animated film via Herbert L. Block, revealed in April 1941, in a while after a treaty approved the U.S. to construct army bases in Greenland.
A Herblock Caricature, © The Herb Block Basis
Loads of American infantrymen have been garrisoned at Ivittuut, a far flung the town at the southern Greenland coast the place they safe the sector’s biggest cryolite mine. The uncommon mineral used to be used for smelting aluminum, vital for construction airplanes right through the struggle.
And since Greenland is upwind from Europe, climate knowledge accumulated at the island proved very important for battlefield forecasts as officials deliberate their strikes right through International Struggle II.
The Ivittuut cryolite mine in southwestern Greenland, proven in 1940. U.S. troops guarded the mine, very important for aluminum manufacturing, right through International Struggle II.
U.S. Coast Guard by the use of Wikimedia Commons
Each the American citizens and Germans constructed climate stations on Greenland, beginning what historians seek advice from as the elements struggle. There used to be little battle, even though allied patrols mechanically scoured the east coast of the island for Nazi encampments. The elements struggle resulted in 1944 when the U.S. Coast Guard, and its East Greenland dogsled patrol, discovered the remaining of 4 German climate stations and captured their meteorologists.
American infantrymen seize participants of Germany’s Edelweiss II climate station in northeastern Greenland in 1944.
U.S. Coast Guard by the use of Wikimedia Commons
Chilly Struggle: Fanciful engineering concepts vs the ice
The heyday of U.S. army engineering goals in Greenland arrived right through the Chilly Struggle within the Nineteen Fifties.
To counter the danger of Soviet missiles and bombers coming over the Arctic, the U.S. army transported about 5,000 males, 280,000 lots of provides, 500 vehicles and 129 bulldozers, in keeping with The New York Instances, to a barren, northwest Greenland seaside – 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the North Pole and a pair of,752 miles (4,430 kilometers) from Moscow.
There, in a single top-secret summer time, they constructed the sprawling American air base at Thule. It housed bombers, combatants, nuclear missiles and greater than 10,000 infantrymen. The entire operation used to be printed to the sector the next 12 months, on a September 1952 quilt of LIFE mag and via the U.S. Military in its weekly tv display, “The Big Picture.”
A wave of U.S. army engineers lands at the shores of northwestern Greenland to construct Thule Airbase in summer time 1951.
Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone by the use of Getty Photographs
However within the realm of concepts born out of paranoia, Camp Century and Mission Iceworm have been the top.
The U.S. Military constructed Camp Century, a nuclear-powered base, throughout the ice sheet via digging deep trenches after which overlaying them with snow. The bottom held 200 males in bunkrooms heated to 72 levels Fahrenheit (22 Celsius). It used to be the middle of U.S. Military analysis on snow and ice and was a reminder to the united states that the American army may just perform at will within the Arctic.
Steel arches positioned over trenches lower into the snow-formed roofs at Camp Century. The arches have been coated with snow and ice, got rid of, and reused. A an identical thought were deliberate for rail strains during the ice.
U.S. Military Corps of Engineers, 1960
An aerial view presentations Camp Century, which used to be powered via a transportable nuclear reactor.
US Military
The Military additionally imagined loads of miles of rail strains buried within Greenland’s ice sheet. On Mission Iceworm’s tracks, atomic-powered trains would transfer nuclear-tipped missiles in snow tunnels between hidden release stations – a shell sport overlaying a space concerning the measurement of Alabama.
After all, Mission Iceworm by no means were given past a 1,300-foot (400-meter) tunnel the Military excavated at Camp Century. The comfortable snow and ice, repeatedly shifting, buckled that observe because the tunnel partitions closed in. Within the early Sixties, first the White Space, after which NATO, rejected Mission Iceworm.
A U.S. Military truck with railroad wheels sits on a 1,300-foot-long observe underneath the snow at Camp Century, Greenland. That is the nearest the army were given to figuring out Mission Iceworm.
Robert W. Gerdel Papers, The Ohio State College
In 1966, the Military deserted Camp Century, leaving loads of lots of waste throughout the ice sheet. These days, the beaten and deserted camp lies greater than 100 toes (30 meters) beneath the ice sheet floor. However because the local weather warms and the ice melts, that waste will resurface: tens of millions of gallons of frozen sewage, asbestos-wrapped pipes, poisonous lead paint and carcinogenic PCBs.
Who will blank up the mess and at what value is an open query.
Greenland stays a difficult position to show a benefit
Up to now, the American center of attention in Greenland used to be on non permanent positive aspects with little regard for the longer term. Deserted bases, scattered across the island lately and wanting cleanup, are one instance. Peary’s fail to remember of the lives of native Greenlanders is some other.
Historical past presentations that lots of the fanciful concepts for Greenland failed as a result of they confirmed little attention of the island’s isolation, harsh local weather and dynamic ice sheet.
International Struggle II-vintage vehicles deserted at a U.S. airfield in east Greenland have been nonetheless there many years later.
Posnov/Second by the use of Getty Photographs
Trump’s calls for for American keep watch over of the island as a supply of wealth and U.S. safety are in a similar fashion shortsighted. In lately’s unexpectedly warming local weather, brushing aside the dramatic results of local weather alternate in Greenland can doom tasks to failure as Arctic temperatures climb.
Fresh floods, fed via Greenland’s melting ice sheet, have swept away bridges that had stood for part a century. The permafrost that underlies the island is unexpectedly thawing and destabilizing infrastructure, together with the vital radar set up and runway at Thule, renamed Pituffik House Base in 2022. The island’s mountain aspects are crashing into the ocean because the ice preserving them in combination melts.
The U.S. and Denmark have carried out geological surveys in Greenland and pinpointed deposits of vital minerals alongside the rocky, uncovered coasts. Then again, many of the mining up to now has been restricted to cryolite and a few small-scale extraction of lead, iron, copper and zinc. These days, just one small mine extracting the mineral anorthosite, which turns out to be useful for its aluminum and silica, is working.
It’s the ice that issues
The best worth of Greenland for humanity isn’t its strategic location or attainable mineral sources, however its ice.
A NASA animation of satellite tv for pc knowledge presentations Greenland’s ice sheet mass losses between 2002 and 2023, measured in meters of water identical within the ice.
If human actions proceed to warmth the planet, melting Greenland’s ice sheet, sea degree will upward push till the ice is long gone. Dropping even a part of the ice sheet, which holds sufficient water to lift world sea degree 24 toes in all, would have disastrous results for coastal towns and island international locations all over the world.
That’s big-time world lack of confidence. Essentially the most forward-looking technique is to give protection to Greenland’s ice sheet slightly than plundering a far flung Arctic island whilst ramping up fossil gas manufacturing and accelerating local weather alternate all over the world.
This text has been up to date with main points from a gathering involving officers from Denmark, Greenland and the U.S.
