Greenland’s Significance

January 23, 2026

President Donald Trump has long hinted at an interest in purchasing or annexing Greenland “for the purpose of national security” before Russian or Chinese interests are entrenched in the area.

The autonomous Danish territory straddles key sea lanes, including trans-Arctic shipping corridors, and is rich in critical minerals and rare earths.

Trump has said that “whether they like it or not,” Greenland will soon belong to the United States. Possible scenarios include Greenland becoming a U.S. territory, such as the Virgin Islands, or a freely associated state in a compact with the United States.

The United States has similar compacts with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau, granting them substantial economic aid, while the United States has authority over security and defense.

The president first expressed his intention to buy Greenland in 2019, and the second Trump administration has voiced increased urgency in incorporating the world’s largest island.

Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Danish and Greenlandic officials on Jan. 14. After the meeting, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen called it a “frank but also constructive discussion” and said disagreements remain.

The Trump administration is also backing mining projects in Greenland, focusing on the island’s rare earths.

Incorporating Greenland—nearly 50 percent bigger than Alaska and three times the size of Texas—would be the largest territorial expansion in the nation’s history.

Trump has consistently expressed concern about the Russian and Chinese presence in the region.

In 2007, Russia planted a Russian flag on the North Pole seabed. Since that time, it has revitalized more than 50 old Soviet military installations. The Russian presence in the Arctic now includes six army bases, 10 radar stations, 14 airfields, and 16 deep-water ports.

“It is important to consistently strengthen Russia’s positions in the Arctic, comprehensively develop our country’s logistics capabilities, and ensure the development of a promising Arctic transport corridor from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in November 2025.

Russia’s coast frames more than half the Arctic Ocean, and it has more icebreakers, including nuclear-powered ice-crushers, than the rest of the world combined, according to an August 2025 report from the Atlas Institute for International Affairs.

The United States, in contrast, has no bases directly on the Arctic Ocean. It has five bases in the Arctic, four in Alaska, and Pituffik Space Force Base in Greenland.

Eric Cole, a former CIA officer and CEO of Secure Anchor, said the importance of Greenland from a national defense perspective is no small matter and will increase with time.

“Greenland’s geographic position places it directly beneath the shortest flight paths between North America, Europe, and Eurasia, making it a natural vantage point for monitoring air and missile activity,” Cole told The Epoch Times.

“Sensors based in Greenland can track aircraft, space objects, and missile launches that would otherwise go undetected until much later in their trajectory. This early detection is critical for both U.S. and NATO forces, as it expands warning times and improves coordinated response options.”

For land and space-based defense systems, Greenland has ideal access to the polar orbit because of its geographical location.

“Polar-orbiting satellites are particularly critical for modern intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities because of the unique view these orbits provide of the Earth,” space operations expert Pat Jameson told The Epoch Times.

The region also serves as a hub for fusing data from satellites, radar arrays, and maritime sensors into a unified operational picture, according to Cole.

“As Arctic routes open due to climate change, Greenland’s role as a surveillance anchor only grows,” he said. “In effect, it acts as a forward lookout post for the entire North Atlantic security architecture.”

China in 2018 declared itself a “near-Arctic state,” announcing that it would be “an important stakeholder in Arctic affairs” in building what it called a “Polar Silk Road” access ramp to its global Belt and Road Initiative.

A 2024 RAND Corp. analysis highlighted that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been increasing its Arctic presence since the 1990s, with state-sponsored Chinese companies investing in oil, gas, mineral exploration, infrastructure, and in developing trans-Arctic sea routes.

Former diplomat and U.S. War Department official Armand Cucciniello told The Epoch Times that Greenland is becoming increasingly important to U.S. defense strategy.

“It has five main strategic and operational benefits to the United States: Positioning early warning radars, space surveillance capabilities, monitoring naval movements in the North Atlantic, access to new shipping routes, and deposits of critical minerals and rare earth elements used in modern technologies,” Cucciniello said.

“With polar ice caps melting, the region is becoming an arena for increased great power competition, most notably with Russia but also China.”

Greenland is framed by the only two waterways linking the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic: the Davis Strait on the Baffin Sea to the west, and the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap in the Denmark Strait on the Greenland Sea to the east.

Thule—now Pituffik Space Base—remains the only official U.S. military installation in Greenland, a key early warning outpost of 150 military personnel within a strategic eye-blink of Russian airbases on Arctic Ocean islands, including Nagurskoye Airbase—where satellite imagery has shown Russian deployment of powerful MiG-31 “Foxhound” fighters.