11 hours ago

Did Trump get one thing right about Greenland?

One of Donald Trump’s more diabolical talents is his ability to land on the right things in the wrong way. Since his first term, Trump has been obsessed with the Arctic – Greenland in particular – something that has puzzled and enraged many, particularly in Europe. He first brought up the idea of buying the icy landmass from Denmark in 2019. Right after re-election, he began ramping up his rhetoric about acquiring it “one way or another”, threatening the Nato alliance and the foundations of post-second world war security.

Trump got his way – thankfully without military force – in September, when the US and Denmark signed an agreement that allowed for many more US troops on the island, albeit without the sort of takeover that the president enjoys “joking” about. “The United States will FOREVER have the complete ability to do what is necessary in Greenland,” Trump wrote on social media. “We will work with the people of Greenland in its development and construction.”

Europeans could be forgiven for doubting that the US president would help any country in its development, let alone Greenland. But the truth is that there is something in Trump’s obsession with a place that has more reindeer than people, and he isn’t the first to suggest the US should own it; President Andrew Johnson floated the idea in 1867. The fact is that since the cold war, Greenland has played a crucial role in North American security, with airfields close to the eastern seaboard, vast mineral resources and a location perfectly suited to tracking Arctic weather (something crucial to military movements).

More recently, it has become a pawn in the US-China geopolitical struggle. As Jeff Landry, the US special envoy to Greenland wrote in early 2026, greater American presence there would “facilitate deployment of advanced missile defense systems” and “crowd out hostile Chinese and Russian influence”. While there are no explicit Chinese or Russian security threats on the island now, many in the administration fear that if Greenland becomes independent – as it has said it wants to be by 2033 – it will be more open to Chinese or Russian influence campaigns.

Whether you agree with them or not, the region is certainly becoming a geostrategic hotspot. Russia is upping energy transit there to avoid global choke points, and China declared itself a “near-Arctic state” in 2018. Security and military drills have been conducted by both countries close to US territorial waters near Alaska. All of this puts the US’s biggest adversaries squarely in its back yard, at a time when it’s unclear what the new, post-neoliberal world order will be, and how either Europe or Greenland will fit into it.

Beyond geopolitics, there’s another reason for all the interest in the Arctic: climate change. When the seas at the top of the world were frozen solid, nobody cared much about what was happening there. But over the past few decades, global heating has opened the possibility of resource extraction (the Arctic seabed is filled with gas, oil and rare-earth minerals, most of which have yet to be mined or even claimed by individual nations). It has also made possible the passage by sea of energy supplies and goods – something that has been coveted by various powers for hundreds of years.

In August, a Chinese shipping company, Sea Legend, started a weekly trans-polar commercial route across the Arctic, through Russian territorial waters. It claims that the voyage will cut the usual 40-day journey time between Europe and Asia in half, something that seems pretty attractive given the Houthi threat in the Red Sea. Of course, to take advantage of new pathways in the Arctic, you need ships, icebreakers in particular. The US, which has very little capacity in this area, has recently started trying to make them jointly with Finland, a project that was endorsed by both Joe Biden and Trump. But the lack of icebreakers is symptomatic of a larger problem.

In 1975, the US shipbuilding industry was ranked No 1 in terms of global capacity, with more than 70 commercial ships on order for production domestically. Just over 50 years later, the US now produces less than 1% of the world’s commercial vessels. China, meanwhile, has tripled its production relative to the US over the past two decades, producing more than 1,000 ocean-going vessels last year, versus the US’s 10. The resulting asymmetry comes with commercial and military concerns for the US, but also for any country that depends on it for security. More than 90% of military equipment, supplies and fuel travels by sea.

That goes to a larger point – conflict in the Arctic is happening against the backdrop of the end of the neoliberal era, which brought modern globalisation and great wealth, but also increased inequality and a sense that policymakers operating at a great height in the national interest were sometimes out of step with the economic reality of communities on the ground.

The pendulum is now swinging back. In the US, Repubicans and Democrats alike are pushing industrial policy to restore industries such as shipbuilding and chip-making. While efforts are sometimes couched with xenophobic, anti-China rhetoric, the truth is that one country dominating any strategic industry isn’t in the interests of workers or nation states. It’s an issue that the EU, too, is now coming to terms with, as cheap Chinese electric cars, steel, lithium batteries and solar panels move from US markets to Europe.

Trump’s focus on Greenland may not be as misplaced as it seems at first glance, then. But there’s a glaring flaw in his approach. In a world that will be dominated by new spheres of influence, the US needs friends. Europe does, too. Shared supply chains, security agreements and trade pathways can all be used to mutual advantage. But it will take careful statecraft of the kind that this administration isn’t exactly known for.

Trump’s limbic brain knows that Greenland, and the Arctic at large, is important. What he doesn’t seem to understand is how to put aside his own ego and ambitions to make sure that the US can secure its own hemispheric back yard in ways that don’t destroy its existing alliances. Here’s hoping the next administration does better: the US’s future will depend on it.

Rana Foroohar is a columnist and associate editor at the FT and the author of Sea Change: America’s New Great Game in the Arctic Circle (Swift).