Expert Q&A: Trump’s Greenland Moves may be ‘Kicking an Open Door’ for the U.S.

EXPERT Q&A — As The Cipher Brief reported last month, Greenland has found itself at the center of the global national security conversation, following President Donald Trump’s public calls for U.S. control of the vast Arctic island. Just prior to his inauguration, Trump said that U.S. ownership of the semi-autonomous Danish territory is an “absolute necessity” for economic and national security, and he has repeated that claim in various ways since he took office. And the President hasn’t ruled out the use of force to achieve U.S. control.

Could that really happen? And how would an aggressive American move against Greenland impact the NATO alliance – given that Denmark is a member of NATO? While experts have echoed Greenland’s strategic value – General Philip Breedlove, a Cipher Brief Expert and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, told us that Greenland is about “location, location, location” given its strategic position in the North Atlantic – Trump’s comments have gotten strong pushback from Denmark, other NATO allies and Greenland itself. “Greenland is not for sale,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederisken has said; and Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede has said that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.” German Chancellor Olaf Sholz went so far as to say NATO should bolster its presence in Greenland as a result of Trump’s comments. “When we say borders must not be moved by force, that of course applies even more to our partners,” he said. 

For his part, Gen. Breedlove told us: “I would have preferred that we would be having these kinds of conversations with the people of Greenland and Denmark in a more reserved way, out of the public eye, but it’s in the public eye now.”

The stakes are high. The U.S. operates its northernmost military facility, Pituffik Space Base, in Greenland, the territory is rich in critical minerals, and China and Russia are interested in the territory for all the reasons that have drawn U.S. interest.

The Cipher Brief spoke with Ambassador Douglas Lute, a Cipher Brief expert who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO, about Trump’s comments and the prospect of U.S. control over Greenland. Ambassador Lute said that while the value of Greenland cannot be overstated, the U.S. may be “kicking on an open door” since the territory is already under allied jurisdiction. “This may be an instance where unfettered access, free flowing exchange of goods, services, trade, and security arrangements is not that difficult,” Ambassador Lute said. “It doesn’t require anything like full-fledged American control.”

Ambassador Lute spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can also watch their full discussion on our YouTube channel.

Nagorski: What is the national security geopolitical importance for the United States of Greenland?

Ambassador Lute: I think fundamentally, Greenland’s important because of location. This is a reminder to all of us that geography still counts in a world where a lot of things span international borders and blur borders, such as pandemics, cyber, information technology, and so forth. Here’s a case where geography still counts.

The original value of Greenland for the U.S. had to do with its pathway. It’s a stepping stone between North America and Europe. Coming right out of World War II, the sea lanes and the airline passages to connect those two continents were vital, especially given the recent World War II experience. An interesting footnote in history is that Denmark is actually one of the original 12 NATO allies less because of Denmark’s geographic position, but because of Denmark’s sovereign authority over Greenland, which is so centrally, geographically important. 

In modern terms, where, perhaps, we don’t rely so much on troop ships or supply ships, liberty ships, to resupply the defense of Europe, it’s important for a number of reasons. First of all, it breaches the Arctic Circle, and as the northernmost passageway becomes increasingly viable as a sea line because of the retreating ice blocks.

Greenland’s also important because we have the U.S. base, the former Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland. It is important as an early warning station and as a forward operating base. 

And then increasingly, as the ice shelf recedes, Greenland is important because it offers the access to critical minerals which are important to the Green Revolution, to the green transition, but also to high tech and so forth. So for a lot of different reasons, Greenland is geographically important.

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Nagorski: Is it necessary that the U.S. actually control what goes on in Greenland?

Amb. Lute: There are a lot of places around the world where American access to geographic choke points or geographic points of advantage, like Greenland, is, I would argue, an important if not vital American national interest. If we look to the south, we talk about access to the Panama Canal. But access doesn’t have to equate to control.

In the case of Greenland, the door is wide open for expanding American access on the security front. Greenlanders are open, Denmark is open to expanding American military access to the island, but also on the economic front. The Greenlanders state clearly that they would much prefer U.S. investment in, for example, the critical minerals field rather than Chinese investment, a key strategic competitor of ours. We’re kicking on an open door here. This may be an instance where unfettered access, the free-flowing exchange of goods, services, trade, and security arrangements is not that difficult. It doesn’t require anything like full-fledged American control.

Nagorski: Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently talked about Chinese influence over both Panama and Greenland. He said that the Chinese could use state-linked companies to establish dual-use facilities and, “It is completely realistic to believe that the Chinese will eventually, maybe even in the short term, try to do in Greenland what they have done at the Panama Canal.” Do you agree with that?

Amb. Lute: There is Chinese active investment in the two ports, the Pacific side and the Atlantic side, of the Panama Canal, that may be of concern. But I think that’s a degree of concern much higher than some potential hypothetical investment by the Chinese in Greenland. 

Furthermore, the Greenlanders and the Danes are alert to this and have stated publicly by way of bilateral security and diplomatic ties that they’re wide open to increased U.S. presence and investment in Greenland. I think they’re quite distinct cases, between Panama and Greenland.

Nagorski: Among the reactions to this, NATO ally Denmark has said, “Greenland is not for sale.” EU officials said, “We’re not negotiating.” And Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz in Germany said,  “Borders must not be moved by force.” I guess this goes to your point about kicking at an open door, because now it seems like we are at odds with NATO allies over this, correct?

Amb. Lute: Fundamentally, yes. 75, almost 76 years ago now, NATO was formed to protect the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of NATO allies — originally 12 and today 32. The notion that you’ve got an internal NATO dispute over territory, or even the not so subtle threat of force of one NATO ally toward another, is perhaps unprecedented — if you set aside the Greece-Turkey relationship in the Mediterranean. This is fundamentally a NATO issue. 

What I’ll be watching carefully here will be the coming Munich Security Conference, which is essentially the public security conference of the NATO Alliance. NATO presence there will be very strong. This will come up there. And by April, Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio will be at another ministerial-level meeting in Brussels. All this leads to a NATO summit in The Hague in June. 

So you’ve got, in the first six months of the new Trump administration, three or four venues where this could be a disruptive topic. It’ll be interesting to watch these as signposts as to whether or not we can separate the substance of this case — the arguments for minerals, the arguments for base access and so forth — from the rhetoric, and whether or not this is a case where, as some have advised, that we should take President Trump’s rhetoric seriously but not literally. Is he literally talking about the use of military force? I think probably not. But these four events on the calendar will be real signposts in terms of this topic.

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Nagorski: We had an earlier conversation this year at The Cipher Brief, when this was first bubbling, with General Phil Breedlove. He said that he wished this could have been handled with Greenland and Denmark in a more reserved way, out of the public eye, in “a quiet conversation,” he said. But now it’s out in the open. Do you think there is a way, putting your former Ambassador to NATO hat on here, to lower the temperature and get it back behind closed doors, as the general may have been suggesting, and deal with it that way?

Amb. Lute: Of course, but Phil’s wishing for something which is not so. This is simply not President Trump’s style. It’s not his favorite move. The notion of suddenly making a very unconventional, unpredictable president conventional and predictable, seems to me a stretch. I think that this is one of the features of the Trump administration that we should expect. We should buckle up. This is going to be a series of unpredictable steps. We’ve seen it in other venues in the first weeks of the Trump administration, that just demonstrate that the president places a value on being unpredictable and being the center of attention. So I don’t think someone at his station is going to change his stripes. What we see is what we’ve got. This is not going to move, in my view, back into sort of a conventional pattern of diplomatic exchange.

Nagorski: Where do you think the issue goes then? 

Amb. Lute: I think what’s viable, what’s plausible, is that there is a conversation between the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, their Danish counterparts, their NATO colleagues that makes much more obvious this notion of an open door. There could be a change in the basing arrangement that makes clear that the door is open for an increased U.S. military presence in Greenland. Of course, the door is open now, but this could be a move that gives President Trump credit for increased basing actions. You can imagine some sort of economic arrangement which gives the U.S. a preferred position with regard to future investments in the critical minerals and so forth. Frankly, it’s not a heavy lift. The Danes and the Greenlanders are offering that today. But I would imagine that we could move this into more conventional style and conventional patterns by giving President Trump some credit for increased access, both on the security front and the economic front. Quite frankly, it may not have required the headlines, but here we are. That’s a path that I’d watch carefully. I think there’s some potential there.

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