The Greenland Takeover That Isn't Necessary: Why America Already Controls the Island

Over the span of four days, it became abundantly clear that the President of the United States has a new obsession: Greenland. After more than a year building his case for US control over the island territory, and after weeks of implying that he would seize it by force, the situation has turned very real. On a Saturday, Trump levied a new ten-percent tariff against the NATO member states who had rallied around Greenland and the government that controls it, Denmark.

The next day, he sent a message to Norway’s Prime Minister so combative it is worth quoting: “Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace… why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also… The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.” By Monday, he had outright refused to rule out taking the island by force.

There is no shortage of angles from which to examine this crisis — the implications for the NATO alliance, for Greenland itself, and for a global balance of power in which a US takeover would almost certainly work against Washington’s own interests over the long run. But all of those conversations rest on top of a stranger, more fundamental reality, one that Trump does not seem to be aware of. For all practical purposes, the United States already controls Greenland.

Key Takeaways

The United States is already party to the Greenland Defense Agreement, a pact dating to the 1950s that allows it to build, install, maintain, and operate as many military bases across Greenland as it wants, with as many personnel as it chooses.
Greenland is strategically vital — sitting above the Arctic Circle midway between Russia and the continental US, overflown by intercontinental ballistic missiles in any nuclear exchange, and rich in oil, gas, and rare-earth deposits that melting ice will expose.
Denmark and NATO have defended Greenland with a remarkably light footprint: roughly 130 to 150 personnel at the Joint Arctic Command, a thinly armed 1st Squadron of the Royal Danish Navy, and an allied troop presence on the island of only about 150.
America’s own current deployment on Greenland is just about 150 troops at Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base — a base whose presence Trump himself helped shrink during his first term, despite a Cold War peak of some 6,000 troops there and 15,000 across the island.
Because Greenland is nearly four times the size of Texas but home to only about 57,000 people concentrated in twelve settlements, the US can operate almost anywhere it wants without triggering the few restrictions in its agreements with Denmark.
Analysts have floated alternative motives for Trump’s fixation — breaking NATO, resource extraction, pressure from American oligarchs, territorial legacy, or simply that Greenland looks big on a map — but Washington continues to publicly claim national security as its driver.
If national security is genuinely the goal, the US could re-expand Pituffik, leverage its unmatched aerial-refueling and space-based assets, build a fleet of icebreakers, and negotiate mineral-rights deals — all without annexing the island or destroying the alliance.

That single fact reframes the entire debate. A US invasion of the territory is not merely ludicrous on legal, operational, or strategic grounds; it is completely, strategically unnecessary. Everything Washington claims to want from Greenland, it can already do — and a forcible takeover would purchase nothing that treaties and geography have not already handed it.

Where the Logic Falls Apart

It is worth conceding a point that many of Trump’s critics, in the United States and across NATO, have tended to avoid. On a fundamental level, it is not unreasonable for the United States to want to ensure direct military control over Greenland. It is unnecessary to invade and capture the island, but it is far from crazy for Washington’s position to be something like, “this island is very strategically important, and we’d like to guard it.”

Geographically, Greenland is a major territory above the Arctic Circle, sitting midway between Russia and the continental United States. It is a place that intercontinental ballistic missiles would overfly in the event of all-out nuclear war, which makes it an ideal location to position intelligence assets and nuclear-capable warfighting equipment like bombers and submarines. Russian submarines and ships already operate in the surrounding waters. The strategic stakes here are not imaginary.

Just as important is the future. Greenland is expected to change more than almost anywhere else over the coming decades because of climate change, and that matters to the United States for several reasons. As the Arctic warms and sea ice melts, the Arctic Ocean becomes navigable — meaning whichever countries can establish control over the Arctic today will reap the rewards of global shipping tomorrow.

As the ice covering Greenland recedes, it is expected to expose immense natural-resource deposits: oil and gas, rare-earth elements, and other materials fundamental to global supply chains. In today’s hyper-competitive geopolitical environment, it is entirely reasonable for the US to conclude that the only way to keep adversaries like Russia or China from co-opting American interests in the Arctic decades from now is to lock down control of the territory today.

A Defense Left Wide Open

Washington also has a fair point about the posture of its allies. As of now, Denmark and the rest of NATO have taken a strikingly hands-off approach to protecting Greenland. Before Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric, Denmark had deployed only roughly 130 to 150 military and civilian personnel to its Joint Arctic Command, which watches over the Faroe Islands as well as Greenland itself. It assigned the 1st Squadron of the Royal Danish Navy to patrol duties, but that squadron consists of only a small handful of patrolling frigates and cutters, none of them particularly well-armed.

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The allied numbers are even more telling. The largest force any of Denmark’s NATO allies had stationed on Greenland comprised only about 150 troops — a figure that becomes important shortly. NATO forces conduct air and sea patrols in the area, and while these are more frequent than they once were, they are hardly sufficient to guard the entire territory. Even as tensions with Washington climbed, Denmark sent only some two hundred additional troops, while NATO advance forces preparing for potential exercises there number in the low dozens.

In short, if the United States treats the defense of Greenland as a priority in the 2020s, it is not hard to see how Washington would survey the territory’s current defenses, judge them incomplete, and grow frustrated — especially at a moment when it has already derided European nations for their lack of military preparedness.

The United States Already Has Free Rein

Here, however, is where the American logic starts to come apart. Washington frames Denmark as a barrier to US national and economic security by refusing to cede control of Greenland. That framing simply does not match reality. The United States, for all practical purposes, already has the freedom to do whatever it wants in Greenland — and it can position so many military assets on the island that it can effectively control it by default.

Since the 1950s, the US has been party to the Greenland Defense Agreement, a pact it signed with Denmark and the other founding members of NATO. That agreement does not grant a sovereignty claim, but it guarantees nearly everything short of one. It is broadly written, giving the US latitude to build, install, maintain, and operate as many of its own military bases across Greenland as it wants. At those bases, it can house as many personnel as it chooses, and it can exert control over the movements and operations of ships and aircraft in basically any area it selects.

A 2004 amendment gave Greenlanders a say over US military operations that risk impacting the local population — but that is practically a non-issue. Greenland spans an area nearly four times larger than Texas, more than double the size of Nigeria or Pakistan, and roughly as large as Mexico. Yet it is home to only about 57,000 Greenlanders, most concentrated in just twelve settlements with a population over one thousand.

This is not a densely settled place. Given the latitude written into its agreements with Denmark, the US can essentially do as it pleases so long as it avoids basing operations in that small handful of inhabited locations.

Why Denmark Would Likely Say Yes

Historical precedent reinforces the point. Broadly, Denmark has been very hesitant to push back against the United States when Washington seeks to deploy troops in Greenland. And right now, in the midst of an exceptionally tense security crisis, Denmark would likely welcome the chance to resolve the whole standoff by simply inviting American troops onto Greenland’s soil.

All of this leads to a decent argument that the US should prioritize a greater military foothold on the island. But there is no reason it would need to purchase the territory, take it over militarily, or otherwise annex it to achieve that goal. Anything the United States could do on a Greenland under its direct control, it can already do — without essentially destroying the NATO alliance in the process.

What makes the current rhetoric stranger still is that, of all the steps America could take today to secure Greenland, it has barely taken any of them. Recall that the largest NATO-ally troop deployment on the island was only about 150 troops at any given time. That is America’s current deployment, stationed at Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base.

Pituffik and the Shrinking Footprint

As the name suggests, the base is currently under the control of America’s Space Force, a military branch that Trump created. And while America’s deployment to Greenland had been downsizing since the 1990s, Trump helped shrink it to its current state during his first term. The contrast with the past is stark. At its peak, Thule Air Base was home to some six thousand troops in continuous rotation during the Cold War, and America’s overall troop presence across Greenland crested at 15,000.

Those are figures the US could decide to replicate whenever it wants, under the current order of things within NATO. Rebuilding bases, repositioning troops, and expanding capabilities into the Arctic are all genuinely challenging tasks. But none of them get any easier simply because Greenland would hypothetically be a US territory rather than a Danish one. The hard logistical problems remain identical regardless of whose flag flies over the island — which means annexation solves nothing that the existing framework does not already permit.

Another Way Forward — and the Question of Motive

From a strict national-security perspective, then, there is no reason for the United States to attempt a takeover of Greenland, peacefully or militarily. But before detailing what Washington could easily do instead, it is worth asking a question that could shift the calculus: is there another reason Trump wants control over the island so badly?

Outside analysts have not hesitated to voice their suspicions. Some argue that all of Trump’s Greenland talk should be read as a challenge to NATO itself, similar to his earlier pressure campaign on member-state military spending, which ultimately led the alliance to expand its defense-spending expectations massively. Others suggest the alliance is the actual target, and that Trump sees an intra-alliance crisis over Greenland as the quickest, easiest way to sever the connection between Washington and its NATO allies.

Other theories proliferate. Perhaps Washington’s primary goal is resource extraction, and it fears that if Denmark retains sovereignty — or if Greenland becomes independent — it will lose the ability to extract what it wants, when it wants. Perhaps, as a recent analysis by The New Republic suggests, Trump is being pushed by American oligarchs with their own long-term designs on Greenland.

Perhaps his remarks about expanding American territory are the key, and he sees an Alaska-style or Hawai’i-style acquisition as so valuable to his presidential legacy that it is worth the diplomatic and strategic fallout. Or, as some of his most cynical opponents have suggested, perhaps it is simply that Greenland looks big on a map, and in Trump’s mind, bigger is better.

When National-Security Logic Falls Short

If any of those outside motivators are what is really driving Trump’s calculus, then his posture would at least make more sense. It would explain why America’s existing leeway to act militarily in Greenland simply does not seem to factor into his decision-making. If this is about something other than national and economic security, then national-security and economic-security logic will inevitably fall short of explaining it.

But for now, Trump and his administration continue to claim national security, especially, as their key motivator for acquiring Greenland. If that is genuinely the case, then a territorial acquisition is simply unnecessary — and certainly not worth the schism that would follow between the US and nations that have been among its closest allies since the start of the Cold War. To annex an entire territory, and destroy the NATO alliance, on the presumption that America would eventually get stonewalled is less a strategic failure than a basic interpersonal one. Washington has not even tested whether it would be stonewalled at all.

What the US Could Easily Do Instead

If the United States nonetheless has a deep, gnawing sense that direct control over Greenland is of paramount importance, it could do a great deal to test that theory under the current set of treaties before ever contemplating annexation. An easy first step would be to re-expand its deployment at Pituffik Space Base, perhaps transitioning it into a joint space-and-air base and returning troop numbers to the thousands rather than the mere hundreds. Because Pituffik is already the world’s northernmost deep-water port, the US could base naval assets there — perhaps a regular, discreet rotation of ballistic-missile submarines, or the fleets of battleships and icebreakers that Trump has been so intent on acquiring. Beyond that base, Washington could regain control of the old base infrastructure that still exists across Greenland and build new facilities designed to host small deployments today but scale up rapidly if short-term emergencies or long-term ice melt create the conditions for a surge.

The US could also lean on capabilities only it can provide. Consider air patrol: there is legitimate concern that European forces may struggle to patrol the skies above Danish territory. With such vast distances to cover, aerial refueling is critical, and the US fields a fleet of air-to-air tankers unmatched by every other nation on earth combined. It has space-based assets that would let it constantly surveil the Arctic Ocean, tracking the movements of surface vessels across the region, and it has both the manpower and the ships to establish quick-reaction forces — especially as America withdraws naval and other assets from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

By positioning not just a few icebreakers but an entire fleet of them, the US could make itself the Arctic gold standard, always ready to escort tankers or cargo ships as the first sea lanes begin to emerge. There is also Trump’s new Golden Dome program, intended to provide integrated missile defense, for which Washington could easily station assets on Greenlandic bases under its control. And outside the military domain, the US could offer mineral-rights deals to Denmark or Greenland to facilitate American extraction of natural resources, or claim a defense-industrial necessity and stretch existing international law a bit to accommodate. On paper, none of those actions would be likely to draw push-back from Danish or Greenlandic authorities — and, more to the point, the US has not even bothered to find out.

The Stakes

If Washington does get stonewalled at some stage, there may be a real conversation to be had about whether sacrificing American priorities in the Arctic is worth preserving good relations with the Danes. But that is a question for after diplomacy is attempted, not before.

At this moment, eventual US military action against Greenland appears more likely than not. The driving force behind America’s decisions remains genuinely unclear. What is clear is that Washington is publicly saying this is ultimately a matter of national security — and if national security is truly the concern, then none of this needs to happen.

If those are America’s motives, then America does not need to invade Greenland, does not need to annex the territory either peacefully or militarily, and does not need to sacrifice the NATO alliance itself to access the strategic value Greenland offers. The hope is that someone in the White House comes to their senses and gets this through to Trump before it is too late. Right now, that does not seem likely.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the United States already have legal access to military operations in Greenland?

Yes. Since the 1950s, the US has been party to the Greenland Defense Agreement, signed with Denmark and the other founding members of NATO. While it does not grant sovereignty, it allows the US to build, install, maintain, and operate as many of its own bases across Greenland as it wants, house as many personnel as it chooses, and control the movements of ships and aircraft in nearly any area it selects.

How many troops does the United States currently have on Greenland, and how does that compare to the past?

About 150 troops are stationed at Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, which is under the control of the US Space Force — a base whose presence Trump himself helped shrink during his first term. At its Cold War peak, Thule hosted some 6,000 troops in continuous rotation, and America’s total presence across Greenland once crested at 15,000. The US could decide to replicate those figures at any time under the current NATO treaty framework.

Why is Greenland considered so strategically important?

Greenland sits above the Arctic Circle midway between Russia and the continental US, along the path intercontinental ballistic missiles would overfly in a nuclear exchange — making it ideal for positioning intelligence assets, bombers, and submarines. Climate change is expected to expose immense oil, gas, and rare-earth deposits as Greenland’s ice melts, and a warming Arctic Ocean will open new global shipping lanes, making early control of Arctic territory extremely valuable.

What other motives have analysts suggested for Trump’s fixation on Greenland beyond national security?

Several competing theories exist. Some analysts read Trump’s rhetoric as a challenge to NATO itself, similar to earlier pressure campaigns on defense spending. Others suggest he is being pushed by American oligarchs with designs on the island’s resources. Additional theories include a desire for an Alaska- or Hawai’i-style territorial acquisition to cement his presidential legacy, or straightforwardly that Greenland looks large on a map and Trump equates size with value.

Why would annexing Greenland not solve America’s strategic challenges there?

Because the genuinely difficult work — rebuilding bases, repositioning troops, expanding Arctic capabilities, and building icebreaker fleets — remains identical whether Greenland is a US territory or a Danish one. None of those logistical challenges become easier through annexation. Meanwhile, a forcible or coercive takeover would risk shattering the NATO alliance, which has been Washington’s primary security architecture since the Cold War, in exchange for nothing that existing treaties do not already permit.